Mack’s Craic
Miserable dog.
The credit agency Moody’s has given Britain a “negative outlook”. Well they don’t call them “Moody’s” for nothing. I have to agree with them though, but not about the economy. In Britain we DO have a negative outlook. First thing Monday morning, go up to anyone you work with and ask them how they are. The chances are what you’ll get back is something negative. I work in radio, one of the most fun and exciting jobs you can have. I often say to people at work, “Having fun?” and they look at me as if I’m mad! It’s as if having a well paid, interesting job is a problem for them. When I lived in Australia and I asked, “How you going?” they’d smile and say, “Good thanks” as if asking the question made them feel even better. When I lived in New Zealand the answer to “How are you?” was often, “Excellent”. Excellent means it can’t get any better! I grew up in the North West of England. The reply to “How are you?” there is “Not so bad”. Not “good”, “Not so BAD”! It’s as if there is no good and no chance of anything being good, there are only degrees of bad.
Let’s face it the British are miserable. We celebrate misery and admire miserable people. We turn them into stars; Tony Hancock, Basil Fawlty, Les Dawson, Jack Dee, Dougal from the Magic Roundabout, the list goes on. We like watching unhappy celebrities so much that our highest paid TV stars are the ones that are prepared to put themselves in the situations they hate the most. Jeremy Paxman hates talking to politicians, Simon Cowell can’t stand watching people who can’t sing and nothing winds Gordon Ramsey up more than being in a kitchen with people that can’t cook. If they can’t skate, can’t dance or can’t even live in a house together for a month, we make them. And if that doesn’t make them miserable enough, we trap them in a jungle and make them eat kangaroo testicles.
It’s all because living in Britain basically comes down to being miserable most of the time. Now don’t get me wrong, our miserable lives are interspersed with moments of ultimate happiness, but in between, we’re angry, frustrated and fed up. That’s why our national game is football. For most of the ninety minutes, we’re shouting at the referee, the players and the opposing fans. Then there’s the ultimate happiness of the goals but that happiness is brief. If we win, we don’t stay happy for long and if we lose it’s like swallowing a kangaroo goolie.
People can’t understand why football hasn’t taken off in Australia, New Zealand, Canada or the USA. Well, now you know, it’s because they don’t have a “negative outlook”.
Look through the Craic again soon!
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Mack’s Craic
Just For Newt
I don’t really understand the Republican Presidential Candidate race in the United States. All I know is it looks like the winner will be either Newt or Mitt. What kind of names are they? They sound like cartoon characters! In case you can’t tell them apart, Mitt is the one that looks like the bloke on the “Just for Men” box and Newt is the one that looks like he should use “Just for Men”.
It’s been really cold lately, so cold that my parents have even considered turning down their heating from inferno to furnace. While I’m on about the weather, how come all of the weather presenters on TV are women? Women hate being wrong! Whatever happened to the men that used to present the weather? If it’s going to be really cold and miserable, I’d prefer to hear that from a bloke but they’ve all gone. It’s a case of no more mist and ice guy!
Valentines Day this week. I always feel sorry for people who have to go to a funeral on Valentines Day. Imagine how much they have to pay for flowers! There are some bargains about though. Asda didn’t miss a trick, selling Valentines cards for 8p. Now I’m no relationship expert but I know that only spending 8p on the card guarantees a lonely Valentines Day. It’s the same thing if all you get is a text. They’re always abbreviated too; the romance disappears pretty quickly when you get something that says “Happy V.D.”
Have you seen this show “The Biggest Loser”? Could they have come up with a more insulting title? If you haven’t seen it, it’s a show where they try to get fat people to become healthy. If they really want to insult them, why don’t they just call the show, “Save the Whales”?
Tensions are rising in the Falkland Islands between Britain and Argentina. They reckon it’s because 60 billion barrels of oil has been discovered nearby. What a find! And so handy that it’s already in barrels!
A new study shows that Britons are more dishonest than they were ten years ago. I’m not sure that’s true, maybe when we’re surveyed we’re just being more honest about our dishonesty.
They thought Mitt Romney was the Iowa caucus winner. Turns out after a recount, Rick Santorum won. – You know what this means? Neither do I.
Craic to front!
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Mack’s Craic
"They're for me Dad"
Figures of authority don’t tend to believe me when I’m telling the truth. This week’s cold weather has reminded me of the first time that happened. More on that later in the Craic.
There’s snow and ice everywhere as I type. Even though this happens every year in Britain, we still can’t cope with it. We got less that six inches of snow but tube trains broke down, motorways ground to a halt and Heathrow cancelled hundreds of flights. It looks like Britain is only just coping on a good day, when it turns a bit icy we’ve had it.
I know that schools will be closed but I’m not sure why. Is it the heating again? I don’t know of anywhere else where the heating packs up as much as in schools. What kind of dodgy heating system is it that stops working every time there’s a cold snap? And is that any reason to send the kids home? I know I’m going to sound like an old git now but I remember when the heating packed up at our school, they didn’t send us home; they just made us wear our coats indoors. And I’m not talking about high school here. The first time it snowed and I had to go to school, I was five. I can still remember seeing the footprints in the snow that lead across the playground from the school building to the OUTSIDE toilet block. Actually high school was worse. At the age of eleven, first thing on a Friday morning was “Games”. I don’t know why it was called “Games”; we only ever played one game, football. It didn’t matter what the weather was doing, we were lead out onto a frozen pitch wearing only a football shirt and 1970s short shorts. “Run around if you want to get warm” was what the sadistic games teacher would shout. I can remember being so cold for the rest of the day that I could hardly hold a pen to write with.
OK, I am starting to sound like an old git. My Dad is an old git and he’s very good at it because he’s had lots of practice. He didn’t like the cold weather. One of his favorite expression is “Best place for snow is on Christmas cards!”
The icy weather took revenge on him one year. He was walking home from the pub, slipped on the ice and broke his right arm. He had to have time off work but the timing was pretty good. I was about ten years old, mum was working, it was school holidays and my six year old sister had measles. He stayed at home with us.
That combination of random events led to the first time in my life that I remember a figure of authority not believing me. My Dad used to send me up to the local newsagents to buy his cigarettes. At first it wasn’t a problem, I’d ask for “twenty Senior Service”, give the money to the grumpy lady at Thornleighs newsagents and she’d give me the cigarettes. As I got older though, it had become more difficult. It was probably because I was approaching the age when kids around our way started to smoke. Instead of just giving me the cigarettes after I’d asked for them, there was now a pause and a sideways look from her, then I’d say, “They’re for me dad!”, then she’d wrap the cigarettes in white tissue paper before giving them to me. Then one day she said, “Next time you’ll have to bring a note from your dad”. From then on I had to hand her a note that my dad had written before she gave me the tissue paper wrapped Senior Service. Writing the note had become more trouble than it was worth and my dad often just walked up to Thornleighs and got them himself.
So it’s a school holiday, my sister’s sick, dad is off work and he runs out of cigarettes. He sends me to the shop and there’s grumpy Mrs Thornleigh. “Twenty Senior Service please”, I said handing her the money. She gave me the sideways look; I said “They’re for me dad”. She looked me in the eye and said, “Why can’t he come and get them himself?” I said, “Because he’s at home looking after my sister, she’s got measles.” “Why hasn’t he written you a note?”, “Because he’s broken his arm”. She handed back the money and said “Get out!”
Another Craic in the ice soon.
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Mack’s Craic
Sign this
The majority is never right
Every day I get to hear about another petition and I’m told about how many people have signed it in favour or against whatever it is that they’re not happy about. Now e-petitions can actually influence government policy in the UK. You can create an e-petition about anything that the government is responsible for and if it gets at least 100,000 signatures, it will be eligible for debate in the House of Commons.
The belief seems to be that if you get enough people on your side, then you must be right. That’s a very dangerous thing to believe.
In 1882, the Norwegian Henrik Ibsen wrote a play called An Enemy of the People. It was adapted in the 1950s by Arthur Miller. There have been lots of other adaptations since then. In the play, the main character, Dr. Stockmann, proclaims that in matters of right and wrong, the individual is superior to the multitude, which is easily led by self-advancing demagogues. Dr. Stockmann sums it up with the memorable quote “…the strongest man in the world is the man who stands most alone.” He also says: “A minority may be right; a majority is ALWAYS wrong. ” He asks the question “Was the majority right when they believed the sun revolved around the earth and let Galileo be driven to his knees like a dog?”
If the play was updated for today you could add lines like “Was the majority right when they said a man would never run a mile in under four minutes?”, “Was the majority right in the United States when they believed that slavery was good (even in the Northern states)?”, “Was the majority right when they elected Hitler?”
Democracy is always held up as the be all and end all. Doesn’t it all depend on who gets to vote? Would it be fair if four wolves and one sheep got to vote on what they should have for supper?
I tend to agree with Henrik Ibsen when he said, “It takes fifty years for the majority to be right. The majority is never right until it does right.”
Craic to the Future.
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Mack’s Craic
Is this man a racist and a thief?
Let me get serious; “Everyone that comes from Liverpool is a racist and a thief”. That was the clear message I got from the Manchester United supporters I had the misfortune to come into contact with at Frankley Services on the M5 the other day. I went in to pay for my petrol while my wife Julie waited in the car. Their chants included “You’re just a town of racists” and “Who can rob your houses? A scouser can”. It soon became apparent that their chants were directed at a young lad at the counter who was wearing a Liverpool shirt. “Hey look, a scouser is paying for something!” one of them shouted. No one in the service station seemed that bothered and treated it all as good natured rivalry. I’d like to think that if the abusive chants were directed at a black person, the police would have been called. Racism is a prejudice against an ethnic group based purely on them belonging to that group, there is no difference here so why is it tolerated? Do a quick search of anti-scouse jokes on Google and you’ll find a lot of old racist jokes were the word “black” (or other offensive words for a black person) has been replaced with the word “scouser”. Does anyone really believe that now these jokes aren’t racist?
The truth is those Manchester United fans chanting about racism and thieving were being racist. And as for thieving; when I got back to the car, Julie said she watched through the window and saw three of these blokes fill their pockets with the contents of one of the shelves, then walk out without paying. Are all Manchester United fans racists and thieves? Of course not, that would be racist.
In hindsight, I now know I should have reported the shoplifting. Now they’ll just blame the scouser.
Craic again soon.
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Football Kit
Happy New Year! Is it two thousand and twelve or twenty-twelve?
Julie’s New Years’s resolution is to get fit. I bought her a Wii Fit for Christmas. She made me get on it and the first thing it did was check my balance. No need to do that, I know I’m £150 lighter since I bought her the Wii Fit.
The economy is still in trouble. This week, the bottom fell out of the Christmas decoration market. Some baubles are selling for less than half of what they were going for this time last month. Experts don’t expect the market to recover until the end of the year.
Mattel are hoping to increase sales by bringing out a ‘Kardashian’ Barbie doll. A lot of parents aren’t happy about that. They’re worried it’ll send the wrong message to little girls. – What, as opposed to the message the current Barbie sends which is you should aspire to be an anorexic gold-digger with plastic boobs?
I wish people would stop saying “ATM machine”. The ‘M’ in ATM stands for “machine”, you’re saying machine twice!
Research from the Prince’s Trust shows that kids without set mealtimes and bedtimes do worse at school. I spoke to some ‘do-gooders’ on the radio about this. They said it’s not the parents fault. I’m sorry but if you’re a parent that doesn’t realize it’s YOUR job to set bedimes and mealtimes, you don’t know how to be a parent.
I was involved in a bizarre discussion with a policeman outside Liverpool Football Club just before the match the other night. We drove up in Julie’s new car, which doesn’t have an actual key. It has a fob thing that you don’t stick in the dash, you just have to have it in the car with you. I only drive Julie’s car when she’s with me. She’s got the fob on her key ring so I don’t bother carrying mine. We got there about half an hour before kick-off so I dropped her off to go and pick up our tickets while I parked the car. As soon as she got out of sight, the car started beeping and “No key detected” started flashing at me. Yes, she had the key so I wasn’t going anywhere. With forty thousand people trying to make their way into the ground, the police don’t like it when you stop in the middle of Walton Breck Road behind the Kop. It took me a long time to convince the policeman that although I was the driver and had driven from Swindon to that spot in Liverpool, I couldn’t go any further because I didn’t have the keys.
I wonder if “Kardashian Barbie” comes with accessories including a video camera, a publicist and a husband that disappears after seventy-two days?
Craicy New Year!
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Mack’s Craic
Piers off!
I hope you had a great Christmas. As usual, Julie and I had Christmas dinner together, just the two of us which is exactly how we like it. It’s so much cheaper too. We only have to buy a box of twelve Christmas crackers every six years.
It’s panto season, so we went to see Cinderella. We got there early, took our seats, then a lady sat next to me and said. “I have to sit here to prove to my kids that you don’t bite.” I said, “Oh I haven’t bitten a child for days!”. She looked at me sideways and didn’t talk to me for the rest of the night. Neither did Julie.
Our cats Memphis and Toffee Pop really enjoyed Christmas. What’s not to like about empty boxes, wrapping paper and decorations you can wreck? Cats are strange, they’ve got so many super-senses; smell, hearing, eyesight, but no sense of humor, everything is so serious. They’re bad mannered too, they can’t chew their food with their mouths closed.
If you got anything battery powered for Christmas, it probably came with Panasonic batteries. How come they’re always Panasonic? You never see them for sale. I’m not even sure you can buy them but when batteries are included they’re always Panasonic.
On Boxing Day we went to Anfield to watch Liverpool v Blackburn. Considering Blackburn is only about forty miles from Liverpool, they didn’t bring many fans. I think they may have all traveled to the game in the same car. Julie is from New Zealand, they all have the same accent there so she finds it difficult to tune in to the regional accents we have in Britain. At the match she said to me, “Wow when Liverpudlians talk really fast to each other, I can’t understand a word”. I didn’t tell her that the people in front of us that she was talking about were Norwegian. Later when it was becoming obvious that Liverpool were only going to draw at home to bottom of the table Blackburn, it became easier to understand the actual Liverpublians around us as they’d developed an aggressive form of Tourette’s syndrome.
Did you see Piers Morgan give evidence at the Leveson Inquiry? It turns out, he’s a lousy chat show guest. They had to keep quoting from “The Insider”, the book he published based on his personel diaries. No wonder he wrote everything down in a diary, he can’t remember anything! I honestly can’t believe Piers Morgan would hack anyone’s phone. Not without leaving a long boring message about himself. They didn’t frame the shot of him very well. That light right above his head made it look like he’d just come up with a bright idea. The fact that he was only being shown from the waist up was interesting. Was that because his pants were on fire? With him in the USA and the QC in London it was a bit spooky. At one point I thought I saw Piers Morgan’s television career leave his body. When Piers finished giving evidence did I hear the news presenter say “More on Piers Morgan later” or MORON Piers Morgan later? There would have been no point asking Piers Morgan what he has on his hot dog. As he said many times, he’s not prepared to reveal his sauces.
Swindon’s famous railway works hooter returned on Friday. Hear what happened when the button was pushed that sent us back in time.
Hope you have a Craicing New Year!
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Mack’s Craic
Give a hoot!
The sound of Swindon will return on Friday at quarter past eight but I need your help. For over a hundred years, the steam hooter at Swindon’s railway works used to sound to tell everyone when to start and stop work. It could be heard for miles and was known as Swindon’s alarm clock. Its twenty-five years since the works closed and the hooter sounded. Although the twin steam whistles that made the hooter sound are still on top of the old railway works building, it’s impossible to restore the steam boilers and replace all of the pipe work, so I’ve got another solution. I’ve managed to find a 20,000 watt sound system. It uses eighteen giant speakers, some of them the size of Vauxhall Corsas. The sound system will be set up next to where the hooter used to sound and at 8:15 on the morning of Friday 23rd December I will play a recording of the hooter through that sound system. I’m not sure even 20,000 watts will be enough and that’s where you come in. At exactly the same time, I will play the sound of the hooter on Swindon’s BBC Wiltshire. Make sure you have every radio on in the house. Open the doors and window, let that sound out. If you’re in the car, turn it up and roll down the windows. If you’re in charge of a sound system anywhere, connect it to a radio tuned to 103.6 and turn it up. It doesn’t matter if it’s a supermarket or a pub. Make sure you turn it up loud at 8:15 on Friday and we can bring back the sound of Swindon louder and prouder than ever. If you give a hoot about Swindon, give Swindon a hoot!
The fourth Mission Impossible movie is out. Tom Cruise’s impossible mission in this one is to try and explain the plots of the last three Mission Impossible films.
Barbara Walters list of the ten most fascinating people of 2011 is out. Pippa Middleton made the list. How is she fascinating? I’ve never even heard her speak! She’s only famous because her sister married a bloke who’s famous just for being born. Ok, her bottom got a lot of attention at the wedding but I’m sorry, unless you can hold an intelligent conversation with her bum she won’t make my list of most fascinating people of 2011.
Last week the world’s governments reached an agreement on policies to stop global warming. And it’s worked, this week, its freezing!
Merry Craicsmas!
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Mack’s Craic
Take the picture Dad, I'm freezing!
David Hempleman-Adams and his sixteen year old daughter Amelia have made it to the South Pole. David’s very relieved, he was sick of hearing “Dad, are we there yet?”
David Cameron has told the French and the Germans he has no plans to go to a wife swapping party. He’s also walked away from the talks on the future of the Euro. I’m sure he made both decisions based on what happened a year and a half ago when a party persuaded him to get into bed with some Europhiles.
Meanwhile the European crisis continues. The credit rating agency, ‘Standard and Poor’ say they may downgrade Europe’s credit rating. I don’t know about being assessed by someone called “Standard and Poor”. I want to be rated by “Super and Rich”!
No one seems to know what’s going to happen. Economics is like that. In school they change the exam questions every year, except in economics, where they change what the answers should be.
In economics closer to home, we’re all going to have to tighten our belts this Christmas. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I have to agree with the broadcaster Dave Ramsey; he said “You’ve got to act your wage”. He’s right and you should set out your family budget that way. Another genius is John Maxwell, he says, “A budget is a way of telling your money where to go, instead of wondering where it went”.
Some people facing a bleak Christmas are the 220 people who are about to lose their jobs at Biomet in Swindon. The company is moving it’s manufacturing to South Wales. They asked for a grant from the Welsh Assembly. I’m not sure how we know that, maybe it was a leek. The interesting irony here is that the bloke trying to stop them moving is the Conservative MP for South Swindon, Robert Buckland. He’s originally from South Wales. I’m not sure if the Labour candidate for South Swindon, Anne Snelgrove has anything to say about this. She lost her seat to Robert Buckland at the last election. I’m sure she’d have a lot of sympathy for the workers. She already knows how it feels to lose her job to a Welshman.
Winter driving conditions are here. The RAC say they fix a breakdown every twelve seconds. – I had a car like that once.
Amelia Hempleman-Adams is pretty pleased with herself; she’s the youngest person to ever make it to the South Pole. Teenagers today hey, they sit there at the world’s southern polar axis and think the world revolves around them!
That’s the Craic’s Factor!
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Mack’s Craic
Is that legend Pete Murray?
I appeared on stage at the Wyvern Theater inSwindonon Sunday as part of the Kentwood Choir’s “Christmas Cracker”. I got to sing “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, backed by the choir and the Albourne Brass Band. The most amazing part was that Dame Cleo Laine was in the audience. I even got to have dinner with her between the two shows. A lot of people think Cleo Laine is a big deal because she sang with Sinatra, recorded with Ray Charles and won a Grammy, but for me, I’m more impressed that she was a guest star on The Muppet Show!
I drove into centralLondonon Monday, so I paid the congestion charge. It’s really quite amazing, minutes after paying it, my cold completely disappeared.
I was in London for a Radio Luxembourg reunion. I must have been the only one there without dyed hair or a wig. I was very surprised to meet Pete Murray at the event, I thought he was dead! They paid tribute to all of the great people that broadcast from the Radio Luxemburg studios, including Willian Joyce, who was better known as Lord Haw-Haw. During the Second World War he broadcast Nazi propaganda in English toEurope. Paul Burnett described him as the world’s first “Shock Jock”. As far as I know he’s the only person to ever be hanged for what he broadcast.
My mate Richie is visiting later today. I still don’t know where we’re going to take him for lunch. He’s so fussy, he looks at anything less bland than cheese on cheese as if he’s doing a Bush Tucker Trial in “I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here”!
When Richie gets here, we’ll take him and his other half out in Julie’s new car. That’s as soon as I close the bonnet properly. Julie went to put petrol in it for the first time yesterday, couldn’t find the release button for the cap and opened the bonnet instead.
What would make this Christmas your best ever? Christmas Wish is back on BBC Wiltshire. All you have to do is tell me what your Christmas Wish is. I’ll put it on the radio and if someone listening can help, your wish is granted. So tell me what your Christmas Wish is by sending me an email to Christmaswish@bbc.co.uk .
Hope you have a Christmas Craic-er!
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