Freddie Flintoff totally upstaged by adorable children in Morrison's advert

Here is the new Morrison's advert. A new Morrison's ad is always an event in my house and this one is no exception featuring as it does cricketing legend, Freddie Flintoff.

Freddie seems to be attempting to make inroads into a media career ever since he broke his body in the name of English sporting success but in his latest foray into the world of television he finds himself upstaged, out-acted and out-classed by a gaggle of adorable child actors.

Note particularly 'They bake them here, you know' girl and a star turn from 'Oh the quiche!' boy. I predict big things from 'Oh the quiche!' boy.

If only Freddie could go back to what he does best - drinking. When he stumbled off the step (at 1.05) and did that tie thing during the Ashes victory celebrations in 2005, I distinctly remember laughing for 10 solid minutes.

In light of all this here are a couple of television predictions/dreams:

'Freddie Flintoff's Lancastrian Pub Crawl' presented by Freddie Flintoff - what starts off as a low key BBC4 study of quiet northern watering holes takes a turn for the lairy when Freddie decides he wants to go to the Printworks and subsequently gets thrown out of Tiger Tiger.

'Oh the quiche!' starring 'Oh the quiche!' boy - A charming little sitcom in which a 4 year old boy repeatedly forgets to buy pastry foods. If they can get half of The Inbetweeners on board to reel in the knob-gag demographic then we're looking at a sure fire hit. I may as well get straight to drafting the treatment right now...

Radiohead announce nationwide Lidl tour dates

Radiohead have today announced dates for their forthcoming 'Lidl by Lidl' tour, with the band set to make appearances at every Lidl in England.

The tour, named after 'The King of Limbs' number (which apparently concerns a randy Thom Yorke "trying it on" with checkout girls), will commence on 15th May starting at Oxford's Lidl Superstore, the opening ceremony of which Yorke himself presided over last year.

"It'll be great to be back in Oxford, at the Lidl Superstore" the singer said today. "I've been a lifelong supporter of the chain. I mean, where else can you get a 2 kilo bag of beef mince for one pound? That's an offer you can't pass up - and I say that as a devout and militant vegetarian".

Johnny Greenwood was unavailable for comment, but it was clear from his body language that he was in reight mard about the whole thing.

Joe Rollino

Human endurance is a fascinating thing. One is often drawn to characters that prevail where others fall, who push life to the edge and whose lives occupy extreme territory. It can take different forms - there are those who can drink and drink and drink and still remain standing/alive.

Actor Richard Harris' capacity for drink was infamous and astounding. In 1997 he discovered he owned a Rolls Royce that had been housed in a New York garage since 1974, and such was his almost constant inebriation during the 70s he had no recollection of ever owning it (If this anecdote seems a little crowbarred in, it's because I love that story).

More honourably representing the nature of human endurance are characters like Joe Rollino. His innate ability was not with alcohol imbibing but weight lifting. He was cool in several ways but chief among them were the following:

- He was the self-proclaimed world's strongest man in the 1920's
- Time could not kill him, he only died after being hit by a van aged 104

Endurance is the wrong word for this man. He wasn't merely enduring living this long, he was showing off at it, still bending coins in his teeth at the age of 103. And unlike characters like Harris, Rollino never drank, smoked and or ate meat.

His whole story reads like an urban myth or a television movie, with a bizarre hotch potch of cameos throughout history - World War II heroics, bodyguard for Greta Garbo, bit part in On The Waterfront (left on the cutting room floor). More than anything he was clearly well loved and a local hero in Brooklyn.

And now for quite a gay looking photo:

It's that guys glasses that makes it gay and not Joe Rollino who is badass.

Arrested Development and The Godfather

I have a past history of comparing sitcoms to other things, or 'sitcomparison' as I now suddenly like to call it. So imagine my delight when I stumbled onto this nugget of sitcomparison gold, comparing the cult sitcom to the movie colossus. I had no idea of the similarities, but apparently it's as Ann as the nose on Plain's face.

Tune in next week when I'll be comparing 1970's British sitcoms to elements of Indian cuisine (or at the very least finding someone else on the internet who already has).

I've worked out why I hate everyone and everything

Reading one of the many enlightening articles on Cracked.com (6 Factors That Influence Who You Have Sex With), I came across an intriguing passage regarding hearing:

The brain is a really complex organ. But after decades of studying it, most psychologists and neurologists feel comfortable making a couple of generalizations -- namely, that the left side of your brain handles verbal information and is tuned in to positive emotions, while the right hemisphere concentrates on nonverbal stimuli and more negative emotions. They also know that information that goes in your left ear is handled by the right side of the brain.

Armed with this information, psychologists in Italy devised a study that tested how the different sides of your brain process information. What they found is that requests are 50 percent more successful when heard from the right side than the left. In the study, a woman approached people at a club and asked for a cigarette, leaning in to one side or another. Exactly double the number of people obliged her when she asked on their right. In a dating situation, not only could the chances of someone saying yes to a date hinge on who is standing where, but the emotional aspect could come into play as well. Sure, you might agree to go out with someone who talked in your left ear, but your first impression might be to associate him with more negative emotions.

Being deaf in my right ear my first impression of everyone is associated with negative emotions. I've never really thought about it too much before, but I'm now convinced that profound unilateral hearing loss has shaped my personality more than I had ever given it credit for. It's responsible for a whole host of winning attributes.

Maybe it's some really bad science and Ben Goldacre can tell me where I've gone wrong, but it's nice to find things to blame for all the bitterness and hatred, however fanciful it may be.

Memoirs # 12

At primary school I remember thinking I invented that thing where you tie your jumper round your waist. No one was doing it before me. Before me all these kids were boiled in their jumpers playing football, but I showed them the way with a killer device.

Not sure it's something that would ever need a patent. But if so, here's my submission:

So yeah, money please.

The White Abum as a single album

I was thinking about this problem today. If I were to cut The White Album to a single album what would be kept and what would be cast asunder? Without actually consulting the track listing I made a quick list of the songs I'd most like to listen to. Out of a possible 30, this came to a worryingly slim 9. To my surprise it was very Lennon heavy (I always thought I was a Mark Corrigan type character), and it had, perhaps less surprisingly, very little representation of the long ones, strange ones or quiet ones. Because, let's face it, they're are some truly awful tracks on The White Album, Don't Pass Me By and Piggies amongst the named and shamed.

Then there's Revolution 9. This fairly uninteresting track of questionable significance made me consider the make up of this single album altogether. In the time it takes to listen to Revolution 9, you could have listened to I'm So Tired, Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey, Why Don't We Do It In The Road? and I Will, with 30 seconds leftover. So would I want to cut down the album according to time or tracks? This led to other considerations - Would I try to represent McCartney and Lennon more or less equally with a token Harrison number ala most other Beatles albums? Would I try to show the contrasting styles and conflicting individual personalities the White Album is famed for?

Looking up other attempts on the internet I came across these from old music nerd magazine MOJO. Some of these MOJO attempts neatly organise the new cut into 'Nice side' and 'Nasty side'. This approach of neatening up a sprawling album didn't seem right. If anything my original route of simply picking the songs I liked the most seemed more appropriate. The very fact of the matter is that it's the inclusion of the self indulgent, the avant garde and the Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da that makes the White album what it is. Any new cut would have to be an unrepresentative selection. So here's my 14 track cut:

Back In The USSR

Dear Prudence

Glass Onion

The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

Happiness Is a Warm Gun

Yer Blues

Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey

Sexy Sadie

Why Don't We Do It In The Road?

Revolution 1

I'm So Tired

Blackbird

Cry Baby Cry

3 observations on making this cut:

- Not only is there obvious crap on the White Album, there's a lot of 'take it or leave it' kind of stuff - I wanted to do a 15 track cut but didn't feel compelled to add any others beyond 14.

- Re-listening to aid my selection didn't really help, it's hard to re-evaluate something you've listened to hundreds of times.

- McCartney does not come out of this well.

Curb Season 8

Trailer here.

Be they Blade or be they Owl, regardless of footballing alligiance

Sheffield city council goes over the top in its representation of as many contrasting demographics in one poster as possible.

Power Children's Plastic Urban Cricket Set's solid gold running tips # 2

Distractions. There's nothing more boring than running so you often have to find ways of occupying your thoughts, especially in the early stages before the really digging in begins. I used to go through the plot lines from ER or write jokes such as this one:

Did you hear about the untimely death of the upholsterer?

He had unfurnished business.

Whilst in considerable pain, the thoughts that go through your head can be surprisingly banal. Like remembering that you have to go to bank. This is a good thing. The more your brain thinks about boring things, the better your body can concentrate on running.

Thoughts aside, the finely toned backside of a runner of the opposite sex can do wonders for your focus. Objectifying attractive people can slash minutes off your PB. Just ask Seb Coe. No wait, don't. He'll be too busy with 2012 and all that.

Music is a popular distraction technique but it can get you run over. I'm of the opinion that all this headphone wearing in the public sphere is damaging to society, but that's another thing all together.

So yeah: Rumination and arse. They're my running tips for today.

Power Children's Plastic Urban Cricket Set's solid gold running tips # 1

Disclaimer: The following tips might not make you a better runner and might actually make you a horrible person.

Embrace extremes. I gravitate towards extremes. It's all about addiction. I can binge almost constantly on food and alcohol for a period of up to 6 months with only a handful of runs in all that time, with most of them being mad dashes to the offy before it closes. The amount I can consume in one day is startling and frankly disgusting. And yet I'm strangely proud of my huge appetite. I can eat until I feel really quite ill and then eat some more. This is where extreme lifestyles create transferrable skills for running. To have the determination to carry on through the pain - if ever there was a maxim to define the mental qualities of the long distance runner this would be it. It is a mental toughness that they share with the likes of hot dog eating champions.

When I first got into running I would eat a bowl of muesli for breakfast, an apple for dinner and a carrot for tea and then go running in the evening. It's going from one extreme to another. This is why you get all these cases of unbelievably obese individuals losing over half their body weight using unbelievably restricting diets - It's just addiction transfer. These people clearly have addictive personalities and for many years lard was their vice. But eating little and exercising a lot can become just as addictive. The way I see it everyone's addicted to something you just have to choose the best one for you.

One word of warning: My dad went on the stupid insane extreme route in his youth, eating salad and running 3 hours everyday. And now he can't walk very well. This is what probably isn't said enough - running destroys your legs. So EMBRACE EXTREMES (in moderation).

Memoirs # 11

Having stayed up all night (possibly under the influence), me and my housemate stopped a milk float on our road to ask for 2 pints of milk 3 times a week (or maybe visa versa).
That milk became a financial albatross around our necks. Every week we'd forget about having to pay it. I think eventually we had it cancelled.

Fiction - Big Things

The main medium I use for discovery of new music is the radio, mostly because I'm a lazy, passive consumer - It's hypodermic needle model stuff, I just sit there listening to the radio nodding in agreement.

This is one doing the rounds on 6Music at the moment. It has a great groove and it just rolls by. It's an unassuming groove, and has the understated air of a laid back demo take. Like a good funk record, it's a track where the constituent parts make a much greater whole (!? Rewrite: 'Like all music ever,..'). Each individual instrument is as clear as a bell and the overall effect is bright and not at all muddied. I like to be able to aurally pick apart a track like that. Like the work of Dungen (another radio discovery), the vocals are the worst bit. I would happily listen to it without them.

Also it sounds like exactly the kind of music I imagine myself making. Particularly the guitar line that comes in with the drums at approx 1.29. If this sounds like an odd thing to say then I guess it is.

Seinfeld and The Beatles

I like this photo.

Now if only I could get The Beatles to mock up a Seinfeld photo. For the sake of simplicity George could be George, leaving Paul to be Jerry, John as Kramer and Ringo as Elaine. Or maybe Yoko Ono could be Elaine and Ringo would be Uncle Leo or someone.

I haven't really thought this through. (In reality this topic is open to mountains of discussion).

I was thinking about making a comparison of the Seinfeld and The Beatles because I have mildly problematic obsessions with both. It turns out (fairly unsurprisingly) that it's been done before.

Here and here a couple of examples I have found.

The first link makes a neat little comparison (in it's first few paragraphs) between the two in terms of their cultural dominance of their respective eras.

The second link makes some cross generational comparisons of sitcoms and music artists which by way of summary goes thusly:

I Love Lucy - Elvis Presley, Seinfeld - The Beatles, The Office (USA) - Queen

Now, first of all, being English I have little to no working knowledge of 'I Love Lucy' but if it is anything like Elvis I imagine it was massively culturally important at the time but contains almost nothing of interest for the modern consumer. I'm sure the author reads it a little differently, but I'll go along with it.

Now there is a line in one Seinfeld episode where Jerry says he's never seen a single episode of 'Lucy' (hence destroying this guy's theory of 'no Seinfeld without I Love Lucy') but then he is a fictional character and I imagine Jerry in real life is very well read sitcom-wise. Perhaps an American viewer would be aware of allusions of 'I Love Lucy' in Seinfeld. But anyway, as far as comparing The Beatles and Seinfeld I agree with him.

But then he says The Office is like Queen. He ranks The Office (USA) his favourite sitcom of all time, so we must assume he holds Queen in equally high esteem. Now I have been known to enjoy the pompous stylings of Queen in the past but to say their better than The Beatles...well for me his theory falls to pieces. I would be prepared to give The Office a chance if he just said 'This is my favourite sitcom, you should check it out', but knowing that he ranks Queen above The Beatles, I can't help feeling his sitcom barometer must be a bit broken. How can I trust his judgement after a something like that?

Besides, he completely ignores Arrested Development. Are they the Radiohead of sitcoms? Perhaps as far as comparisons go, assigning sitcoms their equivalent music group is probably about as wanky as it gets. I'm beginning to think so.

If only I had the patience, skill and inclination to do so, I would now post a crudely put together photo of The Beatles heads superimposed onto the Seinfeld gang just to make up for wasting your time.

Lost all his amethysts

The above URL (taken from a nonsense lyric from 'The legs of fifty spiders', a nonsense song penned by PCPUCS himself) has taken on a brilliant new meaning, one that I wish I had intended all along.

Apparently, the Ancient Greeks and Romans thought amethysts would protect them from drunkenness and wore them to prevent intoxication. According to Wikipedia, (and I hope I'm not being duped here) the word amethyst comes from the Ancient Greek 'amethystos', basically translated as 'not intoxicated'.

So the above title is saying my protection from inebriation is at zero. I have no chance, I'm done for. It would've been a little cooler if it was more like 'Threw away all his amethysts' - a more impassioned 'throw caution to the wind' kind of thing. But then I guess I probably lost the amethysts the last time I got drunk.

10 easy ways of making people think you're crazy

1. Wear a coat indoors all the time. This is simple but effective. People no longer trust your judgement at all after one day of indoor coat wearing.

2. Fall off the back of your chair. Ideally executed in large gatherings of contemporaries e.g during a lecture at a centre for learning. Done properly it should elicit absolutely no reaction from those nearby. Raising concern from others means you have fundamentally failed to pass yourself off as a) mental b) dead or c) attention seeking. No one in their right mind would ever have anything to do with someone in their wrong mind.

3. Move around glasses, pepper mills and other dinner table fixtures during a meal, shout "Checkmate!" and leave. I don't know if this one needs explaining.

4. Doing any normal activity in a squatting position. Just think about it. Eating + squatting = Loopy, Wedding Procession + sqautting = Crazy loco, Open heart surgery + squatting = plain stupid, Filling in your tax returns + squatting = a bit uncomfortable etc. Squatting regresses you back to your chimp beginnings. The fact that shitting in a bush is the only justifiable reason for a human to take up a squatting position says it all really.

5. Drawing on yourself in felt tip. If ever there was guiding principle for being a loon it's that 'Mildy errant childish behaviour as a child = criminally insane behavior for an adult'. (See also: Sticking things in ears.) Writing expletives or apocalyptic messages will add extra helpings to the crazy.

6. Sticking things in ears. This can be anything really, pencils hit home the point a little to obviously for some people's tastes, so consider subtler items such as washing detergent or Ferrero Rocher. Those aiming for the more extreme end of the spectrum work with a variety of minerals such as amethyst or iron pyrite. Of course with substances such as these your commitment to 'crazy' has to be weighed up against how prepared you are to permanently damage your hearing.

7. Develop an obsession. This again is of your own choosing. Some people like to stalk certain individuals and fantasize about subjecting them to all manner of depredation, but it can be equally insane to develop an unhealthy fascination with a television sitcom. Everyone is always a little freaked out when you know every single line of the programme - it's incredibly effective.

8. Talk to yourself on the bus. A classic, really. I would've been branded insane for leaving it out. Chuntering about the state of the transport executive and yet another rise in fares is a good place to start, but by the time you reach the terminus try to ensure you are incoherent and dribbling.

9. Make lists. Live your life by meaningless lists. In a list of hobbies put 'Making Lists' as your No 1. hobby. Force these lists on other people and threaten them with savagery until they produce a counter-list. Publish them in a public forum and watch how people avoid you even more.

Cellar

I find the mess in the cellar pleasing.

It looks like the day after a party. But the party is 20 years long and no one's sobering up any time soon. Instead of being half-empty cans and pools of sick the items down here include old bathroom tiles, cricket equipment and brass instruments from the long-defunct local church marching band down the road.

There's a perambulator chassis and crates of VHS tapes.

There's receptacles of differing kinds - beer bottles, plant pots, frying pans.

There's mouldy tents and fossils found at Scalby Mills.

The debris piles up as items fall out of day-to-day use upstairs and they come down here to die. It's not a party for inanimate object youths. It's a hospice for inanimate object pensioners. What the hell am I saying, it's a fucking cellar.

Anyroad, here's the photies:

Drums, Drawers, Amp, Keyboard.

Mess.

Pots and Wellies.

Trolley, Tyre, Bedframe, Tent.

Receptacles.

Lamp plus Two.

Drums, Tiles, Umbrella, Amp, Keyboard 1.

Drums, Tiles, Umbrella, Amp, Keyboard 2.

Drums, Tiles, Umbrella, Amp, Keyboard 3.

Stepladder, Beach Wind Shield, Orange jacket left by workman 15 years ago.

Light.