KID'S STUFF

Being invited to see your friend's new baby is in no way like being invited over to see your friend.

When you see your friend you have a laugh, you are entertained, you have a lot of time for the intricacies of their life. Basically, you're pretty much happy just to see them and know that they are okay.

It's very uncomfortable meeting their new baby. While the essential qualities of your friend may still be present, this is really a whole new entity. If it wasn't for the connection to your friend, quite honestly you would have no reason to be interested in the baby. If a flyer about that baby were handed to you in the street and you didn't know it was your friend's, you'd probably toss it straight in the next litter bin.

In simple terms, babies are the biological equivalent of bad sequels to movies you love.

"Now, I loved 'Best Friend', but I'm in two minds about 'Best Friend 2'. Have you see it yet?"

"Oh, yeah 'Best Friend 2' is okay but not a patch on the first. It's just an infantile copy of the original. If I were you I'd get 'Best Friend 1' out on DVD instead."

"Ouch, two thumbs down!"

DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION

People are very eager to show you when they have a new car, aren’t they? Even if you're not interested in cars, they still really, really want to show you.

"I don't really know anything about cars," you tell them.

"Doesn't matter. Get in, we'll go somewhere."

If you're not a car person that's a very awkward situation. You try hard to be enthusiastic, but it's difficult knowing quite what to say. "Well, your new car sure has some good... wheels there. And, wow - doors. Can’t get enough of those. Did I mention the, um, wheels? Good, good wheels."

And then the driver always wants to "go round the block" to show you what the new car is like. What can you say? "Well, this sure is different. You never took me round the block in the old car, that's for sure. I'm impressed."

People really like to show you the gadgets, too. The radio aerial that goes up and down on its own, the lights that flip up, the convertible roof so you can experience what it's like to be driving in a force ten hurricane.

When a clown shows you his new car, there's that uncomfortable moment when the exhaust backfires and the doors fall off. To a clown, this is a good thing, of course. That's one ride around the block you'll never forget.

SO, IT'S COME TO THIS - A KRUSTY THE KLOWN KLIPS SHOW

No matter the medium, the anniversary special tends to be a mixed blessing. They've done fifty episodes, they've done a hundred episodes, they've done 200 episodes, how can they possibly mark this phenomenal achievement?

The call back is a popular choice. That's when an actress who left maybe thirty episodes ago reappears, usually to marry one of the lead characters. You know she's only back for this episode, so you watch the whole thing with an air of disinterest. You know the marriage can't go ahead - she left this two-bit sitcom for a career in Hollywood. You spend the whole show marking time until - there it is, the groom's got cold feet, the wedding's off, she's on the next flight back to her real career, roll credits, thanks for watching.

Interviewing the stars of the show is a popular choice which I don't really see the logic of. You've enjoyed the show for 200 episodes, why don't we get the actors to appear out of character and explain what a joy it is working on it. They like to tell that story about how the first episode didn't do so well but they always felt they had something special here, don't they? Guys - the axed shows felt that way, too. The only difference is, no one calls those actors back to tell this exact same anecdote.

The celebrity admiration special is one of the more irritating anniversary decisions. You get lots of people you don't like, telling you how much they like the show you wish you were watching right now instead of them. It's like they're rubbing your nose in the fact that they've not actually made an episode.

The clips show is an unsatisfying option that crops up with alarming regularity. It's pretty much the people who make the show saying "Hey, we know we're good. We're just resting on our laurels here." Magazines do the same thing - "50th anniversary issue, here's some stuff you've seen before."

And, of course, it's not an anniversary anyway. What is the fiftieth issue of a magazine? "We’ve been running four years and two months - let's celebrate!" Same for a TV show. Does 50 or 100 episodes mean anything? I'd like to see more 76th episode anniversary spectaculars.

This has been the fiftieth Klown College graduation speech. Here come some previous speeches I personally chose for you to revisit...

A QUESTION OF TASTE AND DECENCY

Can anyone follow what is going on with the crisps flavours?

I get ready salted - that, to me, makes sense. There's a potato product motif there, like chips or French fries. And I think we can safely bracket salt and vinegar in there as well. When eating fried potato products, we add salt. Gotcha.

Then you cut across to the cheese variants - cheese, cheese and onion, the specific cheese types named on the more expensive crisps. And that works on a jacket potato kind of deal, so I can understand that.

But where did they get prawn cocktail from? Who was sitting at the development team of the crisp manufacturers thinking that the marketplace really needed that flavour?

Worcester sauce? Ketchup? Chicken? Where are these flavours appearing from? Now, I've eaten chicken with potatoes, but I don't think I've ever considered a chicken flavoured potato. It sounds like something they would eat on the long flight to colonise another planet.

It seems to me that they're coming up with new combinations of flavours for the crisps, then they are trying to guess what they can sell them as.

"We like it, but we can't really market these as Flavouring E-7 Crisps, Bob. Have you got an alternative name for them?"

"Sure. Let's call them - quail egg flavour."

"Mmm-mmm, tasty!"

JUST APPLY YOURSELF

I'm very uncomfortable with the online application process. Those boxes always seem very rigid to me. There's no room to go over the edges, to add any personality to your application.

The worst online forms are for applying for a new job. They clearly weren't designed by someone who has ever had to fill in a form. Why do they make all the boxes so small? They know you have to type your answers in, it's not like some people are writing bigger than others. And then the boxes start to expand as you add to them, and you're all "Whoa, back up... Too much, come back here". It's the application form equivalent of sliding on the ice - you can try to compensate all you want now, you're never getting back to the point you started at.

It's with a sense of dread that you turn up at the job interview from the online application form. The interviewer's there, sitting across the table from you, and they're trying to work out how the form all fits together now. The first page is fine, name, date of birth, address. But the education section has split funny, and the pagination's out on the "previous experience" pages, and they have that random blank page in the middle where the tail end of a sentence got lost. They started the interview listening to you as they read your details, now they're trying to sort out this Sunday newspaper-style mess of paperwork with all those sections and weird numbering on the pages. When you reach that point, they're really not paying attention to you.

"Yes, and then I spent three months on attachment to another department. That's on pages three and page four, with a single line on page five and just the word 'Summer' on page six... here. I don't really know what happened there - it looked okay on the screen, I swear."

Unfortunately, if your potential employer thinks that you can't fill in the application form they tend to think you're not going to apply yourself to the job at hand.

THE BATMAN DEMOGRAPHIC

Just seen Batman Begins at the cinema. When you watch the adverts before the movie do you ever wonder what was going on at the advertisers' meeting?

UK cinema performances just now are being sponsored by Orange mobile phones. Their little morality play was followed by an ad for the new Motorola phone ("Hello Moto.") that can play MP3 music files. Then it was something about how the Virgin Megastores could supply any type of music you like, Malibu alcoholic drinks, a Samsung phone, a warning about the ills of driving too fast, and something about iTunes, before concluding with a note about the Smirnoff vodka people liking dance music.

So, I figure at the advertisers' meeting you had the execs sitting around...

"What kind of people would go see a film about Batman? Come on, he dresses up like a bat, he fights crime. Think, people, think. Who is the target audience here?"

"People who like to talk on the phone."

"People who like music."

"Dangerous drivers."

"Drunks."

"Then that's our Batman demographic. Get booking the ads, boys."

THE PETER PANIC

No matter how popular the Peter Pan story is, most folks get funny about real life people who don't grow up. A lot of the real world Peter Pans are shunned by their communities, and many even end up in prison.

It seems to me that people place an undue amount of emphasis on growing up. "Come on, be mature, get a job, stop having fun."

And people have those stock phrases when they think someone's being immature...

"He's got a lot of growing up to do?" What is he, a dwarf?

"Act your age, not your shoe size." Yeah, just act your age. Don't be it - just kinda pretend what it would be like to be that age while this person is around. That one doesn't really work on clowns, of course.

"C'mon, Krusty - act your age, not your shoe size."

"What?! I'm 33 years old and I'm wearing size 97-wide here! What do you want me to do? Go round with a Zimmer frame? Eurgh!"

THE SOAP QUESTIONS

Have you ever been round someone's house and been forced to watch a soap opera that you wouldn't normally follow? There are a lot of questions when you don't watch a soap - I'd estimate about twelve minutes per half hour of programme.

"Are they sleeping together?"

"She's his step-sister, right?"

"Who's this guy? Is he her boss?"

"Her ex-husband, is that who he is?"

No matter how many questions you ask, it's hard to really care about these people when you know you're only going to be in their lives for that 30 minute period. You're there for the half hour, but you're not coming back. You have as much chance of knowing what happened to these people as you do the people you shared the doctor's waiting room with last time you were there.

The only thing worse than not watching a soap is watching one for too long. Sometimes you've been watching longer than the writers, and you start correcting stuff where they mess up.

"He can’t marry her - she's his first cousin!"

"But, when we last saw him, he was crippled in a car accident!"

"Waitaminute, how is this possible?! Her Dad died three years ago!"

No matter how bad a soap opera gets, it's always hard to let go. You have to do it sudden, like removing a plaster. There's no soap opera substitute gum, or soap opera lite you can take in its place.

M. HULOT

Walking out of the cinema in mid-film is terrible. It's a terrible, evil thing to do. But, you've paid your money, you're stuck there, it's lousy - what do you do?

There's that twenty minute cool off period where you stay in your seat trying to convince yourself that it might pick up. You're pinning your hopes on the smallest detail to redeem the movie. "That waitress... she's pretty good. She delivered her line well. 'More coffee, sir?' - yeah, I like her."

And, once you make the decision, it's always a huge performance actually getting out. You're shuffling past all those people, doing the head duck thing, apologising with every step as you edge to the aisle. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. It's awful. I'm sorry. You were enjoying it, I wasn't. Now I've ruined it for you, too." And, even though you've decided it's terrible, you still keep one eye on the screen until you've left the auditorium. What are you going to do if it picks up now? Go back - make all those people move again? "I'm sorry, false alarm. It's a good movie, my mistake."

Leaving a 3D movie is the worst. You have the multicoloured glasses on, you're stumbling in the dark trying to find the stairs to the exit. Until you take those specs off, you're pretty much on hallucinogenic drugs.

And even when you do get out, you're still in 3D-movie mode. You're waiting for things to leap out at you. When your bus home pulls up you're disappointed that it doesn't explode, showering you with debris. That trip home feels frantic when you're in that frame of mind, let me tell you.

THOSE MEDDLING KIDS

Some of the stuff in the old Scooby-Doo cartoon is pretty hard to swallow when you think about it.

Is pretending to be a ghost the best way to scare off land developers if you own an old mine? What other techniques have to have failed before you think that dressing up as in a glowing wetsuit will help? Are American realty developers particularly known for their superstitious nature, making them more susceptible to fake hauntings?

Who taught Scooby-Doo to talk? Did he start talking as a puppy and the gang encouraged it, or did they train him like a parrot? Is he a dog with a speech impediment or do all dogs begin words with the R sound?

Where did they find Velma and why did they start hanging out with her? Fred and Daphne seemed to be of the same social type, and I'd accept that Shaggy was some infant school throwback friend from Fred's past or something - they were all fun-loving teenagers despite their surface differences. But, Velma - she clearly wasn't a natural part of their social circle. There's no way she'd have been part of their clique. Did they all meet in some huge, Breakfast Club style detention?

How come the Scooby Gang found all these mysteries anyway? Were they invited or did they stumble across them by accident? If they were invited, who invites teenagers to solve a mystery? If not, why did they keep staying at abandoned mansions? Were all the motels booked up?

Why did Scooby howl his name at the end of every episode? Was he worried that the rest of the gang would forget who he was?

And why did they start calling themselves the Scooby Gang? Wasn't Fred the leader? Shouldn't it have been his gang?

THE PRIME DIRECTIVE

The most depressing thing about watching Star Trek: The Next Generation is realising that in the future they still haven't discovered a cure for male baldness.

They've got the faster than light warp drive. They've got the phaser ray gun. They’ve got the teleport thing. But, Captain Picard is still bald. Come on, Federation people - let's stop exploring strange new worlds, new civilisations, boldly going where no one has gone before and get down to the serious issue here. Get your priorities straight already.

At the very least, they could teleport some hair onto the bald guy's head or something.

"We have a comb-over emergency here, Mr Worf. Set status to Brunette alert level, now!"

"With all due respect, Captain, it looks more serious than that to me."

"You're right - go straight to Blonde alert. I'll be in my quarters if you need me. You have the comm, number two."

WHY YOU ARE A FASHION VICTIM

Okay, I admit it - I don't "get" fashion. Be it designer names, piercings, hair styles, ring tones, tattoos - really, the whole fashion thing just washes over me. I don't wear the right clothes, I don't visit the right places, I don't display the right body scarification, I don't listen to the right music, and, quite honestly, it really makes no odds to me at all.

In two years time, all of these trends will have gone and the Next Big Thing will be here. We'll look at pictures of lads from 2005, displaying their Chinese character tattoos and their shaven heads and we'll wonder if we were running concentration camps back then.

But when you think about it, we're all victims of fashion. Take the clock back a few billion years. Loads of fish swimming about until one day one of them thinks - hey, what's all that land stuff up there? I'm going to a take me a look-see. And fish boy decides he quite likes it and he sets up home, maybe in the trees. Next thing you know, a few of his mates are up on the land and we have the start of monkeys.

One day, one of those monkeys gets bored with all the swinging about in the trees, builds a house and settles down. Before you know it, some of the other monkeys have cottoned on and suddenly he's surrounded by people who think this looks pretty good. And that was the first City of Man.

You see, all evolution is is a load of trendy people trying to keep ahead of the fashion curve.

CATEGORICAL

If there's one group of people who should know how to use the language it's second-hand booksellers, right? They spend their days surrounded by words, stacks and stacks of them, bound into these little paperbacked volumes. So, why is it that when they find a book with its cover detached, some writing on the first few pages, a cup of tea poured over it and the glue dried out they describe this as "good" condition?

Near mint, I get. That's, like, so fresh it still smells minty.

Fine is pretty clear, too. "How's that old book look?" "Well, it's all there and it's nice and shiny... I'd say it's fine."

Poor condition speaks for itself. With a pot of glue and a bit of imagination you might just be able to make a decent read out of that copy.

But good? Good means bad? Riiiight. And when did that happen?

If an electrician installs "good" wiring do we expect its covering to be detached and maybe a few dinks and cuts into the main cables? Wouldn't wiring that was unsafe and exposed to the elements be called something other than good?

You know who I blame? Michael Jackson. After the "Bad" album in '87 (it meant good, apparently) he started corrupting all of the words in the English language. Isn't that what he's on trial for now?

ON THE FANTASTIC FOUR MOVIE

The Fantastic Four really didn't think about how they would all go together when they were choosing their superhero names.

Now, Reed Richards - he got the stretchy body powers but he didn't mess about with a daft name like "Stretch Man" or "Long-limbed Guy". He went straight in with "Mister Fantastic". First superhero of the Marvel Universe, June 1961, and he had the pick of any superhero name he wanted. Of course he chose Mister Fantastic. It doesn’t take a genius (which he is, by the way) to choose that name from the list.

The same thing is true of the DC Universe. The first superhero there took the name "Superman". Do you see the pattern here? I believe the first superhero published by Charlton Comics was called "Captain Best in All the World" or something. It takes a lot of ego to be the first of the superheroes from a given comic book publisher.

But after Mister Fantastic, the FF went a bit haywire.

Okay, Sue Storm went with the Invisible Girl, which is nice. It's descriptive. Doesn't leave much to the imagination. I mean, if you're a supervillain trying to fight the team and you meet Sue, you figure - (1) she's a girl and (2) she'll be the one who'll sneak up on me if I don't keep my wits about me.

Johnny Storm chose the Human Torch as his codename. Yeah, he's a flaming torch of a man, so that makes sense again. The Storms clearly had very linear thought processes in their household. No thinking outside the box for them.

Finally you have Ben Grimm. Now, bear in mind he's the fourth superhero to choose a name in the whole comic book world. There's still a lot of great names out there waiting to be taken. And yet, he goes with "the Thing". Really, you have Mister Fantastic at number one and the Thing at number four. Come on, Ben - you had the pick of the names. I know Reed got the Mister Fantastic one but you're no Human Torch, guy, and, be honest, the Invisible Girl wouldn't really have helped your credibility on Yancy Street. But, look around - was the Thing the best you could come up with? Why not call yourself "Lump" or "Waste of Space" or "Don't Ask, 'kay"?

Then again, maybe the Thing was a canny choice after all.

"Wow, that guy sure has some moves on the dance floor and the chicks are really digging him."

"Yeah, he has a certain je ne sais quoi."

"A certain... what's that?"

"It's French. It means, y'know, Thing."

CRIMINAL PRIORITIES

Headline on yesterday's Evening Standard: "World's worst hacker arrested in London".

If this guy was such a poor hacker, why did the police bother to catch him? Why did they waste numerous man hours and reams of paperwork trying to catch this guy? Why tie up the court system convicting him? They really should be trying to arrest the world's best hacker. I mean, that guy's doing some mean work out there and getting away with it. All those pop ups that tell you your computer may have a virus, all that irritating spam e-mail you get about Viagra and dubious cigarettes, that time we almost nuked France - that's the handiwork of the world's greatest hacker. But the police are chasing after the worst possible hacker they can find, figuring they'll make an easy arrest with that loser.

Okay, it's possible I've misinterpreted that headline. That, in fact, what the Standard is trying to tell us is that the world's most successful hacker has been arrested in London. But, just because an activity is bad doesn't mean all the descriptions get reversed, Evening Standard journalists take note. We are not living on Bizarro World here. The world's worst serial killer wouldn't be Jeffrey Dahmer or Hannibal Lecter. To date I am the world's worst serial killer. I could be on the front page of tonight's Evening Standard with a caption beneath the photograph: "I'm innocent I tell you! You got the right guy!"

DEDICATION

It's with some irony that you realise that the greatest single source of environmental wastage is, in fact, the Guinness Book of Records.

The Guinness Book of Records is an A4 sized, one inch thick listing, as you're probably aware, of the greatest achievements in a variety of fields. There's everything in there from the highest jump to the biggest pair of shoes. If you want to know who holds the record for the tallest child under seven or cleanest car that's painted red - the Guinness Books of Records is the number one source.

The trouble is that, as diet improves, you get taller and taller children, so they have to alter the entries. As paint technology gets better, red cars get cleaner and cleaner. And some people, believe this if you will, actually strive to break records just so they can have their name in there as the fellow responsible for roller-skating around Blackpool the most times, or the girl who made the most Moon landings or whatever.

No problemo, the Guinness folks say, we'll just update it every year and include all the new records next to the ones that are still valid from last year.

Which is all well and good until you look at what to do with the previous year's books. Suddenly, you have a load of A4, inch thick collections of outmoded ex-facts. Sure, some of them might be still applicable, but, unless you know which ones, that's about as useful as a dictionary where one in every 50 words is misspelt - only really handy if you're a good enough speller to know which ones.

(And, hey - why do people say they are "good spellers" and "bad spellers"? Isn't it like fiction versus non-fiction - either you can spell or you can't.)

So, every year the Guinness Book of Records fells another dozen rainforests to bring us a collection of rapidly out-of-date facts. Like so many of their entrants, I thought I'd highlight this because I figure they might like the recognition just once. Congratulations, Guinness Book of Records - you are a record breaker!

THE SHOE PEOPLE

The shoe people are obviously ashamed of what they sell these days, aren't they? I mean, ten years ago you'd see an advertisement in a magazine for shoes and it would focus on people's feet, what they were wearing on their feet, what they were doing with their feet. You'd look in the window of a shoe shop and they'd have a blow-up of desert boots or mules or flip-flops or something.

These days, the window display is a picture of a model on a catwalk. Whether she's wearing shoes or not - we don't know. The picture's cropped so that we can’t tell. That information is on a need-to-know basis only, and the shoe people aren't sharing it with us.

In magazines, it's a photograph of an attractive woman in a bikini, who's wearing heels. What are these adverts meant to be telling us? If you're a young woman who spends an inordinate amount of time in a bikini... you might want to try these shoes with that ensemble. Who is the target audience here? Strippers and lap dancers?

It's reached a point now where if I see a woman in her skimpies I know she has a hidden agenda. She just wants to sell me shoes.

JOHN BAIRD LOGIE

The people who are making the TV shows are not the same people as the people who are showing the TV shows.

The people who make the shows are trying hard to get the details right - little story facets, nods to character progression, a beginning, a middle, an end. They even have someone on set whose job title, according the closing credits, is "continuity".

The people responsible for showing television don't really understand continuity. In their eyes, we watch television in the same way that we eat crisps - we don't care which one we have so long as we get the sweet, sweet tastes of salt and vinegar. As long as they can get a twenty-five minute episode into that slot, they really don't care what's going on in it.

Children's TV gets it worse than anyone. Try watching a continuing story in an animated series - no matter how much you enjoyed the first part, part two could be shown at anytime, any place with little or no warning. Heck, it may even have already been on the week before. I mean, it's only a cartoon, right?

What are schedulers like when they get home? Do they blunder around the house breaking dishes, mirrors and limbs on the Monday only to find everything's back to normal on the Tuesday, and then, come Wednesday, they've lost three stone, have their arm in a cast and are bitter over a nasty divorce? When they read books do they start at whatever page it falls open at? Do these people even own television sets?

Maybe that could be the next reality television show. We could get all the schedulers together and make them watch stuff, y'know, in order.

OH, THE HUMANITY

Does anyone actually know what Human Rights are? Is there a list written down somewhere that I'm not aware of? I don't remember being invited to the meeting. I'm sure I didn't get a say in what constitutes Human Rights. My vote didn't count. And yet, the Human Rights campaigners seem to pop up all over the place telling us that people's Human Rights are being abused with jaw-dropping regularity.

Holding terrorists in prison is an abuse of their Human Rights. If a child can't get into her school of choice then her Human Rights are being abused. If the school doesn't teach music - well, that's a Human Rights violation, right there.

The use of the word "flagrant" is all important. Smoking in public places is a flagrant abuse of human rights. It's not enough to be an abuse of Human Rights. Step it up to a flagrant abuse - that's like when Kirk switches from yellow to red alert on the bridge of the Enterprise. This is the real deal - all that other Human Rights violating was nothing compared to this.

Human Rights seem to be pretty easy to abuse... Someone vacuuming while you're watching TV - that's an abuse of your Human Rights, friend. Your neighbour's playing loud music - yeah, that's abusing your Human Rights, too. Standing next to a sweaty guy on the bus - consider yourself flagrantly abused.

But even worse than the abuse of Human Rights and the flagrant abuse of Human Rights is denying someone their basic Human Rights. I guess that's when you could allow someone their Human Rights, and they know it, but you don't let them anyway. You just taunt them with their Human Rights. "Look, we're listening to the Beatles out here while all you've got is a Val Doonican collection!" Denying someone their basic Human Rights, it seems, is just plain mean.

When they catch people who they suspect are guilty of abusing Human Rights do they have a special version of that whole arrest speech that they read them? "You have the Human Right to remain silent. You have the Human Right to an attorney..."

And the poor guy's being hauled away and he's complaining "What? I gave my prisoners air, I gave them water and three decent meals a day. I gave them books and allowed them access to the prison yard to get some sunshine and exercise. They even had TV in their cells. Pretty much, all I didn't do was let them out of the prison."

"Yeah, you gave them TV but you hid the remote - what kind of a sick, perverted, Human Rights abuser are you?"