I recently returned from my honeymoon in Australia. How was it? Absolutely wonderful, thanks for asking. In fact, it was so wonderful that my wife and I were overcome with snotty weepiness prior to take-off from Brisbane Airport, when Qantas cruelly filled our personal TV screens with sweeping images of vast, red-tinged Aussie landscape, accompanied by a song that was so sad it was like injecting the final scenes of Pans Labyrinth directly into my heart.
I feared our flight had been commandeered by a team of X-Factor producers determined to yank at our heartstrings, and that the opening announcement from the flight deck would probably feature Coldplay’s ‘Fix You’ playing in the background. The captain would then tearfully reveal that he was flying us back to Blighty to make his leukaemia-stricken cat proud, before pumping a looped soundtrack of anthemic Snow Patrol tracks into the cabin for 21 gruelling hours.
Thankfully, none of that actually happened (apart from the crying bit), it was just a way of bulking out the intro to this blog post. And the honeymoon was great. The only downside was other people. Dribbling idiots, all of them (well, some of them).
When I think about the perfect holiday set-up my mind instantly darts to the opening scenes of 28 Days Later, with Cillian Murphy wandering around a deserted London. Provided you did all your sightseeing before nightfall – to avoid being overwhelmed by excessively violent ‘Rage’ zombies, while posing for a photo at a key tourist attraction – it would be absolute bliss to wander around a holiday location without the presence of other tourists. Sure, the gut-wrenching smell of bins and lack of public transport would eventually take its toll on the holiday spirit, but those first few days without other people would be great.
Because when I’m surrounded by other people on holiday I can often lose hours of my life obsessing over their rudeness and baffling inconsiderateness. I also end up with a roll-call of identifying nicknames for the most annoying people I encounter, which often sound like members of a crap street gang. Subsequently, my wonderful honeymoon was frequently punctuated with grumbles about ‘Pink Shirt’, ‘Fat Samoan’ and ‘The Inquisitive Brothers’ – to name but a few.
Planes are particularly challenging, claustrophobic environments in which to sit shoulder to shoulder with fellow humans. For instance, there are those passengers who fully recline their seats roughly 20 seconds into the flight, which leaves your headrest TV screen so close to your face you can count the number of screen pixels in Bear Grylls’ eyeball (assuming you’re watching Born Survivor, like I was). I dare say these inconsiderate arseholes would also happily vomit on my Kindle’s screen and wipe their bum on my bread roll, anything to make my flight just that little bit more uncomfortable.
On a flight we took from Perth to Sydney I was driven to distraction by an overweight father of two toddlers, who wandered around the plane constantly – barefoot – like it was his own living room. He spent almost the entire flight doing circuits of the cabin in pursuit of one of his daughters, which was impossible to ignore on account of the fact that Boots Randolph’s ‘Yakety Sax’ rattled through my brain every time he and his daughter whizzed by my seat for the umpteenth time. I then spent the next few hours of the flight fantasising about garrotting him with the cord of my complimentary headphones, or fashioning a shank from the foil tray of my inflight meal; something strong enough to puncture his Hawaiian shirt and the outer wall of protective blubber in which he was encased. However, on the upside, my murderous imaginings actually made the flight pass quite quickly.
It’s also worth mentioning that the sound I associate most with the collapse of civilisation is the chorus of clinks at the end of a flight, when everyone unfastens their seatbelt before the seatbelt sign has been fully extinguished. (Let me repeat that: before the seatbelt sign has been extinguished.) Hell, why don’t we all just charge off the plane, smear shit along the walls of the jetway as we go, pillage each other’s luggage, and rut like stags in the arrivals lounge? Let’s revel in the total breakdown of order!
Unbelievably, I even found someone annoying whilst snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef. Someone actuallyannoyed me in the middle of the Coral Sea – at a breathtaking World Heritage Site. As I marvelled at the explosion of colourful marine life darting around beneath me, with a vacant expression of total awe – like a man wearing a snorkel mask dipped in paint thinner waiting for the Clown Fish to perform a routine with a bucket of confetti – the bellowing voice of a Russian constantly pierced the calm. I actually thought I was pretty clever shouting “shut the fuck up!” into my snorkel – until my ears broke the surface of the water and I heard my voice carrying across the waves, sounding like a Borrower hurling abuse from the bottom of bottle.
Thankfully, the Russian didn’t drown me or offer me a polonium-210-coated digestive on the boat journey home, and he eventually piped down and allowed us all to swim around without the commentary.
It should have been hard for me to find anything remotely annoying about the people at Byron Bay, as it’s sort of a mecca for inoffensive types, such as surfers, beach bums and hippies – but I still managed a tiny grumble (even though a bearded old hippie said my wife and I were an “attractive couple” and described me as a “strong man” for carrying a heavy rucksack. He was stoned, obviously, but that’s no reason to doubt his opinion). Basically, everyone in Byron Bay seemed to walk around with their bum out, looking lithe, sexy, bronzed, young and cool, while the surfers darted in and out of the tumbling surf as if they were running a giant thread through the waves in a bold attempt to sew up the ocean. The place has a ridiculously high rate of general attractiveness and effortless cool.
It wasn’t that I found the people themselves annoying, I think I was just annoyed at how old they made me feel. The average male surfer and beach dweller tended to walk around with their shorts sitting just below their Apollo’s belt, while I wandered up and down the beach with my Apollo’s bum bag concealed beneath a t-shirt and some sensibly hoisted cargo shorts. They were young and free, with their lives still ahead of them. Conversely, I could barely remember my youth and freedom, which means that I probably didn’t even know what to do with it when I had it. And now it was gone. I wasted it. That wasn’t the fault of those who’d flocked to Byron Bay, of course, I was just envious of them. It was annoying to think about.
Anyway, I thought I’d better wrap up this blog post by saying something positive, which is that the customer service we received in Australia was possibly the best I’ve ever experienced anywhere, and the vast majority of people we encountered on our travels were beyond fantastic. There was even a guy on one of our flights who retrieved everyone’s hand luggage from the baggage compartment and passed the bags to those who couldn’t reach. Whoever you are, sir, you briefly restored my faith in humanity. Still, me being me, I probably spent more time grumbling about the irritating and inconsiderate few that we came across, which my long-suffering wife will wearily testify to. I honestly don’t know why I do that? I guess I’m just annoying.












Yippee-ki-yay, Mrs Dorries
When I think about a “conveyor belt of smut” I imagine something on the scale of Barclaycard’s giant waterslide snaking through the streets of London, with a load of wobbling tits, sexually explicit song lyrics and gay kiss storylines from soaps juddering past people’s office windows. Although, I’d wager that it runs directly through the offices of the Daily Mail’s web team.
Because once you finish reading the Mail Online’s report about the smut that our children are exposed to – on television, the internet, and in the high street – you can then read about how lucky Gary Lineker is, spending the day on a sun-kissed Miami beach with his 31-year-old “model turned actress” wife Danielle. Go on, why not scroll through umpteen photos of her “sizzling body” in a black string bikini. Phwoarrr!
Still not tired of bikinis? Well, you can always click on the Mail Online’s other story about Danielle Lineker, in which you get to see photos of her wearing an open shirt over a different bikini. Or you can drool over shot…after shot…after shot…after shot…of the girls from The Only Way is Essex wearing…er..bikinis. Or maybe you’d just rather settle for Cameron Diaz in a “nude swimsuit”. Your choice.
OK, what about some science and technology news instead? Did you hear about the iKini? Apparently, you can charge your iPod with it and…oh, wait, the article features a blonde model wearing a solar-panelled bikini. Sorry.
Perhaps you’d prefer an article about Imogen Thomas “showing off her figure in a tight red summer dress alongside tan strappy heels” as she embarks on a much-needed clear-out of her wardrobe. The lead photo is a gratuitous shot of her cleavage as she hoicks a bag of clothes into a charity shop, which practically places you in between them and muffles your internal reading voice. Go on, you know you want to!
And let’s face it, she’s a remarkable role model for young girls. With the lucrative commercial opportunities and kiss and tell deals off the back of the Ryan Giggs affair, not to mention the nude modelling for Nuts and Zoo magazines (the kind of lads’ mags that David Cameron, Nadine Dorries and the Daily Mail want to see encased in a modesty cover and banished to the top shelf), she’s a modern day success story. Look, kids, she drives a Mercedes SLK and can afford to give away bin bags full of designer labels! Look how easy, yet aspirational, it all is!
But if none of that floats your boat, there’s always the Mail Online’s favourite sex tape and reality star, Kim Kardashian. If she callously suffocated a load of chicks and tossed their lifeless bodies into the slobbering jaws of an irritable Doberman, the Mail would probably report on how the chicks’ fluffy yellow feathers complimented her amazing shoes and low-cut, figure-hugging dress. They cover her every fucking move. The Kardashians simply must have some dirt on Paul Dacre.
For a newspaper with a free-to-access website, full of questionable ‘celebrity’ role models and cheap titillation posing as news, it’s laughable that the Daily Mail should report on the Bailey Review as if it’s the moral guardian of the world.
Even the Mail Online’s report into Reg Bailey’s review was crammed full of photos from Christina Aguilera’s “raunchy” X-Factor performance from last December, including a screengrab of the precise moment a backing dancer spread her stockinged legs during the dance routine.
Mary Whitehouse once said: “Last Thursday evening, we sat as a family and watched a programme that started at 6.35pm. And it was the dirtiest programme I have seen for a very long time.” I imagine several Daily Mail journalists reluctantly endured the same level of filth while searching for the sexiest looking screengrab they could find from December’s X-Factor. Poor souls.
Also talking about the Bailey Review yesterday was Tory MP Nadine Dorries. She took to the airwaves to speak to a slightly bemused-sounding John Humphries on Radio 4′s Today programme, where she once again dribbled a load of vague, outdated statistics about pre-watershed sexual references on TV. The exchange went as follows:
Dorries: “In terms of the watershed, at 9pm, there are 1.8 references to sexual intercourse before the watershed in the evening. Many more sexual innuendo and other references…”
Humphries: *interrupting* “Sorry? 1.8…say that again. There are 1.8…”
Dorries: “There’s recently been a recording of sexual innuendo, references to sexual intercourse…and there’s a whole list of comments made before the watershed. 1.4 references to sexual intercourse before the watershed at 9pm.”
You can listen to the full interview here, but Dorries’ comments are typically confused. Firstly, she quotes two different figures relating to pre-watershed references to sexual intercourse on TV, which strongly hints that she doesn’t have the first clue what she’s talking about (it’s also a different figure to the one she cited in Parliament in May). And secondly, the figures she regurgitated (“recently” recorded, apparently) had already been whisked off to a lab and carbon-dated to the early 1990s, where they’ve apparently been doing the rounds on American Christian websites for years.
You’ve almost got to give Nadine Dorries some credit. Securing yourself a slot on Radio 4′s flagship news programme to confidently spout woefully inaccurate twaddle is impressive. Disturbing, but impressive.
Referring to the prime-time filth on our screens, Dorries also claimed that “young boys want their young girlfriends to behave like the women they watch on X-Factor,” which perhaps insults young people’s intelligence slightly.
When I was a kid, I once found two books in my mum and dad’s bookshelf which made my eyes widen with delight: one was Ronnie Barker’s Gentleman’s Relish, which was a collection of Victorian nude photographs and saucy postcards, and the other was a cocktail recipe book called Rude Cocktails, featuring nude photography by David Thorpe.
If dislodging those books had caused my parents’ bookshelf to suddenly revolve, transporting me into a magical, Narnia-like world, I still probably would’ve just sat there studying every nude picture intently, while rudely ignoring the attentions of a charming woodland satyr.
Based on Nadine Dorries’ assumption that young people are impressionable to the point of having wildly inaccurate expectations of the opposite sex, I probably should have grown up believing that foreplay would come with a free champagne cocktail. Or maybe I should have expressed confusion when my first sexual experience wasn’t preceded by my girlfriend posing against a scenic backdrop, holding a parasol.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree that kids should be kids. I don’t want to see little girls dressed up as if they’re starring in a school production of Band of Gold, and I obviously don’t want young kids surfing the internet for hardcore porn. But some of the anticipated recommendations in the Bailey Review range from the painfully obvious to the worryingly meddlesome.
The Advertising Standards Authority should discourage the placement of billboards with sexualised imagery near schools and nurseries or other areas where children are likely to view it. Also, no bear traps should be laid in school playgrounds. And children should not, under any circumstances, be issued with crossbows during assembly.
Lads’ mags should be moved to the top shelf or sold in covers. Fair enough. No children should have to see Danny Dyer’s smirking face superimposed over the nipples of a curvaceous blonde. If you’re moronic enough to buy such mags, you’re probably tall enough to reach them.
A single website to be created, to act as “an interface between parents and the variety of regulators across the media, communications and retail industries”. What’s this website going to be called? Mumsnet Extreme? Will the media, communications and retail industries be able to keep up with the sheer volume of complaints they’ll receive from all the parents they’ll most certainly be offending in various ways across our vast culture? And how will that work exactly? Is there going to be a Blue Peter totaliser that will set off a vibrating alarm in David Cameron’s trousers when a complaint receives a certain level of support? “We’re only 80 complaints away from having Bill Turnbull arrested for saying ‘boob’ on BBC Breakfast this morning. Here’s how you can get in touch, parents!”
A clampdown on sexualised and violent images shown before TV’s 9pm watershed. This is another no-brainer. But here’s the thing: if pre-watershed TV is sanitised to create acceptable, clean family viewing, then post-watershed TV should cater for an adult audience and be strictly off-limits to anyone complaining about the effect it’s having on their children (who shouldn’t be watching anyway).
I distinctly remember watching Die Hard 2 at gone midnight once, when “frickin’” was still being dubbed over every use of the F-word and John McClane’s famous “Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker” line was changed to “Yippee-ki-yay, kemosabe”. (Although, the American dubbed-for-TV version changed the line to: “Yippee-ki-yay, Mr Falcon,” so maybe we got off lightly.)
Of course, with the advent of Sky+ and internet television the watershed is somewhat irrelevant these days anyway. People can watch whatever they want at whatever time of day they choose. Prime-time TV can be toned down and sanitised to a point where the only programme available is a cartoon of Alan Titchmarsh playing Hungry Hungry Hippos with a kitten, but there will always be content that’s naturally inappropriate for children of a certain age.
As such, regardless of the government’s various reviews and recommendations, parents are always going to be the first and best line of defence in terms of what their kids are exposed to.
With the Bailey Review condemning what it describes as the “sexualised images used in public spaces and on television, the internet, music videos, magazines and newspapers,” it’s called for public space to become more family friendly, thus changing “the wallpaper of children’s lives”.
Let’s just hope that Nadine Dorries and the Daily Mail aren’t decorating.
[UPDATE: Only a few days after I published this post, the Mail Online ran a photo-heavy article about two girls from Channel 4's Made in Chelsea series, which showed them cleaning cars and bouncing on Space Hoppers....in bikinis. It surely won't be long until Loaded or FHM magazine comes as a free supplement with the Mail.]
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