Category: Russian Roulette Sunday

Russian Roulette Sunday: The A to Z of 7 Reasons (part II)

Well, it’s Sunday again, and the thing that we were hoping to bring you has been put back due to our website difficulties this week. So here’s the thing that was going to appear next week: Part II of the A-Z of 7 Reasons. Last week remains unaffected.

N is for No. Which is the answer to the question, is writing 7 Reasons every other day ever a chore? Some days it’s difficult; you don’t feel funny, or you’re ill, or you’re busy trying to do something else, or you’re tired, but it’s always an enjoyable thing to do. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t do it. And you wouldn’t read it. Which you are doing. Right now. Hello!

O is for October. It was in this month in the year of 2009 that 7 Reasons was born. In years to come people will remember this time. Probably because we’ll keep reminding them. So thinking logically, it would help if you just made a note and sent us beer in October. Thanks.

P is for Penguin.

At 7 Reasons have a psychedelic penguin. He doesn’t have a name. And he sometimes turns up when you least expect him. Or, in the case of next Sunday, when you most expect him. What could possibly make anyone happier than a psychedelic penguin?

Q is for Quinn. Or, to use her correct name, Claire Elizabeth Quinn. This is who actually comes up with all the posts for the Kent side of the sofa. And probably explains the display cushions.

R is for Rohan. Purveyor of the Pilkington hat: The official hat of 7 Reasons.

S is for Sofa. Half of it is in Yorkshire, half of it has just moved from London to somewhere in Kent. Though quite where in Kent the sofa isn’t sure. A bit like its owner.

T is for T’internet. Which is what the internet is known as in Yorkshire. We don’t have to prefix web addresses with a t though, that would be wasteful. And that sort of profligacy is frowned upon in Yorkshire, where men are men and women read this:

U is for Ubiquitous. 7 Reasons is everywhere. It’s in everything and on anything. A bit like air. Everywhere you look there are 7 Reasons. For example: I am looking at the screen of my Mac at the moment. Immediately I can think of 7 Reasons why I am writing this at 10.30pm on a Saturday. And none of them are pretty.

V is for Vuvuzela. Vuvuzelas are eroding our brains. We don’t know why, but we have a hunch that they are. Am I the only one that can still hear them when the football stops?

W is for Words. These are the tools of our trade. Without them we’d be very boring, but far better at spelling them. Expert, in fact.

X is for Xylophone. We’ve never mentioned one. Until now.

Y is for Yes. Which is the answer to the question, did you find coming up with something for X really difficult?

Z is for Zebedee. The biblical character that caused half of the 7 Reasons team to have such an uncontrollable and sustained fit of hysterical laughter that he was eventually sent from his R.E. lesson to a considerably less amusing interview with his headmaster. To this day, he still can’t see or hear the name Zebedee without being amused. The next time you see a member of the 7 Reasons team, say “Zebedee”. At least one of them will laugh. A lot.

June 27, 2010
Russian Roulette Sunday: The A to Z of 7 Reasons (part I)

Crikey! It’s the first part of an A to Z of 7 Reasons. Whatever will they think of next? Yup, the second part. Almost certainly.

A is for Advertising. It’s something we haven’t quite got right yet. Since we blew the whole of our budget on an ad from Pearl & Dean, we have been kicking around trying to make the most of our own talents. Which is why we’ve created masks and stolen 1970s posters and changed the words. We’ll get it right though. Someday.

B is for Bath. Much of the creative thought that goes into 7 Reasons occurs in the bath. Many, many posts and website features have had their genesis there. The bath is a place of much 7 Reasons creativity. It is not, however, a place for 7 Reasons meetings. We won’t make that mistake again. Oh the horror.

C is for Cat. Or, to give him his correct name, Horatio Pyewackett Caractacus Fearns. This is who actually comes up with all posts for the Yorkshire side of the sofa. And probably explains all the scratches.

D is for Daily. 7 Reasons has a new post every day. Not always with the correct amount of apostrophes, but it’s there (or rather here) every day. We’re more reliable than the postman, more dedicated than god, and more committed than…in fact, we probably should be committed.

E is for Eighth Reason Competition. One of the better ideas Jon has had, though that isn’t saying much. You may not have realised it, but it is still running. All you have to do is think of an eighth reason for one of that week’s posts and you may well win a badge. Well actually, you will win a badge. Because no one else will enter.

F is for France. We’re probably not welcome there. Perhaps as a result of this image.

Or as a result of this post. Or this post. Or this post.

G is for Guests. Every Saturday someone joins us on the sofa. And they’ve come up with some intriguing observations. Things about gussets; and cricket kits looking like bananas; and freckles. And, rather frustratingly, they always prove the most popular posts of the week.

H is for Hell’s teeth! Which is what I exclaimed when 7 Reasons was first read in Ulaanbaatar. Strange that someone in Mongolia would want to know why Marc’s afraid of Flamenco dancers but there you go. The world: It’s a bit odd.

I is for Intelligence. This is something Marc and Jon are still striving for. Though until 7 Reasons is finally put to rest, they’ll go on looking at plant pots and Germans and tortoise shells and thinking there are 7 Reasons right there.

J is for Jennifer. Jennifer Aniston. Ah Jennifer, Jennifer. Jen Jen. One day we feel sure that you’ll respond to our phone calls/emails/faxes/letters/texts/tweets/notes written on beermats and pushed under your door/petrarchan sonnets performed from the depths of your garden hedge. One day. One fine day. One happy, happy day. One glorious day.

K is for Kent (via Sussex). This is where the first half of the 7 Reasons team is based. If we are doing it in alphabetical order. If we’re doing it in height order, it would be the second half. But we’re not. We’re doing it in alphabetical order. So it’s the first half.

L is for Lucubration. Like most good things, much of the work that goes into 7 Reasons happens at night, while mere mortals are sleeping or watching television or knitting or whatever people do at night when they’re not writing. They edit probably. We don’t know what they do, we are busy. We write. At night. Oh, and during the day too. We just wanted to show off our fancy word.

M is for Muppet. If it wasn’t for muppetry, you wouldn’t be reading this A-Z now. All will become clear next week. We’re very excited about next week. Be sure to clear three minutes and seven seconds in your diary next Sunday. We’ve cleared six minutes and fourteen seconds, but then there are two of us. Did we mention that we’re excited?

June 20, 2010
Russian Roulette Sunday: Race A Bed

Approximately 50% of the 7 Reasons Team attended the Great Knaresborough Bed Race yesterday. Held annually in the North Yorkshire town of Knaresborough, the bed race is a quirky traditional event much like cheese-rolling or bog-snorkelling (in fact, it contains elements found in both of those events).

The bed race takes place every June and consists of teams comprising six runners and one rider pushing their bed on a short circuit around the (almost impossibly) hilly market town, including climbing a one in five gradient, before eventually arriving at the River Nid. Teams then launch their bed and themselves into the water and cross the river, before dragging themselves and their bed out, up a steep muddy bank, at the other side. It looks ridiculously hard. Though fun.

You might be wondering why we’re telling you about this. The reason for this is, when watching the waterborne part of the bed race from a wooden rowing boat on the River Nid (the place to watch it) a friend turned to me and said, “This is amazing, there’s only one thing that would be better than watching this from the river.”

I was fairly certain that I knew where this was going but I bit anyway, “What?”

“Being in the bed race.”

Now, I thought about this idea for quite some time and it actually is a good one. It looks challenging, fun, and a bit eccentric – all of the things we love here. This is why we’re looking for volunteers to join the 7 Reasons Great Knaresborough Bed Race 2011 Team. At the moment we’re looking for runners, not riders, and applicants must be able to push heavy beds up and down steep hills and swim with a bed on their shoulders. In short, you’ll need to be very fit, and very daft (and possibly a little soft in the head).

They haven’t opened entries for 2011 yet, but usually they need to be in by January/February so there’s plenty of time to decide, but we would like to get a rough idea of who’s interested so please get in touch with [email protected] and let us know if you want to come and help us die with a bed next June.

We haven’t chosen a charity yet, we’ll put that to the vote amongst team members. So if you have a particular cause you feel should be benefiting from this madness, you’ll need to sign up. Here’s a rough idea of what to expect:

June 13, 2010
Russian Roulette Sunday: Make Do And Mend.

Hello. It’s Sunday again. And Sundays come as Sundays do – after five days of hoping that the other 7 Reasons writer has come up with something for Sunday. They never have. Which is why Marc came to me yesterday, breathless and devoid of inspiration, and said, ‘We don’t have anything for Sunday do we?’

‘No,’ I replied, supping on a cup of tea and stroking my mirror.

‘Damn,’ was his silent reply.

We sat in silence for a minute or twenty. Neither one of us prepared to say, ‘Let’s have a Sunday off’. Then, just as I was about to snap my gingerbread man at the neck, Marc leapt out of his chair and kicked the cat. ‘Let’s do some more advertising!’ he declared.

‘Marc,’ I began, my blood beginning to simmer at my colleagues scant disregard for our lack of money, ‘we don’t have any finances. You gave all our money away to Pearl & Dean and my masks have proved about as popular as Esther Rantzen in a…well about as popular as Esther Rantzen’.

‘You make a good point Jon,’ Marc said, taking off his pith helmet and vaulting over the desk, ‘but maybe we can just make do and mend.’

I looked puzzled, Marc was using phrases from World War II again. ‘How do you mean, Marc?’

‘I mean, we just use a load of old adverts and pimp them to suit 7 Reasons. Then we can ask people to put them up in their windows and on the back of their cows.’

‘Genius!’ I shouted, sending tea all over my groinal department. And with that Marc left, leaving a waft of whisky and a cat stuck in my plant pot.

Thirteen hours later we were finished. And so was the cat.

So yes. Please choose your preferred poster and stick it up in your place of work, caravan, shed or personal telephone box. Then take a photo and send it to us. It’s not that we are an unbelieving duo, we just like to know our hard work has been worth it.

June 6, 2010
Russian Roulette Sunday: Ambient Advertising

Hello, it’s me. (Or Mr Lee to you). Happy Sunday to you. Now, in the last few weeks you will have noticed that Marc has blown all the 7 Reasons marketing budget on a couple of films. And as good as they were, I have been left with the challenge of promoting 7 Reasons on a budget of zero. You may think that sounds like tough work? Well it would be for mere mortals, but we are talking about me here. Which is why I have come up with the genius idea of 7 Reasons Masks. There are two versions – one of Marc and one of me – so it shouldn’t take too long for you to complete the set. All we want you to do is walk around with one of these masks on your face. My plan is for thousands of people to do it so eventually it becomes a sort of, ‘Who Are They?’ mystery. People will want to find out. I would say you would want to find out, but…erm… you already know. Anyway, newspapers will track us down and talk about us. For free. Genius. So please, go out and look like me. Or Marc. And, just in case you are wondering what to wear them with, here are some ideas. You can of course get a better look at my breasts if you click the image.

See, they really do go with anything. To get a mask all you have to do is email [email protected] with either Jon Mask or Marc Mask in the subject line. We will then send you a pdf version of the mask which you can download and print onto the back of a cereal packet. Before you know it you’ll be looking like one of us. Oh, and helping create history for the number of good looking people out and about at the same time. Right, that’s me finished for the day. Thanks for your assistance and, of course, do post your photos to the rapidly growing facebook group. Or don’t. Whichever you feel more comfortable with really. Peace out dudes.

May 30, 2010
Russian Roulette Sunday: 7 Reasons Top Trumps

Hello. It’s Jon here. I like your pyjamas. No, I know your not wearing them at the moment. But that’s not the point. Today I thought we’d play a game. And when I say ‘we’ I really mean ‘me’. The game I’m going to have with myself today is Top Trumps. But not just any version of Top Trumps. Oh no, sir. I shall be playing 7 Reasons Top Trumps. With myself. I have two cards. A Jonathan Lee card. Woohoo! And a Marc Fearns card. Boo! Let’s duel.

Drink: Tea v Coffee. So we have Lee with his traditional English cuppa against Fearns with his rest of the world coffee. Verdict: Lee win. 7 Reasons is a British humour site after all. And tea is better.

Sidekick: @SirStraussy v Horatio Pyewackett Caractacus Fearns. It’s the spoofed version of England Cricket Captain Andrew Strauss up against Marc’s cat. Verdict: Fearns Win. Horatio Pyewackett Caractacus Fearns has walked over foil for a BBC Radio 5 LIve experiment. @SirStraussy hasn’t.

Best Rating: +41 v +7. So it’s 7 Reasons Sports Personality Of The Year Was A Joke up against a couple of Marc’s posts that have registered plus seven. Verdict: Lee win. Maths.

Grammatical Errors: 298 v 1. A disgraceful number of misplaced apostrophes taking on the incorrect spelling of Jennifer Aniston. Verdict: Fearns win. 7 Reasons uses the English language. It helps if the writers know how to use it.

Special Power: Self-love v Cow Magnet. A man who fancies himself a bit too much against a man who is fancied by cows. Verdict: Score draw. Narcissism is not pretty. Neither is being buggered by a cow.

Overall Result: 2-2. Well it wasn’t a classic. In fact it was a bit like watching Carlisle play Scarborough. In the end though, it was a fair result. Player of the game was Lee, purely because he had better headwear. Next week we might actually play Russian Roulette.

May 16, 2010
Russian Roulette Sunday: Advertising Take II

Hi! Marc here again. Last week, as you may recall, we blew our entire advertising budget on a film by Pearl & Dean. To be honest, we were a bit disappointed by it. We were so disappointed, in fact, that we thought we could probably do better ourselves. We reasoned that with my capacity for historical perspective and Jon’s talent for understatement and his innate modesty, it wouldn’t be too difficult to put together a simple and cheap – yet memorable – advert for our website. Here it is:

7 Reasons Advert II

So, in conclusion, please send donations to:

The 7 Reasons Advertising Fund

7 Reasons Towers

London

W12 7RJ

May 9, 2010
Russian Roulette Sunday : Advertising

Hi, Marc here. Happy Sunday. At 7 Reasons we’re very serious about bringing a new audience to our website and we work very hard to spread the word about it. We don’t have much of an advertising budget though – which is why we’re always delighted when people retweet our work and use the Share buttons – but we thought that, as we’ve already got our own money invested in 7 Reasons, we really should splash out a bit on advertising. Now we couldn’t afford much but we reasoned (that’s our speciality) that with the global economic downturn, and Jon’s contacts in the advertising business, we should be able to find someone that could professionally put together an advert to suit our budget. The guys that made it haven’t worked for a while, so they were delighted to help. Here’s what they came up with.

7 Reasons Pearl & Dean Advert

So, to summarise, please keep retweeting and using the Share buttons. Thanks.

May 2, 2010
Russian Roulette Sunday: The 7 Reasons Q&A Session In Video Format

This doesn’t really need an introduction. Just press play. Or if that doesn’t work, email us and ask for a transcript. We won’t send you one, but we like to be asked.

The 7 Reasons Q&A Session

The winner of last week’s Eighth Reason Competition was Robert. A. Foot. Partly as he was the only one to give a reason and partly because he is already owed a badge for his Guest Post last Saturday. This just reminds me to send it to him.

April 25, 2010
Russian Roulette Sunday: Promoting Brown

The 1960s: clothes, interiors, fabrics, art – just about everything – were a riot of colour. This wasn’t much help to the (predominantly British) manufacturers of brown dyes and paints though, which was problematic, as during that decade their production continued apace. The result was, that by the 1970s, Britain had a huge surplus of brown colourants and needed to find a market for them to help with the balance of payments. This led to the formation – in 1971 – of the Brown Marketing Board, a government funded organisation devoted to the task of promoting the use of the colour brown by manufacturers and consumers alike.

While researching 1970s advertising, we came across many fine pieces of work by the Brown Marketing Board and today, we thought we’d share a few of them with you.

1. Swatch. A very simple poster, placed on the London Underground, on bus shelters and other street-level sites where people congregated. It was purely placed there as a brown colour swatch, the idea being that anyone standing near it would appear uncoordinated if they weren’t dressed in brown. Sales of brown coats to London commuters soared, thus proving that the simplest ideas are often the best.

2. Germans Eat White Chocolate. By the 1970s, Britons had still not gotten over the war, as this poster designed to promote the consumption of brown chocolate demonstrates.

3. If Only The Carpets And Curtains Matched. A poster used to encourage the use of brown in all areas of interior design. Looking back at pictures from the 70s, it seems that this campaign must have been a success.

4. Brown Bears Don’t Kill Seals. We’re fairly certain that they weren’t encouraging people to divest themselves of their pet polar bears in favour of brown bears. We think that this was probably just an attempt to promote brown as having generally “good” qualities. Sales of Fox’s Glacier Mints plummeted as a result of this controversial image though, and it was soon withdrawn.

5. Arrive In Style. What can we say? It’s a brown Austin Allegro. Perhaps this image contains a powerful subliminal message, because British Leyland sold loads of them. No one knows how. Maybe it was this advert.

6. Also Available In Brown. A very clever poster designed to increase the consumption of domestic produce in two ways. Firstly, using brown sauce instead of ketchup would help the sales of brown food dye. Secondly, it reminds us that brown sauce is a British tradition – after all, the H.P. in H.P. Sauce stands for Houses of Parliament – so the increased use of brown sauce would directly benefit British manufacturing interests.

7. Score In Style. Well, you wouldn’t want to win ugly, would you?

April 11, 2010