In which I lose a moustache.

This November I grew a moustache to raise some money for prostate cancer research.
I also learned about white balance.

Day one

Day three

Day fifteen

Day nineteen

Day thirty

Can you believe that day thirty face got IDed in Asda?

I had never shaved off a 'tashe before so was a little unsure how to go about it. Despite putting in a fresh blade into my razor I feared that it would be a bit painful to shave straight away so I initially trimmed it with scissors.

Then I moved onto the razor

And now I am back to my usual babyfaced self.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Give and take

Tomorrow is my last day in my current job.

I have worked in the same office with the same people for the last four and a half years.

Some people suggest that you shouldn't work in the same office for this long.
They say that it can lead to stagnancy.
That change is good.
I believe the biggest disadvantage of staying in the same job this long is that the ever increasing disparity between how much one has contributed to other people's leaving collections and how much one will get in their own.



Over the last four and a half years someone has left, on average, about once every two months.
On average I might donate two pounds to someone's leaving collection. If I like them I might donate more. If I don't like them I might donate less. That is what an average is.

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Therefore I'm screwed.

So what have we learned;

Leave a job before 28 months have passed
To maximise profit the best time to leave is after 6 months.

That is all.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC. If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Something for the weekend, sir?

I have been told many times that I look like Patrick Kielty so imagine who freaked out I was when last Sunday morning he was on Something for the Weekend not only looking like me but wearing almost exactly the same shirt as me.

So I did what any sensible person would do in that position.

I photoshopped myself on to the Something for the Weekend couch recreating Kielty’s pose.

Wonder at my Photoshop skills

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Glastonburied

I think my idea of hell would be to go to a music festival. Everything I have seen, read or heard about them makes me thank the Lord God above each night that I am not settling down to sleep in a tent surrounded by fucking awful people listening to fucking awful music.
Last year it was such a happy coincidence that my holiday coincided with Glastonbury so I didn’t have to suffer hours of coverage of people you would cross the road to avoid performing their music to tens of thousands of others.
And Jo Wiley.
This year the world cup and Wimbledon will hopefully keep me from seeing too much television overage of people I don’t like talking about bands I don’t know.

I think my aversion to festivals is based on the same prejudices as my hatred of people who travel. Because, in my mind at least, they are pretty much the same people.



These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

And did those feet in ancient times...

Some people will remember yesterday for England not getting knocked out the world cup, or maybe USA’s late winner against Algeria, or the longest tennis match in history.
Not me.
I will remember 23rd June 2010 for completing a journey that TFL estimates will take one hour in just 33 minutes.
Take that BBC for letting me leave a mere 30 minutes before the kickoff.
I hate England fans.
We really have the ugliest fans in the world.
Worse even than Germans.
This is the reason I cannot watch England matches anywhere other than the sanctity of my own living room. Why would I watch a match surrounded by the chavviest of the chavs, risk getting beer spilt on me if England score and have to fight through a sea of tattoos and skinheads to get served overpriced piss poor lager?
Nah. It isn’t for me.
Show me footage of England fans celebrating a goal and I will show you a bunch of people which the world would be much better without.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

I don't like using mechanical hand dryers.

I will always choose a paper towel over a hand dryer.

I saw a film at an impressionable time of my life in which someone was attacked while drying their hands, and have always had a phobia about using hand dryers ever since. From my memory they were grabbed from behind and their neck broken. Thanks to the sound of the dryer they had no idea their assailant was approaching.

This cinematic scene has stayed with me for a long time and I haven’t trusted hand dryers since.

To make matters worse the hand dryers at my place of work are the Dyson Airblade.
They claim to be the most energy efficient and hygienic handdryers in the world but they are also louder than a 747 taking off.
Even the clumsiest, most Clouseau-esque attempted assassin would be able to successfully approach me from behind undetected.
Not good for someone with already existing hand-dryer paranoia.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.

Big Brother: I'm coming to get you!!!

Big brother used to be great didn’t it?
You know, when it was new and exciting and unique to have everyday people LIKE YOU AND ME on television.

I am trying to put my finger on where it went wrong. What made the public fall out of love with a programme about a bunch of people living in a house for three months?

Personally I think I lost interest when the show started getting longer and longer. The last series I fully engaged with from start to finish was 2005 (incidentally won by someone called Anthony who I had forgotten even existed) was the last sub-80 day big brother. Since then the series has consistently had durations in the mid 90s and viewing figures plummeted.

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As well as making every series a war of attrition that takes up every night of the summer (last year’s series had 108 episodes), as side effect of this increase in length is that we have to have more and more housemates each series.

Last year we had 22 housemates. That is the same total as the first two series combined.

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With more people in the house each contestant has less opportunity to shine at the start – some people manage to go completely unnoticed well into month two. The viewing public (ie me) get confused between the characters, and this isn’t helped by the way the producers insist on putting in wannabe glamour models that have no personality and who look exactly the same as each other. Yes, I know Sam and Amanda were identical twins but it was damn confusing.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.