Dogs on the Catwalk

There’s an exhibition of pet portraits taking place soon at a somewhat infamous place not too far away from Pither Towers and so the Very-Soon-To-Be Ex-Mrs-Pither decided that the pack should feature.

As a result, a good friend of ours who is an extremely good photographer came round today and took a series of pics of said hounds. They are pretty damned good!

Anyway, I have chosen one of each pooch. What do you think?


Henry (the boss).


Tilly.


Dave.


Caty.

Sad, really, what makes me happy and what makes me proud these days!

In Which Pither Prepares For Yet Another Slingshot or Arrow To Land.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention. How remiss of me. Looks like I’m going to be made redundant again!

The Carrot and Cow Herder announced major cutbacks yesterday which, we were assured, will spread right across the board. The C&CH is one of two evening papers in the group and the directors on each will have to downsize their cars from Bentleys to Mercedes. Their expense accounts will be limited to £5,000-a-week each, their golf leave is to be reduced to 34 weeks per year and they will, in future, only be allowed to lean out of the windows of the board room on the fourth floor and urinate on the workers below twice a week.

When this news was broken to us work drones I wondered how it was going to achieve the necessary savings we were told had to be made. The announcer, after droning on and on about “guaranteed journalistic integrity”, “leaner and tighter operations”, “efficiency for the 21st Century” and “belt tightening all round”, let slip right at the end the area where the money would be found……………………………….”Oh, and there will have to be 126 redundancies,” he said.

Yes, we are, indeed, all in it together – although some of us are in it more than others.

Having only been with the company for around six months I am not entitled to redundancy. I am, however, one of the most experienced hacks and so am paid more than most. Put those two facts together and what do you think the bean counters are going to conclude when they look at the payroll? If it’s not “Hmmm, if he goes we cut a decent wedge off the wage bill and don’t have to pay anything out in compensation” then I’ll eat my cat.

Is this all down to the credit crunch, I don’t hear anyone ask? No, is the simple answer. It’s down to the simple fact that people don’t read papers anymore. “Why is that, Reg?” the non-present questioners don’t persist. Well, there are basically four reasons:

1. Thanks to Blair’s dogged pursuit of “ejukashin, edgycageon, et tu Casian?", 90 per cent of the UK population can’t read.

2. The invention of cat litter.

3. A dramatic fall in the sale of budgies.

4. The widespread use of purpose-manufactured toilet paper.

Ho hum. That’s life. You win a few, you lose a couple of million. Still, life goes on and the sun will still come up tomorrow. Readers may find this hard to believe but age HAS definitely mellowed me. In the grand scheme of things, it don’t amount to a whole hill of beans!

Hurrah for life, laughter, dogs, the countryside and women with big breasts! Grantham shall not have them.

The Time Machines.

If ever I was reminded of just what a pathetic, grasping materialist I am it was last night, when I put the clocks back an hour for winter time.

Ok, strictly speaking the clocks weren't due to change until something like 4am today but I am an anally retentive Virgoan and I alter them earlier and earlier each year – it’s a disease with me.

I pout and pour scorn on the age of materialism regularly on this Blog and decry the consumer society and those who adhere to it. Then, when I come to alter the clocks, I realise just what a hypocrite I am.

Gone are the days when father used to ceremoniously open the glass face on the grandfather clock in the hall and then move the minute hand clockwise or anti-clockwise a full rotation before closing the case and climbing the stairs, candle in hand, nightcap on head, ready for six months in a new time zone.

Pither, the shallow hoarder of meaningless consumer trinkets, yesterday evening had to alter:



….His watch.
The clock in the kitchen.
The oven clock.
The clock on the microwave oven.
The clock on the TV in the kitchen.
The central heating timer.
The timer on the hall light.
The time on the phone/answermachine.
The timer in the garage on the fish pond lights.
The timer in the garage on the back security light.
The clock in the car.
The clock in the study.
The alarm clock in my bedroom.
The back-up alarm clock in my bedroom.
The TV in my bedroom.
The TV in the spare bedroom.
The timer on the fish tank in the spare bedroom.
The alarm clock in the spare bedroom.
The video recorder in the lounge.
The DVD/video tape converter in the lounge.
The timer on the fish tank in the lounge.
The time on my mobile phone.
This computer’s clock.



The irony of the whole situation is that, doing a job which involves me keeping my eye on the time every second of every minute of every hour in order to meet recurring deadlines, the last thing I want to be reminded of away from the office is the time!! My hatred of “knowing the time” has led me in the last few years to abandon my watch the moment I get home and not put it back on until I have to go back to work. If I’m on holiday that can be two weeks without a watch and without any care of what time it is. I find the sun and the moon give me sufficient information.

How many of these non-biodegradable pieces of soon-to-be landfill cluttering up my home and charting my inexorable march towards the grave do I actually need, I ask myself?

Like every dumb clutz across the nation, however, I still work up this morning, looked at the clock and thought……..”Ah! I’ve got another hour in bed.”

They're The Wrong Questions, Gromit!

The extent to which I am veering further and further away from supposed mainstream thought (or it is veering away from me) has been well illustrated in the last few days.

1. A huge row has erupted over whether or not Shadow Chancellor George Osborne solicited a donation to the Tory Party from Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska while the guest of supertoff Nathaniel Rothschild in Corfu.

I take the point to be that, had the approach been made and had Loadsamoneyski agreed to it, Russia would have had some say in the conduct of politics in this country.

Ok, that would not be ideal, I grant you, but would it be unprecedented? Considering the French Government already owns and controls our power supplies, Indian companies control our steel industry, Japanese companies control information technology in our local government, Germans run our automotive industry, American companies run our education system and New Labour is, and has been for some time now, desperate to flog the Post Office off abroad (the Krauts being first in the queue of potential buyers)…I think not.

Even football, that cornerstone of British society, is owned by other nations. An Aussie/Yank megalomaniac dictates how it is played, where and when, while the clubs themselves are owned by everyone from dodgy Russians and incompetent Yanks to criminal Malaysians. When England fans chant “It’s coming home, it’s coming home, it’s coming, football’s coming home” where exactly do they suppose “home” is these days?

No, Thatcher started it and New Labour speeded everything up. UK Ltd was sold off fucking years ago. The only things left on the metaphorical national sideboard are the recently acquired banks and they still do exactly as they want and not what we want them to.

The question journalists should be asking over the Osborne affair is “Isn’t it just a teensy bit of a coincidence that this nasty, gossipy, nah-nah-na-nah-naah bit of dirt was dredged up just after that consummate New Labour arsehole Mandelson came back into the Government fold?”

It’s just the sort of spinning for which he is infamous but the now completely untrained, useless and largely illiterate media take the bait and run with it without ever delving deeper – “Ooh, someone might have said it, everyone else is carrying it, let’s talk about it.”

Fucking Mandelson has also enjoyed the hospitality of Rothschild. You telling me he hasn’t tried to sponge cash for the cause off either him or any other millionaires he comes into contact with? He gets nowhere and so feeds titbits to the media and they run with it and are too thick and too immoral to avoid being used.

2. Next, Mohamed Taranissi, who runs London's Assisted Reproduction and Gynaecology Centre, is free to carry on in practice despite having faced charges relating to his treatment of two women.

I quote from the BBC: “He had denied the accusations of failing to keep proper medical records, carrying out inappropriate tests and acting in an insensitive manner.
“The General Medical Council decided after several weeks of sitting there was insufficient evidence to continue.”

The news was full of this today, almost pillorying the women who had made the complaints and upholding Mr Taranissi as some kind of saint.

The question that was not asked was: “Isn’t it about time the GMC was abolished and doctors were policed by a truly independent body? That way, no-one could argue that doctors, like coppers, just look after their own.” Fuck me, it took the GMC 10 day – yes, 10 DAYS – to suspend – yes, SUSPEND – Dr Harold Shipman after he was convicted of murdering 15 or his patients and suspected of topping hundreds more. Technically, he was free to practice when he was sent to prison. It took a further day for them to decide that slaughtering your patients constituted “gross professional misconduct”.

3. The media is obsessed with asking the same question over and over again: “Would Cameron and the Tories govern Britain better than Brown and New Labour?” Surely the question which should be asked is: “If you chopped up Brown and Cameron and put them each in separate microwave ovens, which one would explode in a gelatinous mass of blood and partly cooked tissue first? Then, to settle the argument once and for all, we could put it to the test on Ready, Steady Cook or something similar. It's just an idea, no more.

In Which Reg Just Talks To Himself - Again!

So, we’re all Socialists now, are we? Well, not exactly.

You see, there has indeed been a revolution – but it was a silent one. It sneaked in through the side door. It slithered in on its belly while our attentions were elsewhere. Who would make it through to the next round of Wannabe Chavsing Cryalot On Ice? Would the DNA test show that professional statistic Dwayne was indeed the father of teenage, mother-of-nine Michellesuit’s latest vaginal extrusion? These were the only things of importance, surely? What time was there for anything else?

To the amoral, uneducated, grasping and instant gratification-obsessed legions of Thatcher’s children the slight matter of a radical change in the way our whole economy operated was not only incomprehensible but also of absolutely no importance. Hell, if Jordan didn’t have anything to say about it in Chat Magazine then how could it be of any value to anyone?

The trouble with Jordan is that she sometimes takes her eye off the ball, politically speaking. When you dedicate your life to having your tits either blown up or deflated you can’t be expected to follow every slight socio-economic policy shift.

The revolution which sadly bypassed ole’ rubberknockers was the acceptance by government’s around the Western world that pure, unadulterated capitalism and the market system did not work! The huge lurch to the right and the ensuing idolisation of “the market” began in this country 30 years ago (under guess who?). America had always been that way inclined but Thatcher, by tapping a rich vein of greed in the middle classes, allied Britain to Wall Street and espoused GLOBAL Capitalism. Similarly blinded and greedy administrations around the world followed suit and eventually we had one, worldwide economy, heavily interlinked and heavily dependent on what happened in the home of rabid Capitalism, the USA. If anything goes wrong in the good 'ole U S of A then EVERYONE suffers.

This wunder system was not only amoral, it had obvious, fatal flaws. It involved the super-rich playing a glorified board game, initially with stocks and shares, creaming off billions for themselves in good times and making millions redundant to ensure the continuation of their massive payouts in bad times. It was a win-win game for the players. Once they realised they could get away with it, they expanded the game and took it well and truly into the realms of virtual reality. They began betting on imaginary scenarios and “won” unimaginably huge amounts of dosh on imaginary outcomes. They bet on what would happen in the future and sold their bets on to one another to cream off yet more money, well before, and invariably always, before those futures had materialised.

The game became gradually more and more complicated, with more ways of betting introduced, all of them based on imaginary scenarios. I don’t pretend to understand the complexities of market playing – I don’t think anyone does – but a classic example was the sub-prime loans game of which we are now only too well aware. Basically, you get ANYONE to sign up to a loan, completely regardless of any assets they have or of their ability to pay. When you have got thousands of these obviously bad debts you sell them on, packaged as “good loans”. You take a massive profit from the sale and you take it now – well before it becomes evident that the loans cannot be repaid. The person you sold them to, in turn, sells them on, and so on and so on. It’s basically a game of economic pass-the-parcel. All the players took their turn with the parcel and none of them thought that the music would ever stop. Well it did – it has.

Now the whole rotten system has come crashing down, as it always had to. Governments around the world were then faced with two choices. One, they could let all the greedy banks go bust. Sadly, that was the mistake made in 1929 and we are all well aware of the consequences. So, to avoid that happening again, the governments are taking the only other option open to them – to nationalise the banks and guarantee a pool of money – liquidity – to them so they can carry on loaning money.

The nationalisation of banks is a cornerstone of Socialism – and I am a big believer in it. Banks, like public utilities, SHOULD be nationalised. The problem we have now is that the Capitalists have decided to have their cake and eat it. In short, true nationalisation of banks would see taxpayers provide the banks with money to loan out and then one of two outcomes is possible:

1. If the banks incur bad debts then the taxpayers will make good the losses to keep the banks in business.

2. If the banks make profits then those profits are shared out among its backers, namely the taxpayers.

Guess which scenario will hold true under the brave new world into which we are entering? Guess which one will not apply?

Also, if you are the major investor in a bank then you would expect to have a major say in how it is run, wouldn’t you. Is that going to happen from now on? In short, no.

Will there be strong regulation of the banks? The politicians say there will be – but the politicians lie. Of course there won’t be. If there had been ANY regulation, if the Financial Services Authority had actually done what it was supposed to do, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are in now.

So, by bailing out the banks we have bowed to the inevitable. But are economists and sociologists saying that Capitalism is dead, just as they said Socialism was dead when the USSR dissolved? Nope!

By bailing out the banks we have adopted a fundamental principle of Socialism. So, are we now Socialist? Nope!

The Capitalists have got round this tricky conundrum by finally abandoning all attempts at pretence. Whereas before they ripped off everyone, playing their stupid boardgame, and told us Capitalism was not perfect but it was the only way, now that have been forced to admit it doesn’t work – but they don’t care. It is good for them and so they will carry on with it, thanks to “Socialism for Capitalists”. Fuck the rest of us. For the first time in more than a hundred years we are being screwed and those doing the screwing openly admit what they are doing. “Whatcha gunna do about it, little man?” We pay, they take.

What has happened in the last few months marks a new low in life in this country. We have at last proved Capitalism only benefits a few – but those few will continue with it because they have the power and the rest of us can go fuck.

Rule Britannia.

Payback time

I got a letter from the bank yesterday. Apparently, I owe them some money and they want me to owe them less money. Hah! That’s a laugh!! I’ve just lent them £55 billion but do I keep sending them letters – at £10-a-throw???!!!!

Pay me back what YOU owe ME, dipshit, then we’ll see about my poxy overdraft!!!!!

Finland, Finland, Finland.........!

I’ve just seen Finland’s ambassador to the UK on the TV news. He was wobbling on about his countryman Marti Ahtisaari who was today awarded the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize.

I’m ashamed to say that my eyes glazed over because, excellent though Mr Ahtisaari’s efforts have been over the years in resolving international conflicts, the ins and outs of professional diplomacy do not really get my pulse racing. Also, bearing in mind the mindless dickhead who is Al Gore won the same honour last year, I think the Nobel Peace Prize ain't what it used to be.

No, as my eyelids fell heavy and my mind began to wander, my thoughts turned to the ambassador – one Pekka Lintu. Finland’s ambassador to the UK, eh? How cushy a number is that? I mean, what dealings do we have with Finland, exactly? I’m sure Fins flee the perpetual dark of their homeland in their thousands each year and wash up in Blighty on their hols but I don’t recall any of them hitting the headlines or sparking international incidents. Doubtless there must have been the odd cove who lost his Tube ticket and there must have been a couple who moaned about the absence of smoked herring in Basingstoke but apart from that? What exactly did the ambassador have to do?

All the visa applications are dealt with by a team of work drones. Someone in the embassy has been appointed to tell callers the opening times of Madame Tussaud’s. There is also a dedicated enquiries desk to explain why all the trains are late or cancelled and the supermarket staff are surly and on drugs. What is left for old Pekka to do? Well, there are a lot of gala luncheons, state dinners and dates at the Palace to attend and then there’s all that being driven around in a large car and looking important.

Anyway, what if there was a major incident which threatened Britain’s relationships with Finland? Oh no!! Diplomatic relations would be severed and then……oh God, no!.....trade would cease. Where the Hell would we get all our pickled herring from? Who else could supply us with……with……with…...Finnish tourists! I can't imagine any scenario which would keep Pekka up (at night, that is). I imagine his response to even the most serious diplomatic incident would be: "Yeah, well, whatcha gunna do?"

Such is Pekka’s high profile in the world of international diplomacy that I have been unable to find a clear photo of him ANYWHERE!

Anyway, here’s to Pekka and all the other people out there with brilliant jobs. Can I have one, please?

Petitions

I'd like to dedicate the following to BGT, for it was he who inspired me to put my thoughts on the subject down in writing.

The Big Green Thing was asked to sign a petition calling for the closure-threatened Walsall to Wolverhampton rail link to be kept open. He replied, somewhat ardently, that he was not a fan of petitions and forwarded his views to me.

I replied thus:

Dearest BGT,

I have to admit to being much on your side in this debate. Historically, petitions have proved ineffectual, to say the least (witness the ill-fated Stop Being a Naughty Adolph protest handed to the German embassy in London in 1939).

One flaw in petitions lies in their invariably insipid preambles. Words or phrases such as “we the under-signed”, “consider”, “sincerely” and “possibility” ensure that the documents never make it past even the most inattentive and unskilled correspondence secretaries to evil despots. Should they, by chance, overcome these hurdles they are unlikely to strike fear into the hearts of the recipients – no-one ever went into hiding and sought the skills of a plastic surgeon having been “urged” to do something.

The overriding drawback to petitions, however, is that they are gathered by people for whom the targets of their ire have no respect. The wrong-doers reason that if someone is so fair minded and reasonable as to favour this form of protest and also has the time and patience to go around getting others to sign their names on a piece of paper then they will be fair minded and reasonable enough to understand that no-one gives a fuck what they think and they will also have the time and patience to sit around being crapped on by them until Hell freezes over.

If one has no alternative but to write to express angst then I have found that, in dealings with Eon, Lloyds TSB Bank and Nottingham Forest Football Club, “testicles”, “clamp” and “urethral scrape” carry more gravitas and invariably at least result in a response from someone in authority, even if it’s only a police officer, which it has been for me on four occasions thus far.

No, the only path to direct action lies in…..well……direct action. Mr A. Hun did not expand his holiday timeshare business across Asia and Europe by penning a strongly worded letter to The Times. Mr N. Bonaparte did not increase the sales of garlic and sautéed amphibian propulsion systems in Prussia, Spain, Italy and the Austro-Hungarian empire by writing to the chairmen of various policy and resources committees.

To this end, might I suggest that a determined and sustained bombing campaign to cultivate terror and widespread panic be instigated across the wider Midlands region until those evil, baby-eating, devil-worshipping monsters in charge of regional integrated transport strategic planning are brought to their bloodied and broken knees and forced to maintain the Wolverhampton to Walsall light rail commuter link.

While I’m on the subject, if anyone has any old Semtex or unused pipe bombs lying in their attic or garage or knows of around a dozen people willing to blow themselves up for charity then I have a few ideas as to how we might get the litter bin reinstated outside the Somerfield supermarket in my village and also fund an Al Qaeda training cell on the village green into the bargain.

Yours in a tight jacket with straps at the back,

Reg.

A Dog's Life.

I look forward to Sundays and the chance of a long, luxurious lie-in.


Some of us like to lie in longer than others, however.


The chance of a bracing walk to work off breakfast is always welcomed enthusiastically.


..for a short while.


Grantham shall not have them.

Define Bloody Happy, Darling!!

There are people in this world who INSIST on looking on the bright side. The dictionary calls them optimists. Business gurus call them positive thinkers. The only mildly critical call them Pollyannas.

This group includes among its number such sufferers of reality blindness as Bobby McFerrin, the man who told us all “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” after pointing out in some detail how entirely shite our lives were.

Whoever wrote “Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam” is in there, along with anyone who ever sings it, and then somewhere near the middle of the crowd is Little Orphan Annie and her ridiculous belief that the sun will come out “Too-marr-how”.

These are people who say that Hitler might have been naughty at times but he was nice to his dog, that the Nazis had some challenging policies but always looked smart and that Peter Sutcliffe did wonders for the sale of hammers in Bradford.

They are people who trill “When one door closes, another one opens”. Oh yeah? Try telling that to the Princes in the Tower! They say that every cloud has a silver lining. I’m sure villagers in Bangladesh have that in mind as they are carried along at 100mph by a torrent of flood water as they cling desperately to the remnants of what was once their homes.

Anyway, the point of this rant (there is one, honest) is that these stupid people now have a board of directors in charge of them. The board is made up of the lounge lizards behind the latest Always Ultra advert.

Their mind boggling slogan for these menstrual pads is………Have a Happy Period - Always.


Now I don’t have periods. No, it’s not because of my advanced years, it’s because I’m a boy, you see, and only girls have periods (says ‘ere). However, I have lived with girls and, consequently, have witnessed first hand just how “happy” these bleedin’ lunar events can be. Now I’m not going to launch into a sexist rant about women and periods. I can fully appreciate the pain – “like little men with razors” one lady once said – and the hormonal/mood disruption they bring about. Having said that, I wouldn’t mind getting a brand new, replacement sexual organ every month, but that’s just me being trite. No, periods are bad. Bad for women and, thanks to misery displacement, bad for men.

How, then, could any adiot (Def:One who works in advertising) believe that any product could bring about “a happy period”? What next? A range of greetings cards with “Happy Period to You, Happy Period to You, Happy Period to Yoo-hoo, Happy Period to You” emblazoned across the front? Jesus, if they can get away with the latest Always advert they could get away with that. Hell, they could then branch out. Why not some more cards:

“Congratulations on Your Cancer Diagnosis.”

“Sorry You’re Leaving – From All On Death Row.”

“You’ve Lost the Key of the Door! – Good Luck With Your Alzheimer’s.”

“Wishing You A Happy Murder Trial.”

“All the Best in Your New Home – You’ve Been Sectioned.”

“Happy Anniversary – 10 Years Since You Were Widowed.”

Actually, the more I look at those, the more I think there is a market for them. Then again, being a committed realist (N.B. Realist – NOT pessimist), something would go wrong.

Always has always been too long for me so it can go to Grantham.

Imagine

I could imagine Virgin Rail running an efficient and inexpensive rail service.
I could imagine the Pope coming out onto his balcony on Easter morning and telling everyone gathered in St Peter's Square to “fuck off!”
I could imagine not getting any pleasure from shooting Michael Winner in the head.
I could imagine landing on Mars next week and opening a small pottery shop.
I could imagine believing Jeffrey Archer.
I could imagine watching Katie Derham read the news without wondering once what colour her bush is.
I could imagine chatting to Nigella Lawson without staring at her tits.
I could imagine thinking footballers aren’t paid enough.
I could EVEN imagine the Queen having a shit!!

BUT………..America………going Socialist………under Bush?????????????

Trouble is, I don’t think there’s an unadulterated Clause 4 in this startling new brand of Socialism. Now, call me cynical if you like, but I’ve got a feeling that instead of the workers truly controlling the means of production – in this case, the production of absolutely NOTHING except obscene profits – I think the workers are having to make good losses brought about by the abject greed of a few so that same few can go on making obscene profits, safe in the knowledge that if they should fuck up again then the workers will pay their debts.

It’s a bit like playing Russian roulette and getting your brother to put the gun to his head and pull the trigger while you bet on the outcome with his money.

Is it really a form of Socialism? On the face of it, yes. The Government – i.e. the common people – takes control of an industry and guarantees its losses to ensure all in it remain gainfully employed and in business.

Look a little deeper, however, and it is, in fact, the zenith (or should that be nadir) of Capitalism. Capitalists – true, 100 per cent, unashamed Capitalists - produce nothing. They just gamble on man-made gaming systems and make piles of cash unimaginable to the likes of you and me. The trouble with gambling is that you can lose, as well as win. So how do these greedy pigs remove this slight insect from the balm? They persuade the Government – i.e. the common people – to back them and make good any losses they make. Sadly, the deal does not involve the common people sharing out their winnings. No, the pigs keep those!! It is the perfect form of gambling – gambling with other people’s money and keeping the winnings while offloading the losses.

It’s a belter!

Actually, I don’t think it’s going to work. I still think everything is going to go tits up and you and me will be turfed out of our homes and reduced to servitude. Will the men and women who brought all this about suffer likewise? Well, to answer that, here are two little facts for you:

1. Bradford and Bingley Bank has gone tits up and so we have had to wade in to save it. That has left every man and woman in this country having to GUARANTEE £35,000 in payouts to each of its investors should it fail again.

2. The man who brought about this monumental fuck up by greed and blithering incompetence is Richard Pym. He is the boss of the bank and he is GUARANTEED a half-yearly bonus of £375,000.

Only Fools and Small Courses

Janssen? Jason? - Let's call the whole thing off!



Be honest, have you ever asked David Jason for his recipe for Italian risotto? I know I haven’t! Then again, I’m not one of his friends and it is they, he tells us in the first in a new series of adverts for M&S “fud”, who often tell him he “must” break his wall of silence and reveal the secrets of the culinary creation.

Do you want to know what I think? I think either Dave is a liar or he is a desperately unhappy and harassed man, badgered, pestered, harangued - day in, day out, week in, week out - by those supposedly closest to him, pleading, begging, cajoling, demanding, ringing him in the wee small hours, knocking on his door the moment they see his car pull up on the drive, accosting him in the post office, cornering him at Variety Club lunches, relentlessly pursuing him, hounding him, tracking him to the ends of the earth, all on a God-sent quest…..to get the recipe for his risotto!

Turns out, as it happens, Dave doesn’t knock up this gelatinous, noduled gloop himself anyway. No, he buys it ready-made from Marks & Spencer’s!!! I s’pose that’s the point of the adverts. Still, I can’t help wondering why he endures all that stress, all that diving into doorways to avoid his next door neighbours, that ducking down below the bar so as not to catch the eyes of his golfing pals, the continual change of routes into work, the bills run up at the Acme joke disguises shops......all that, and for what?

Why doesn’t Dave just tell them? More significantly, as far as I am concerned, why don’t his dumfuck friends clock that it might not be his own creation. There are clues, let’s face it. Firstly, the same fucking meal is on sale in Marks & Spencer! Secondly, and for those who don’t shop in M&S, surely they should be suspicious when Dave dishes out a portion of Italian risotto which would be insufficient to sustain Karen fucking Carpenter for half an hour?

No, I think M&S Italian risotto can go to Grantham – and Dave had better go as well.