You'll be wanting clean towels next!

Another day, another hotel. This time the Novotel at Birmingham Airport.

And if you're ever in the area you could do worse than stay at the Novotel. Or so I'm told anyway. Personally I find it hard to believe you could find worse at £135 a night.

For that I would normally expect at least Sky Sports and hot and cold running housemaids.

Instead what we got was the point where Ryanair meets hotels. If you're not savvy, you'll be charged £2 merely for the privilege of finding out exactly where you need to park.

Having followed the signs to the Novotel we found ourselves on a narrow road confronted by a car-park barrier. We took a ticket - we're not completely devoid of experience in these matters. But then a sign informed us this was the stop-and-drop area only - no overnight parking. Instead it told us to exit the car park and go to car parks 1, 2, or 3.

At the exit barrier inserting the ticket in the relevant slot resulted in us being told we owed £2. That's 200 pennies merely for following instructions and being led on a wild bloody goose chase.

We retraced our tyre tracks to a pay machine in the hope it would validate our ticket. It did and we got out for nothing. But some of our colleagues were not so lucky. There were no instructions anywhere.

The overnight charge in the NCP car park was £19.50. No, you're not seeing things. £19.50. It would have been cheaper to fly to Berne. When we checked in we tried to validate the ticket to get the parking free, but were told it would be just at the reduced rate of £13.50. The guy looked at us as if we should fall at his feet in gratitude.

He then informed us that to actually redeem the ticket to obtain parking at this ludicrously cheap rate we would need to schlep over to the arrivals' hall in the airport itself to get the ticket validated by the NCP office.

I was not amused. I don't like schlepping at the best of times. And, to top it off, all the rooms our group had booked were singles except for ours which was a twin - obviously young Lee and I lost out in the pillow lottery.

But, yes, you guessed it. All the rooms were made up as twins ... except ours. I phoned down and told an incredulous receptionist who sent somebody up straight away to make up the bed.

This, it transpired, involved no more than pulling out a lever, which saw the bed, already dressed, spring out onto the floor. All the young lady needed to do was take two pillows from the cupboard and place them on the bed.

"If they'd told us how simple it was, we would have done it," said Lee to the young lady apologetically.

Her look, as she departed, suggested we were the biggest divas she'd seen since Mariah Carey's entourage made the mistake of thinking the Novotel sounded like a good place to stop over.

The bathroom was brilliantly designed. Full of wonderful flowing curves and big, bold statements. It was obviously a candidate for a National Design Award, for it wasn't made with functionality in mind.

A shallow sink which made it impossible to do anything unless you filled it to the top and wasted water. And the carefully crafted glass shower guard looked very attractive while offering the rest of the bathroom as much protection from splashing water as would a couple of Rizlas.

Removing the plug from the sink gave a waft of disgusting drains and the separate toilet smelt of damp - what sort of damp we never quite established.

I don't have a grudge against the Novotel chain - I've stayed in the ExCeL Novotel on many occasions without a problem - but this was beyond belief for the price.

On the plus side, they did have black pudding for breakfast - a breakfast which cost an additional £14 or so. But by that time I couldn't wait to check out.

Our survey says...

Now I've reached a certain age I judge the standard of a hotel by a number of factors:

• The shower in the room;
• The quality of tea/coffee-making facilities;
• How many toiletries I can pocket; and
• The quality of the black pudding in the 'and breakfast' part of the deal

I've spent the last two nights at a pleasant enough hotel in the West Midlands. However, on neither morning did they give me my requested alarm call.

And on the first morning nobody bothered to advise us we needed a code to exit the car park. But what was worse they claimed to offer a 'full' English breakfast - but the buffet was sans black pudding.

It all seemed so good. I trousered two bars of soap, some shampoo and some moisturiser, wasn't forced to drink de-caf coffee and the shower was hot. But no black pudding?

I'm sorry, but it's a no from me...

Comedians on the road to career change?

Comedians seem to be branching out.

On the way to Birmingham today we passed a coach from a company called A&J Carr and a lorry belonging to Fry Transport.

Now there's a funny thing...

Sorry, what was that?

A funny thing happened to me on the way to ... wherever I was going.

One of my mates, who actually reads this rubbish, suggested I did a blog on the bad manners of people who insist on fiddling with the apps on their iPhone while pretending to be interested in what you are saying.

I would but I didn't catch why it made him so angry. I was too busy texting ...

Yeah, yeah. See ya later.

And finally, monsieur, a wafer-thin mint...

I went down to Portsmouth on Friday to meet up with a few old mates who I hadn’t seen in some time.

I don’t go down to Pompey much now, except to pick up and drop off my son at weekends – and he doesn’t live anywhere near the centre.

But when I do go it all looks so different – it’s hard to believe I lived there for the first 35 years of my life. Very few of my teenage haunts remain, and if they do they tend to have been renamed after a colour and either a fruit or animal of indeterminable origin.

Portsmouth has always been a ‘hard’ city, built as it was on the navy and the sore thumbs of thousands of dockies.

By the way, the phrase ‘chip on the shoulder’ is believed to have originated in Pompey dockyard was back in the 17th century. I’m sure there is a website confirming this etymology somewhere, but I really can’t be arsed to find it.

Anyway I digress. Portsmouth has always been a ‘hard’ city, but I didn’t realise, after living away from it for 11 years just how much of a big Jessie I had become.

This was brought home to me in the early hours of Saturday morning when, after a distinctly average curry, I lost a filling on an After Eight mint. Even soft mints are hard enough to take out a filling in Portsmouth when you’ve spent 11 years living in the semi-rural confines of fluffy Petersfield.

So it was, that this morning I found myself registering with a dentist in fluffy Petersfield – not having bothered in the previous 11 years in protest at the dearth of NHS options.

Those particular chickens came home to roost when I realised what bad condition my molars were in. As the lady dentist leaned over what felt like a chasm in my tooth, she asked her hygienist to prepare some cement.

“How much?” asked the hygienist, presumably of the opinion that I could do with having my entire mouth filled.

“Not a bucketful,” replied the dentist.

Had I not, at that moment, had a young lady poking around in my oral cavity, I would have assuaged my natural curiosity by asking if there were only two quantities of cement which could be prepared: a bucketful, and not…

However, as the aforementioned young lady was, at that very moment, poking around inside my cavity with a sharp implement I’m sure I last saw in a tableau on board HMS Victory, I decided against imparting a remark which might have been interpreted as sarcastic.

Having not visited a dentist for more than a dozen years, it was amazing how familiar the sights, smells, and sensations felt. It might well have been yesterday that I last had weapons of mandible destruction wielded in my mouth. The scrapings, the sound … it was all so familiar.

What was hugely different was the fact that as I departed my new chamber of horrors of choice I was clutching a bill which amounted to a three-figure sum. And to get full value from it I have to return next Monday for more of the same.

Folks, as the great Pam Ayres once opined, I wish I’d looked after me teeth…

Moss comment is hard to swallow

I see model Kate Moss is in trouble again after saying she lives by a slogan which encourages people with anorexia not to eat.

In an interview with fashion news website WWD, Moss said one of her mottoes was: "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels."

Well, I've never been skinny, but I've seen those poor little kids in Africa and I would imagine they'd all swap their lives for a regular supply of lemon meringue pie or chocolate profiteroles.

What a shame she no longer goes out with Pete Doherty - two people have never been so deserving of each other.

It's good, but it's not right...

You have to give spammers credit for trying, but the least they could do is aim for a degree of verisimilitude.

The email I have just received purported to come from HM Revenue & Customs and told me I was due to receive a sum of £218.50 in a tax refound.

To compound the error, the email address to which I was supposed to send all my bank details was Refound-tax@online.hrmc.gov.uk.

To be fair I suppose English might not be their first language, but given the standards we witness these days, who's to know for certain?

Are they taking the pizza?

On Friday evening I was lucky enough to accompany my wife as she helped take a school trip to London to see Terry Pratchett's Nation at the National Theatre.

She works at a prep school in Surrey, so I suppose I should not have been at all surprised that when we stopped for a bite to eat at Pizza Express, the most popular choice among the kids was the Padana: a pizza with goat's cheese, caramelised onions and spinach.

But I still choked on my sun-ripened tomatoes when the order went in. No pepperoni for them. And not one of them asked for tomato ketchup...

Bless.

More moans about reality TV

I'm really losing the will to live. This morning, over breakfast, bloody GMtv was talking about X Factor and I'm a Non-Entity...

For God's sake, is there nothing else happening in the world that's more important than that shallow pile of *****?

And before you tell me I can always turn it off. I can't; I'm outvoted.

BTW I believe the big-breasted bimbo, Katie Price, is in the jungle. Didn't she do one of these dreadful programmes before and found herself a husband? Anybody would think she was looking for another man or something.

Perhaps Ant and/or Dec are starting a new vehicle: I'm a vacuous bint who flaunts her t*ts and am in need of more publicity and another husband to show off, so get me in there...

I don't know about X Factor, I think hundreds of people have, not just X.

The times they are-a-changing...

Amid all the offers of drugs to improve my sexual performance and Russian women desperate to ‘meet man lik you’, my email occasionally offers sage advice from people I’ve actually agreed to hear from.

Despite, at 46, being too old to learn, I keep being told by all around me that ‘you’re never too old to learn’.

Hence, I recently joined the social networking crowd with a Twitter account (www.twitter.com/Bunkybowers) and a Facebook page.

And, thanks to people out there who know things I couldn’t possibly hope to understand, I’ve even managed to set my blog up to post automatically to Twitter and Facebook as soon as something appears.

OK, so it’s not rocket science – but it might as well be for all I knew about it before reading the ‘how to’ pages on the interwebby thing.

But the great thing about web-based activities and computer software, I’ve discovered, is how much you can learn simply by getting and ‘having a go’. If you get it wrong, things don’t crash around your feet – you simply start again and learn from the errors.

The modern age is great for that, because working in Photoshop or Illustrator, designing websites, or using social network tools is a world away from the industries I knew as a lad.

Born and bred in Portsmouth, many of my contemporaries went to work in the Naval Dockyard as apprentices. And I’m bloody sure on their first day they weren’t told by the gaffer “just go and try to fit those rivets into the side of the Ark Royal – you’ll soon get the hang of it”. Or “take this screwdriver and try to rewire that nuclear missile launcher – you can’t do any harm”.

They had years of extensive training. With many of the 21st century industries being in the ‘virtual world’ it is much easier to be self-taught, which also means there are areas where the ‘expertise’ is likely to be lacking a little something.

Most people, like me, get by. I’m no expert. But I know enough now on lots of things to be able to hold my own – a habit I first developed as a teenager, though it was frowned upon by polite society in the 70s.

Traditional industries – and by ‘traditional’ I mean stuff before computers took over the world and sent Arnold Schwarzenegger back in time to save us all – don’t allow for a ‘little knowledge’ and require a lot of training and tuition.

This was brought home to me in spades earlier in the week when, as a parent of a prospective student, I was shown around the chemistry department of the University of Sheffield.

My chemistry knowledge is very limited, as I took the subject for only one year at school. And my place in dunces’ corner was confirmed when we arrived at the department and I thought the periodic table on the wall in reception was the seating plan for a lecture theatre…

But my complete ignorance was brought home during the tour when Dr Jim Thomas, one of the members of staff tasked with dragging round idiots such as I, spouted forth in one of the laboratories about the machinery doing ‘some of the basics of chemistry’.

From what I understood - and it wasn't much - it took something, smashed it to pieces, and then tried to discover its constituent parts. I wanted to know why it smashed up whatever it was that it smashed up in the first place. I’m sure there was a damned good reason but I know not what it is.

But for the most part my lack of basic knowledge meant Jim’s words made the same sound as those of the teacher in the TV Charlie Brown cartoons: “Wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa.”

It’s a good job the self-taught philosophy doesn’t apply in those labs, otherwise I get the feeling parts of the University of Sheffield might have been relocated to Barnsley and other areas of south Yorkshire some time ago.

"Sum up the game for us Jon..."

If you read my ramblings last week about my one-man campaign to correct the misuse of the English language by the nation’s football commentators – or even if you didn’t – you will be interested to note that I’m also now taking issue with their numeracy.

Jon Roder, commentating on Reading v Ipswich for the BBC’s Football League Show, made the point that as Reading had scored only two goals at home all season, Simon Church’s equaliser for the Royals had increased their home goals’ total by 33 per cent.

Given they had only scored two goals before it should surely have occurred to him that any increase in goals scored, by the very nature of football, was never going to be less than 50 per cent.

On the plus side he didn’t insist that the ball was prodded in from “distance”.

It's not so grim oop north...

So then, I'm back from Sheffield - and I was right: it was a real shock to the system.

But not in the way I imagined. I was hugely impressed by both Sheffield the city and the University of Sheffield.

My last visit to Sheffield was around 20 years ago, maybe more - and my recollections were not good. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, a sh*thole!

I was expecting boarded up mills and steelworks. But it was nothing of the sort. Maybe Mrs Thatcher was right in shutting down all the indigenous industries of the north ... no of course she wasn't.

Now, however, it seems a splendid city. Much has been done to it and I felt much safer walking around it yesterday than I do when I return to my home city of Portsmouth.

While that is a sad indictment on poor old Pompey, it's also a compliment to the former steel city. James, my eldest step-son, was also hugely impressed. He may even choose to study there.

If I had to live in a northern city - heaven forbid - I could certainly do much worse than choose Sheffield. The only problem I had with it - speaking as a chap of some girth - is those seven bloody hills!

A step into the unknown

For more than 46 years I have lived within 20 miles of the south coast - for two-thirds of that time within half-a-mile of the sea as the crow flies.

To me, the area known as 'the north' has always been a mystical land filled with giants, damsels in distress, dragons, whippets, cloth caps and blokes who wear cap-sleeve T-shirts in February.

I am the archetypical 'soft southern shite'. I'm happy drinking pear cider, wouldn't attempt anything hotter than a chicken madras, and always make sure I wrap up warm as soon as the leaves start to fall from the trees. Even a genealogical study fails to turn up any of my ancestors who lived north of 'the smoke'.

Any visits to 'the north' were brought about by watching football (often when younger); out of necessity with work (occasional); and the odd - and I use the term advisedly - weekend away at some tourist trap (seldom).

I once went to York for the weekend with my first wife and can recall being completely underwhelmed by the Jarvik Viking Museum - it was more than 20 years ago and must have improved otherwise it wouldn't still be there. I think some of the displays were made by the original invaders.

I do quite like Oxford, though it is only those of us who live in the deep south who would ever consider Oxford as 'north'. Inspector Morse was based in Oxford, of course, and I can recall him saying that he once visited 'somewhere' and "further north than that I have no desire to go".

It tickled me then and it would tickle me again now if only I could remember where the 'somewhere' was.

Anyway, I digress. The reason I write of 'the north' is that I am going there today, with our eldest, who has an interview with Sheffield University tomorrow.

Sheffield, of course, likes to compare itself with Rome, both being built upon seven hills. From what I can recall from previous visits that's the only similarity - I can't imagine the Full Monty being remade in Rome for the Italian market.

Nor, when travelling to Rome, do you have to pass Luton, Milton Keynes and Nottingham to get there.

Rome has the Colosseum; Sheffield the Meadowhall shopping centre. Rome is full of beautiful women in designer clothing; the north is full of hoodied chavs - though to be fair so is most of England these days.

I'm a great believer that devolution should not have stopped with Wales and Scotland. The Midlands and the North should have been next to be given independence, with only the south - and maybe, at a push, the south-east - being retained as England.

Cornwall, as we know, has long harboured a desire to be an independent state and it should be given that right along with anything west of Fareham. Likewise Suffolk and Norfolk where there are several million people and only about five surnames.

You may have summised I'm not looking forward to my trip north. I'm approaching it with the same trepidation that Capt Scott and his team had when attempting to travel to the South Pole. I'm expecting the same desolation and temperature.

But most of all I'm worried that James, coming up 18, might actually like it and choose to continue his education in the city's university. That would require further visits ... and I'm not sure I could survive the culture shock.

*For fellow sufferers, might I take the liberty of offering up a recommended read... Up North by Charles Jennings. A fellow southern Jessie goes in search of the real 'north'.

Hello, my name's Jules and this is my friend Sandy...

"'Ere, Mister 'Orne..."

I’m a big fan of BBC Radio 7, the DAB station which outputs a load of vintage radio comedy shows.

I’m also keen on the 6.30pm comedy slot on BBC Radio 4, but in recent weeks the contrast between the two has been palpable.

Take Tuesday’s Radio 4 output – Too Much Information – and the 8am slot this morning on Radio 7, Round the Horne.

The latter episode was 42 years old and still makes me chortle; the former, which claims to be a comedy based in a tourist information office, simply made me shake my head in disbelief. I’ve heard funnier news bulletins.

What is it that commissioning editors look for currently in new shows? One would hope it was humour, but that clearly is no longer a pre-requisite.

Shows of the quality of Round the Horne would, quite simply, never be given the go-ahead in the BBC of the 21st century. It’s far too concerned with being politically correct, and inoffensive – the BBC’s ‘fun police’ are the broadcasting equivalent of the health and safety executive.

Round the Horne is too near the knuckle; too dangerous; too camp; just too damned funny.

Take this morning’s episode. Kenneth Horne is a special agent and catches Robin Day trying to climb the BBC’s equivalent of the Berlin Wall.

“I’m trying to defect over the wall,” explains Bill Pertwee as Day.

“Well,” says Horne, slowly,, in that wonderful deep brown voice, “it’s a clever trick if you can do it.”

It requires the art of innuendo – and it is an art in its highest form – and, in the listener, a decent command of the English language.

Perhaps that’s the answer. The general population is no longer able to appreciate clever or subtle humour so we get programmes devoid of any form of it.

Too many of today’s shows pander to the lowest common denominator. And I’m not saying that because I’m in my 40s. I can see why the younger generation would like things like We Are Klang. I’ve laughed at it myself, despite the fact it’s not aimed at the likes of me.

But the BBC wouldn’t let Round the Horne through these days for myriad reasons, not least for fear sketches like Jules and Sandy might offend homosexuals or that minors might be corrupted by the cordwanglings of Rambling Syd Rumpo.

Rambing Syd was completely inoffensive; it’s only in the mind of the listener that it becomes suggestive. A classic example of the British love of innuendo.

And as for Jules and Sandy, Kenneth Williams was as camp as a row of tents in real life and if he had no problems playing the part why should people be offended by hearing it?

Indeed one of the biggest Round the Horne fans I know is a gay woman. She loves it. And she’s quite keen on Round the Horne… did you see what I did there?

The gist of what I’m trying to say is that anybody out there with a modicum of comedic writing skill should be haranguing the BBC with anything they’ve penned. And anybody with an interest in enjoying comedy should be haranguing the BBC to commission some decent stuff without running it past the fun police first.

It's shocking to think that had the current climate been prevailing 30, 40 and 50 years ago we would never have had Round the Horne, Are You Being Served, It Ain't 'Alf Hot Mum, Til Death Us Do Part, The Goon Show, Monty Python's Flying Circus and many other great comedy shows.

It doesn't bear thinking about.


*And if you’re really interested in following my advice, the controller of BBC comedy commissioning is Cheryl Taylor (http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/tv/network/genres/comedy.shtml)

Grammar pedantry part 432

I've always looked at the BBC as the last bastion of the English language.

But I've now decided the British Broadcasting Corporation is just as poor as everywhere else in retaining a semblance of correct usage. Eric Partridge must be turning in his grave.

The past few days have really been the final straw for me.

Radio 4's Today programme has fallen into the trap of scripting its newsreaders to say "try and" instead of the invariably correct "try to...". And they persist in using "due to" instead of "owing to" or "because of" when not modifying a noun.

Football commentators appear to be a breed apart when it comes to bastardising the English language. In the past few days alone I have heard them say "he shot from range" and "he shot from distance". No shit Sherlock.

Every shot is from range or distance; what actually needs to be determined is whether it's short range or from long distance. Even better why not try informing us of an estimate of the distance in, say, yards ... that seems as good a measurement as anything else.

And to top it off, when Robin van Persie skewed his shot wide of the post in Saturday's clash with Spurs, the commentator pointed out that the Dutch striker had missed by "...a margin". Sorry but I thought that was, in sporting parlance, a 'given'.

Of course he missed by a margin - and it's your role to tell us just how much of a margin it was.

This footie-speak is becoming anathema to me now and will soon result in something being hurled at the tv in the same way I previously launched a keyboard at the radio during my days on the sportsdesk one Saturday, when, for the umpteenth time that season, the local radio commentator claimed the ball had gone "straight into the goalkeeper's midrift".

Heaven help us...

That's odd

The great thing about wearing boots to work, as the weather gets colder, is that you can wear odd socks and nobody is any the wiser.

Unless of course you're stupid enough to write about it...