Is It Really Too Much to Ask? Read online

  I suppose we could start by drawing it just above the point where someone says on Twitter that Jeremy Clarkson and Jemima Khan have had an affair. And even though everyone knows it to be rubbish, it somehow becomes front-page news for two days.

  15 May 2011

  Garçon! A hike in my flat’s value, please

  I’ve never quite understood this country’s obsession with property prices. Because if the house you’re trying to sell has fallen in value, it stands to reason the house you’re trying to buy has fallen in value as well. So what does it matter?

  However, it is possible to make your house shoot up in value while everyone else plummets into a world of negative equity, unpleasant letters from the bank, despondency, despair and, eventually, death. Simply open a really good restaurant at the end of the road.

  Checklist: balsamic vinegar and olive oil on the tables; lots of weird bread items in a nice basket; some silly cheeses; and pretty waitresses in jeans. That’s about it, really.

  Let us examine the case of Padstow, a fishing village on the north coast of Cornwall. It’s always been a popular holiday destination and, as a result, property prices in the area were always 20 per cent higher than anywhere else in the county. But then along came Rick Stein, who opened a jolly good restaurant, and now, as a direct result, Padstow property is 44 per cent more expensive than the Cornish average.

  Then you have Bray, in Berkshire. For centuries you would want to live there only if you were keen on brass rubbing. But then up popped the Fat Duck and the Waterside Inn and now you can’t even buy a can of pop in the village shop for less than £1 million.

  I am similarly fortunate. Not that long ago a super-expensive farm shop and restaurant opened just a few miles from my house and, as a result, every metrosexual in London now wants a country retreat in the area. The result? Well, last weekend some Daily Mail reporters stood at the end of my drive for a while and decided my sorry little collection of ramshackle outbuildings was worth a whopping £2 million*.

  I don’t really understand why restaurants have this effect. But nothing else will transform an area quite so drastically. Last week, for instance, a £35-million modern art gallery opened in Wakefield. It looks a bit like the Guggenheim – if you stand very far away and squint – and it houses forty-four sculptures by Barbara Hepworth, who everyone has heard of. I imagine.

  Feeling a need to move to Wakefield as a result? Of course not, because an art gallery, as we know, is just a building behind which children on school trips can go for a smoke.

  Then, of course, just up the road in Doncaster there was the ill-fated Earth Centre. Built with millions of our money, it was a place where visitors could look at a yurt and watch their own excrement being disposed of in an eco-friendly way.

  Doubtless the locals felt that such an attraction would cause the value of their houses to soar. They were to be disappointed.

  As soon as it opened, property prices in the nearest village fell and didn’t start to rise again properly until after someone realized that nobody wanted to look at their stools being mashed and the Earth Centre was closed.

  Shopping centres don’t work, either. They just mean more traffic in the area. And while public transport links are good, you can’t exactly buy a house in the hope that someone will come along soon and build a railway station in the back garden.

  It’s the same story with Richard Curtis. I could have bought a house in Notting Hill for about £2.50 before the film came along. Afterwards, the same house would have been worth £2.5 billion. Had we known in advance about that movie, we all could have made a fortune. But we didn’t, and that’s the problem: guessing which area is about to become hot. And that brings me back to the question of restaurants.

  Next week a friend of mine who has had much success with clubs and bars all over the world is opening a pizza joint on Portobello Road in west London. You may scoff at this and claim the area is already so expensive that one new cafe can’t possibly make a difference. However, what you don’t know – I didn’t – is that Portobello Road is the longest road in the world.

  It starts in Notting Hill, and this is the bit we all know. Pretty art students selling fascinators from trestle tables and Paddington Bear wandering about looking for Mr Gruber. Then it goes all trendy and there are many people in bars, wearing extremely thin spectacles. And then it reaches the A40 flyover and you assume it stops. But it doesn’t. It keeps right on going, plunging north through parts of London that have no name until, eventually, it gets to what looks like West Beirut. In one of the windows I could make out the bulky form of Terry Waite, chained to a radiator.

  And as I sat there at a pre-opening dinner, drinking rosé with the trendiest people in all of London, local hoodie types emerged from nearby houses on those stupid small bicycles all people on council estates seem to have. They couldn’t believe what they were seeing. They didn’t realize that spectacles could be so thin. And many had very obviously never seen a real live homosexual before. There was much pointing.

  Here’s the thing. Soon, and I can guarantee this, they will all be gone. This one restaurant, all on its own, will cause the small bicycles to be replaced with Vespas. The shops currently selling taps and hens will be sold to bijou furniture designers who will fill the windows with driftwood coffee tables at £4,000 a pop.

  And the flats in the area? You could probably part-exchange one today for a tin of boot polish. Whereas next year, when Jude Law is living there, and Sienna Miller’s popping past your window to buy a granary loaf, a one-bedroom basement flat will fetch half a billion. You mark my words.

  Oh, and before I go, here’s another tip. I gather Curtis’s next film is to be set in Hitchin. Or I might be making that up.

  22 May 2011

  A quake’s nothing until it becomes a wobbly iDisaster

  Last week Iceland exploded again. Against a backdrop of images that looked like an atomic bomb had gone off, weathermen were saying the resultant ash cloud was heading our way and that soon all Britain’s airports would have to be closed.

  This would have caused inconvenience to thousands of us, as we’d have been forced to spend the next few months listening to friends telling very improbable stories about how they got back from Prague. ‘I had to crawl to Madrid and then I got someone in a rickshaw to take me to Toulon, where George Clooney offered me a piggyback.’

  Weirdly, it seems only yesterday that Europe was shut down by the first cloud of Icelandic high-altitude dust and I was boring anyone who’d listen with the astonishing tale of how I got home from Warsaw. To précis: I drove.

  And it’s not just Iceland that has gone wonky recently. Who could have guessed after the 2004 Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami that, just over six years later, there’d be another double whammy off the coast of Japan? An event so massive we all forgot instantly that only days earlier a tectonic shiver had reduced the wonderful New Zealand city of Christchurch to a crumpled pile of broken sewage pipes, decapitated churches and shattered dreams.

  In the twenty-first century alone, we’ve had Haiti. And Pakistan. And the floods in Queensland. And Hurricane Katrina. And a seemingly never-ending stream of tornados reducing America’s Bible Belt to matchwood. And the French heatwave that killed almost 15,000. And swine flu.

  When I was growing up in the 1960s the natural world seemed so stable and safe. I don’t remember my parents ever feeling the need to hoard soup and paraffin. Sure, they’d occasionally make me send food I hadn’t eaten to a place called Biafra, and while Aberfan was grisly, it was a) man-made and b) not really in the same league as the Asian tsunami.

  In short, we used to be surprised when we woke in a morning to find that Mother Nature had girded her loins while we were asleep. Now it’s the other way round. We’re amazed when we wake to find the world is pretty much as we left it when we went to bed.

  So what’s going on? While eco-mentalists are examining the sky for telltale signs of impending doom, and NASA is scanning the heavens for
the pinprick of light that will herald the dawn of our extinction, is some major Hollywood-style catastrophe unravelling in the upper mantle? Is the crust cracking up? Is the world falling to pieces? Or is it all down to the iPhone?

  Iceland is always exploding; has been since a volcanic burp brought it into existence in the first place. As recently as 1963 there were no islands of any note off the south coast but then the planet decided to be sick and by 1967 the region’s guillemot community had a whole playground. It’s called Surtsey and it’s a mile across.

  Today the arrival of a new landmass would keep the rolling news channels going for years, but back then no one had a smartphone, which meant that, to all intents and purposes, the event never happened. If the recent Japanese earthquake had happened in 1970 it would have made a few paragraphs on page twenty-nine of The Times and that would have been that. Now, though, CNN needs to be fed, twenty-four hours a day. And it’s not picky about what it eats. If it’s on film, it’s news. If it isn’t, it isn’t.

  In many ways this is a good thing. In the past a tsunami was something that really only existed in schoolbooks and we in Britain had absolutely no idea what it might be like to be stuck in an earthquake.

  Now, though, thanks to a Japanese office worker who filmed the shaking filing cabinets in his office, we do. And in case we forget, YouTube is on hand to remind us.

  Floods? Well, in Britain they used to come up to the news reporter’s ankles, and only then because he’d spent an hour before the broadcast looking for the deepest puddle in which to stand while delivering his report. Now, thanks to Apple and Nokia, we know what it’s like when a flood picks up an articulated lorry and smashes it into a petrochemical refinery. We know that floods don’t lap. They rage and boil and ruin rather more than your new button-back settee.

  There’s more. Without mobile phones, few of the uprisings in the Arab world this year would have had much traction. A few youths would have gone on the streets, thrown some stones and been shot. It wouldn’t have been news here because we wouldn’t have been able to watch it.

  Remember Rodney King? He was a black man in America who was ordered out of his car after a police chase and beaten up. News? Not really. I imagine that sort of thing happens a lot. But because the beating was videoed, it was on the front pages.

  So, yes, now that we all have them, the camera phone is a tool for justice, and for putting us closer to the action when the world springs a leak. However, there is a problem.

  In April 1994 there were many pictures on the news of Kurt Cobain, a rock star who had apparently killed himself. And then there was the televised death of the Formula One driver Roland Ratzenberger at an event in Italy. There was, however, little coverage of the unfilmed Rwandan genocide that saw about 800,000 people hacked to death in 100 days. Only when pictures of the aftermath started to roll in did it get noticed.

  This is still going on today. Whenever Bangladesh is overrun by some terrible natural disaster, we never really know. This is because the only means most people over there have of recording it is with an easel and some oil paint. Whereas whenever it rains in America, we are treated to some grainy, wobble-vision mobile footage of a fat man sobbing and pointing at his upside-down Buick.

  It used to be said that if it bleeds, it leads. Now, though, if you want it to stick, you need a pic.

  29 May 2011

  I’m going to cure dumb Britain

  Normally, when a couple decide they need a nanny to look after their child, the list of requirements is quite small. Can you cook a sausage without blowing the house to smithereens? Do you have a rudimentary grasp of English? And are you able to walk past our fridge without eating every single thing inside it?

  Actually, I’m being a silly. A mother is bothered about these things. A father tends to worry mostly about aesthetics. Well, I did. I wouldn’t deliberately choose an ugly sofa or a hideous coffee table, so why would I want to clutter up the house with a nanny who looks like Robbie Coltrane?

  Anyway, according to various reports last week, the actress Gwyneth Paltrow and her crooning husband, whose name has temporarily gone from my mind, have advertised for someone to look after their children, aged five and seven. And their list of requirements is enormous.

  The successful applicant must be able to teach ancient Greek, Latin, French and either Japanese or Mandarin. He or she will also be proficient in painting, sailing, a martial art, chess and drama. So what they seem to want is a blend of Julie Andrews, Robin Knox-Johnston and Boris Spassky. Maybe Stephen Fry would do – except, perhaps, for the martial art – but I fear the salary of £62,100 plus expenses, and a free flat, might not be quite enough.

  The story attracted much tut-tutting on the radio and in the newspapers. But there will be no scoffing from me because, if the story is true, I think the couple should be applauded for setting such high standards.

  In the olden days, cleverness was celebrated. People would flock to exhibitions to see new machines and meet the men who’d invented them. Talks were popular. Authors were the rock ’n’ rollers, and poets deities. Not that long ago, you could be an engineer and rich … at the same time. But then along came Blind Date and that changed everything. Because here was a show specifically designed for morons. Occasionally, for comedic effect, a clever person who could speak properly was invited into the pink and purple idiot chamber so that the host, Cilla Black, could make mocking ‘oooh’ noises on discovering that they had been to university.

  Suddenly, it was uncool to be intelligent and well read. Cilla told us every single Saturday night that it was much better to be a hairdresser. And, as a result, the future wasn’t bright. It was orange.

  Blind Date was the master and originator of the ‘all right for some’ mentality that now pervades every part of our lives. Anyone good-looking, or rich, or lucky is perceived to have committed some kind of crime against the chip-eating masses. Today, this has reached such an absurd level that we are expected to weep at the loss of Jade Goody and are bombarded by the antics of minor-league non-celebrities who have pretty much the same genetic coding as a cauliflower and a bit less intelligence than a dishwasher.

  I was told last week by someone who worked on The Only Way Is Essex – it’s a TV show, apparently – that, when asked to name the prime minister, one of the stars said: ‘What? The prime minister of Essex?’ Upon being told that there is no such post, he thought for a while and then said: ‘Gordon Ramsay.’ Meanwhile, on the other channel, Andrew Marr was talking about the origins of cities. And no one was watching.

  Clever people, today, are scary. Stephen Fry is bright enough to know this. It’s why he does knob gags. Stupid people only really like to see other stupid people on the television because it makes them feel good about themselves.

  They reckon that if someone with the IQ of a cylinder head gasket can get on the box, there is hope that they can too.

  Obviously, if this continues, Britain will be sunk. If our children feel they must be gormless to fit in, we shall soon be a big, dark backwater full of fat people celebrating their idiocy with another bag of oven-ready E numbers. And so, obviously, it’s important to turn things round. But how?

  Earlier this year, a man with an IQ of 48 was barred by the High Court from having sex. It said that he was too stupid to understand the consequences and health risks. Yes. But what it also seemed to be saying is that he might produce a child that’s just as daft as him.

  There are those, I know, who think that the judge was correct and that all stupid people should be neutered. But I reckon it’s better to undo the teachings of Blind Date and humiliate the nation’s morons into changing their ways. I believe this is possible. When I worked in Rotherham, I met many people who could barely speak. If you’d asked them to write down every single fact they knew on a piece of paper, they’d have needed only a stamp. And yet, despite having less knowledge about the world than a tree, they could add up a darts score faster than a Cray supercomputer. This means people have the capac
ity to be bright and useful but that no one has worked out a way to make them realize it. Until now …

  Tomorrow morning, I have a meeting scheduled with the controller of BBC1 and I’m going to suggest we make a new TV game show in which contestants are picked at random from the streets and told that, if they answer a selection of fairly simple questions correctly, they will be given sex with a supermodel, much money and a speedboat. However, if they get one of the questions wrong, the studio audience will be encouraged to howl with laughter at their stupidity. Maybe we could go further and put up signs outside their house saying: ‘The person who lives here thought the capital of France was Southend.’

  I think it would be a long-running smash. And I very much look forward to the day when the children of Gwyneth Paltrow appear and sail off into the sunset in a shiny new speedboat with a bag of cash.

  5 June 2011

  Advice for men – don’t try to keep your hair on

  I don’t want to be unduly rude about Wayne Rooney, but it seems the irritating little brat, who plays annoyingly well for Manchester United and annoyingly badly for England, has had a hair transplant. And I’m sorry, but what on earth is the point of that?

  He was a very ugly little troll with sticky-out ears and a bald head, and now he is a very ugly little troll with sticky-out ears. It’s an improvement but only in the same way that Dawn French’s recent diet is an improvement. The fact is, you’d still want her on your team in a sumo wrestling match.

  I wonder about this hair transplant business. Did Silvio Berlusconi, for instance, think that if he emptied the sweep-up bag from the local Hair Port beauty salon on to his bonce, he could burst back on to the world stage looking like George Clooney? He doesn’t. He just looks like an oily, perma-tanned buffoon with a hair transplant.