What If?

In the nineties there was a fairly cheesey little mid budget movie called “Sliding Doors” which seemed to do quite well. The story concerned a girl who nearly missed a train. In that second her life split into two possibilities. What if she had missed the train after all? How would that chance happening have influenced her life? The film showed us both outcomes.

So, why did this seemingly innocuous little film do so well? Because it had amazing performances? No silly, it starred Gwyneth Paltrow, for goodness sakes. Did it have a riveting plot line? No, it was about a girl in a bad relationship with a cheating boyfriend- ask any girl and you’ll get a similar real life story. Did it employ amazing new technology? No, it makes no attempt to use anything other than the cut, fade and blur motion tools in an editing programme- it may as well have been put together with Sellotape. Did it star Michael J Fox? No, sadly no, you can't have everything... So why did your common and garden cinema going bod like it so much? Reason: because it tapped into a key question in life: “What if?”

Just about everyone can look back on their life and find the key “What if?” moment. I know I can. You don’t know it at the time, but looking back you can pin point a happening that shaped your life forever. Mine was a phonecall to my Mum from a cafe in Zarautz, Spain.

I was working in Zarautz in the Basque Country teaching English. It was a little bit on the ropey side. The guy that owned the language academy was a nice enough American bloke from Boulder, Colorado, who loved collecting obscure languages, and whilst on a trip to the Basque Country to collect another one met his wife and stayed to teach. Unfortunately two weeks after he employed me he got involved in a partnership with another bloke from Cork, who looked as if he’d been on a beach holiday, got too pissed, lost his passport and couldn’t find the airport, so he decided to stay and set up an English school because it looked like a piece of piss. He made his money by withholding the wages of those who worked for him.

I won’t go into the details but I was fed up with this job but still keen to stay in Spain and find another one. I made enquiries to that effect. Unfortunately a long weekend loomed where the only people I knew in Zarautz, my flatmate Martin and a couple of other teachers, all went travelling for the weekend. I spent four days reading Agatha Christie novels from the school’s library and walking along the beachfront alone, speaking to myself because I could only speak Spanish, not Basque, and the Basques don’t like you speaking Spanish to them. They get a bit upset about it, in fact. By Sunday I was pretty low and fed up of wily Belgian detectives and languages that have three X's in each word. I did something you should normally never do when you are at a low ebb; I phoned home.

Two minutes into the phonecall from a payphone in a cafe my Mum said these immortal words, “Just come home, Pet”. That Tuesday when work opened I handed in my notice and booked a flight home. I gave no notice because I’d only just managed to prise my last month’s wages out of the Irishman and didn't see the point in earning any more for him to keep in his pocket for three months. That week, back home, I met a bloke in Ma Camerons pub in Aberdeen who’ll you’ll all know as Meeester M. One month later my post got forwarded onto me from Zarautz. In amongst it all was a letter from my friend Ann who was teaching in Bilbao telling me she could easily get me a job at her school and I could rent a room in her flat. When could I get there? Hmmm, don’t really feel so much like teaching anymore.....funny that. I stayed put.

And that my friends is why Sliding Doors got bums on seats. The “What If?” question is the basis for all good stories. In German they call it the "Wendepunkt" which is a great name for a band if your looking for one. What’s your “What If?” moment. Go and tell us in that there comments box. Or better still, link to one of your own posts in your own blog about your “What If?” moment.

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How to Give Good Interview

One of my professional hats is that of a media advisor or media trainer. I used to do this all the time but now I only do it every few months or so when I get the opportunity. A few years ago Anne Weakest Link had a go at us media trainers on Room 101. But then she also had a go at Wales, and now lives in mortal fear of a posse of the Welsh rugby team, Charlotte Church, Tom Jones and the Manic Street Preachers firebombing her house.

Media trainers coach normal people, usually businesspeople, sometimes footballers (the stories I could tell- if I cared enough about football to remember any of their names) sometimes civil servants, occasionally academics and other folks to do something completely out of their comfort zone which is to be interviewed by journalists.

I enjoyed the work but noticed a few common things about my clients that might be a warning for anyone ever being interviewed on telly particularly. Here are some of the pieces of advice that you would normally pay top dollar for but are actually very common sense.

1. Before the interview empty your pockets of anything you can click or jingle. Even if you don't consider yourself a clicker or a jingler, or even a clacker or a jangler, you will instantly become one when the recording starts. This applies especially to blokes. If you're in a head and shoulders tight camera shot, you'll sound like you are jingling or clicking like a malfunctioning android. But even worse, if you are in a medium shot showing most of your torso, you'll look like you are playing with your genitalia. Either isn't good for your image, I suspect.

2. Not every journalist is Jeremy Paxman or John Humphries. Most are just asking you straightforward questions and you are probably not a politician trying to cover up the fact that you got your mistress pregnant the day you tabled a White Paper on "Family Values". So when you are asked a question like "What led up to the incident", don't answer it by saying "Unfortunately that is a matter of national security and cannot be discussed at this time, but what I can say is how we are working together to provide a better future for everyone at the company and .....etc, etc" Just answer the flipping question, will ya? And remember people hate politicians, and the reason they hate them is because they use flannelly answers in interviews and are a bunch of liars. They should not be your role models. Check out the monumental interview by Jeremy Paxman and Michael Howerd on Newsnight if you want an extreme example of not answering the question. This is one of my favourite pieces of telly ever. Short version is here for the full interview is available on You Tube as well for those of you slumming it today.

3. Don't look at the camera...fool! (Slaps forehead) Just look at the interviewer. No..keep looking at him, don't take a sneaky wee peak into the lens of the camera, no not even a wee one, just stop it. Don't think about the camera, don't speak to it, don't refer to it, don't do a wee message to the "viewers out there" and please don't talk to the cameraman afterwards about how you're a keen amateur filmmaker and how much would one of "these babies" cost. Just do your interview and get on with it.

4. Don't freak youself out by worrying about what the interviewer is going to ask you. If you've just had a fire in your building, that's what you'll be asked about. You won't be asked about matters of political policy in Paraguay. And if you are, then point out that maybe the journalist might have taken a wrong turn at the roundabout. One of the most beautiful examples of this is here, I suppose but it's an extreme example I put in just for fun. It's the man who took a wrong turning straight into a BBC News 24 studio. when he was really only applying for a job and was mistaken for the correct interviewee. I think the word you are looking for is "bless".


So there's four things for free. And the reason I mention them is a ham fisted way of introducing an interview I gave about this blog to The Pakistani Spectator yesterday. Some of you lot are even mentioned in it. Happily for me it is only in print, so you can't see whether I take my own advice or not.

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The Cold Curse of Simon Cowell

Simon Cowell

With The Look

Recently, and for the first time in my life, I watched Britain’s Got Talent (the inlaws were up- that’s my excuse). It was chilling. Watching it was like having a cheese grater rubbed fiercely up and down my eyeballs and then having rough hot builders' sand thrown into the sockets. The programme encapsulates everything that has gone weird, and nasty, about popular culture. It also has three titans of hideousness in evidence; Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden and Piers Morgan. I’ve looked up the Geneva Convention and there’s nothing in it we can use to get this to the European Court of Human Rights, so don’t even try.

Bushy eyebrowed middle-aged Midlothian songbirds aside, the thing that upsets me most about the show is the look that Simon Cowell gets when someone who is actually quite good gets up on stage. No, let me rephrase that, it is the look that Simon Cowell gets on his face when someone who he thinks can make him a quick ton of money gets up on stage. It is utterly terrifying.

Cowell doesn’t smile so much as put on his poker face, he may even put his pen in his mouth to try and quell any smiling signs that he recognises the lightning, money making, potential of the subject on stage. I imagine it’s the same face a ruthless antique dealer puts on when he spots an old master hanging in the living room of a penniless old lady’s house that he’s negotiating the clearance of before she makes that last flit to the old folks home. The look shows indifference on the surface masking pant wetting excitement about the scam he’s about to pull and, in Cowell’s case, it is as if he goes into some kind of mesmeric trance.

Invariably the subject will be a teenager who can be easily manipulated. The only time you will see his eyes divert to the side away from the object of his desire will be to check if any awkward details like parents are present. If the parents look gormless, which they often do, it’s all systems go. Chilling. And don’t mistake the look for the same one X-Factor’s Louis Walsh gets when a teenage boy star takes to the mic; that’s a different look, that means something else entirely. You know what I’m on about.

Cowell didn’t quite have that look when Susan Boyle took to the stage yet he very much did when the young lad, Shaheen Jafargholi, let rip. For those who didn’t see it I’m not going to provide the Youtube link, you can do that yourself, but the whole thing was rigged. Cowell had clearly been told earlier by his minions that the boy was a cash cow. The boy comes on and sings a soundalike Amy Winehouse cover of The Zutons' Valerie . Simon pretends he is unimpressed but he already has his “tell” in evidence right across his greedy mug. Luring the boy into insecurity and doubt, he criticises him but suggests he try another song, something he never does, thus intensifying the boy’s desperation, gratitude to Cowell and effectively his willingness to snap at anything the midget millionaire will offer him after the cameras have been packed up. Even though that offer might be a big bag of shiny nothing.

Shaheen Jafargholi

Say no to the bad man, little boy

"What else have you got?" says Cowell. It just so happens that the boy has a second song, it just so happens that the show’s producers have it cued up, it just so happened that Cowell knows that this is the case. The boy takes the roof off with a Michael Jackson number. Michael Jackson, who, it just so happens, is one of Simon Cowell's new clients....

Oh and did I mention that there’s no real prize for the winner of Britain’s Got Talent except appearing at the dusty old Royal Variety Performance, for which I imagine they don't get paid for? In fact, I suspect the winner might even have to pay their own bus fare to get to the Albert Hall. I mean, who even watches the Royal Variety Performance these days? Even the Queen rolls her eyes when she’s reminded she’s got to get out of her housecoat and get dolled up to attend it. I bet she even Sky-plusses what's on BBC at the same time the Variety Performance is on the other side. Apparently her and Charlie play Rock Paper Scissors to decide which one of them has to attend.

Susan Boyle

Is it just me or does she remind you of Gordon Brown too?

So why did Cowell get that look when 12-year-old Shaheen Jafargholi came on, but not so much when international hirsute spinster superstar in the making Susan Boyle gave it her all? Simple; Susan will need a lot more handling (electrolysis bills aside).There will be no fleecing her of her talent for one hastily produced album and then casting her aside without consequences and effort. Susan looks like she can handle herself, she's more of a Will Young than a Gareth Gates. Notice how she walked jauntily off the stage as if to go and fetch her mohair coat and get home in time to catch the Emmerdale Omnibus, even after the judges had been raving about her? Susan couldn’t give a rat’s ass either way.

Eoghan Quigg

Half Boy half Furbee

Still Cowell’s instincts aren’t always right, though. Look what happened with that odious half puppy/half boy who looked like he’d been put together by Jim Henson, Eoghan Quigg (a popstar name if EVER I heard one). Apparently the X Factor runner up has released an album that sounds as if it has been recorded using a karaoke soundtrack. Peter Robinson in The Guardian dubbed Quigg’s album “the worst album in the history of recorded sound” and even though hundreds of thousands of "fans" phoned in to support Quigg every week on X Factor the CD has only sold about 10,000 copies, presumably most of them are in Quigg's folks' garage. Yet given that the CD probably only cost about £500 to record as no production values seem apparent and clearly no real money has been invested, no one, except Quigg himself, actually got hurt. Quigg is disposable and the deal hasn’t exactly panned out for Cowell, yet the man has lost nothing and barely spent anything on him, so it was worth a punt. The songs were all covers, possibly from artists already on Cowell’s books, and deals to get use of rights will have been done with minimal effort and expense. By the time the boy fills in his Asda trolley collector’s application form next month he’ll be finding it very difficult to even get his calls returned by Cowell, who’ll have made a small profit on his fleeting and now waning popularity and will now be completely washing his hands of him.


Expect the same soundtrack used on Quigg’s album to be resurrected for a second bite at the cherry with young Shaheen Jafargholi later this year.

Anyway, I won’t be watching the programme again. Especially not after that stripper stole my act.

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Lest I Forget

If this photo were Scratch and Sniff,
it would smell of Patchouli

This piece of evidence got hurled out of some vortex in the Universe into my living room floor this week. No-one knows how it got here. It is a photo of me in the ladies loo of some establishment aged eighteen, looking like I was getting ready for a Dexy’s Midnight Runners tribute band audition. Every time I look at myself it makes me laugh. It makes me chuckle almost as much as this photo of an advert for fizzy juice on the Paris Metro. I say, almost as much, because nothing is funnier than this photo of an iron pumping, presumably steroid popping grizzly bear. Nothing.

The need for that fig leaf disturbs me

Anyway, back to my photo. I think the reason this photo has karmically landed on my floor this week is because I have been guilty of taking the mickey out of my 18 year old student cousin, Pete, who visited a couple of weeks back. Pete arrived with a manky old suit jacket on (my photo: check!), hair defying the laws of physics and fashion, in need of a good wash yet set hard with crunchy cheap hairspray (my photo: check!), ill fitting clothes meant for a member of the opposite sex and possibly once belonging to a person now dead (my photo: check!) and badly applied eyeliner (my photo: check!). Actually Pete didn’t have the eyeliner yet, but I expect that’s in the post.

My friend Tracey has just looked at the photo and called it “Lest Ye Forget”. There's only one thing comforting me about this scene, and that's the knowledge that the two friends with me in that loo looked just as bad as I did. I'm sure my pal, Barbara, would have been wearing her old lady peach-coloured mac, and my other pal, Joanne, would have had peroxide hair so chemically burnt that there were some bald patches on her scalp.

Finding the photo has also inspired me to write a proposal for a reality TV show. Now that we can’t buy and sell our houses, afford any plastic surgery and fund any wardrobe make overs we have to find something to capture the zeitgeist. I’m calling it Nostalgia Makeover. It’s a mix between Gok Wan and Dr Who. We find a subject who wants to go back in time and sort their previous selves out for the sake of humanity. No permed mullet, nor shiny drainpipe suit would be beyond our powers. I shall be the first subject and we will be traveling back to that very loo (which I remember being a cafe in Bath after we’d got chucked out of the Bath Student’s Union at 5am by security guards for attempting to sleep on their floor once it had shut for the night). I will be bodily assaulted by a hairdresser, put into actual non charity shop clothes my actual size and meant to be worn by an actual woman, and that beret will be surgically removed from my head in a one hour operation under anesthetic by a leading Harley Street surgeon.

I expect it to be a success, and even now I can envisage a Celebrity version with the members of the newly reformed Spandau Ballet.

Nostalgia Makeover, copyright: me. Coming to your screens soon. Applications being accepted now. Apply in comments box for my consideration. Ex-Goths particularly welcomed.

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Faith and Love

When you start up a jolly blog like this one, it can be hard to post when life doesn’t seem so jolly after all. Misssives readers come over here for the daft stories, but occasionally I need to get serious. Indulge me.

This week I have been thinking a lot about church. And why I don’t go anymore. My reasons can quickly be summed up in news I heard this week. In Aberdeen, a minister applied for a position in a city church. He is a gay man with a cohabiting partner. He was previously, a few years ago, a married man. He finally admitted to himself and his wife that he was a homosexual, and they divorced. I do not know how amicable this divorce was, but it is an upsetting story all the same, involving the sad breakup of a family. The man had led a lie of a life and had hurt many people in the process. Presumably he felt that he had to lie to himself and others to fulfil his calling as a Church of Scotland minister but of course, only he really knows why. It’s not exactly in the league of lying about your word per minute typing speed on your CV, is it? It involves considerably more cover up effort. It is tragic that he had to cover up this fundamental part of his make-up and cause such a great deal of pain.

All I know is that after all this he is still a minister in the Church of Scotland, he has rebuilt his life and he is widely regarded at good at his job and people seem to value him, including the members of the church he applied to lead, who overwhelmingly agreed to approve his application. Minister happy, congregation happy. Everybody happy? It would seem not.

In the wake of the announcement of his acceptance of the post as minister for the church in question, twelve other city and shire ministers wrote a letter of condemnation of this gay, cohabiting man being able to take up such a post. This letter has been sent to the Church of Scotland headquarters who are currently looking into it. One of the ministers who signed this letter is a man me and my husband know personally. We have mutual gay friends, and many other friends who have cohabited without being married, most of whom have not wanted to become ministers, so have not had to face this career stumbling block. We were appalled to find out that his name was on the bottom of this letter.


Here’s why I don’t go to church anymore:

1. The Church will not accept the validity of common law marriage.
2. The Church still condemns sexual relations outside of marriage.
3. The Church still regards homosexuality as a sin, despite it not appearing as one of the Ten Commandments.
4. The church seems to think that a man or woman in a same sex relationship, or cohabiting outwith wedlock is unfit to lead a congregation despite any skills, commitment, and strength of faith they may have.

I don’t accept their views on these matters, and until they change I will not be sitting in any church pews. I used to feel guilty about not going to church anymore. Now I don’t want any part of it. Our views are at odds.

And don’t even get me started on what's going on at Amazon.


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Beagle Legal

The genetic strains of a gun dog run deep. Even in those who have never actually stridden alongside a deerstalker wearing gentleman with a half cocked gun over his arm, still know that, somewhere in their very core, they are alive for one reason; to chase birds. Ask a Spaniel (a talking one if available) what his Unique Selling Point or his Raison d’être is and he will surely answer:

"My ability to chase, catch and bring back a dead, or dying, bird for my master."

Sonny the Black Menace, my client, comes from a long line of noble bird wranglers. Both his mother and father are celebrated gun dogs. Indeed his pedigree name is Stones Frolic, which I believe is Latin for “Nimble Bird Worrier”. “See bird, chase bird” is the motto under his family’s coat of arms although he himself has chosen a different career path, that of a family pet.

Now, I put it to you, that the non farming, converted farmhouse dwelling yuppies who thought it would be charming to get themselves some free range chickens maybe didn’t think their decision through. Perhaps they had seen a few episodes of 1970s British sitcom “The Good Life” or had lately been ruminating over the success of television food expert and novice freeholding celebrity farmer Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. Their motivations for keeping chickens matter not. Their execution (if you pardon the pun) of their chicken keeping methods, most certainly do.

Each day in this land thousands of chickens are caught and eaten by foxes. Some of those chickens are even in coops, where a resourceful and hungry fox will dig underneath chicken wire to get at his terrified prey. Chickens allowed to wander outwith their coop into neighbouring gardens, roads and public areas will not last long. In fact, these wandering chickens face a double risk. In addition to hungry foxes they may also come into contact with frisky cocker spaniels, who although not hungry, are at the mercy of their genes and have no option but to bolt from their masters, ignoring the futile human calls of “Sonny! Noooooo! ” to seize their feathered freaky orange-eyed quarry.

Somewhere out there is a bald arsed cockerel who knows this all too well. And my client has apologised to him fully. Something, you may note, a fox would never do.

But before you deliberate, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I pose only one question to you:

If you were a cocker spaniel born to chase avian creatures, what would you have done, confronted with five stupid chickens spilled out into the path of your usual walk?


This is an except from the closing argument of defence lawyer, Alan Shore, of Crane, Poole and Schmidt , the firm portrayed by TV’s Boston Legal for his client, Sonny The Black Menace, who stands accused of ripping the tailfeathers out of a chicken’s bottom.

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