Tag: silly

Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Grow The Hell Up

So you’re a teenage boy. I was one once, and got over it. You can too, if you TAKE HEED of these important points.

1. You are not special. You are not the first person ever to feel this way. You are not the first person ever to fall in love, or get stoned, or drunk, or listen to music that wasn’t in the charts. You are, in a word, unoriginal. Hurry to adulthood where such tedious conformity goes unremarked.

2. You look like an animated French Bread Pizza. This is not a good look. Get busy with the acne treatment, and you might find the teenage girls you pine after, bother to look at you. I mean, it’s still doubtful, given you only speak in mumbles or grunts and have the personal hygiene of algae, but hey, it’s a start, no?

3. You are composed entirely of knees, elbows and Adam’s Apples. While teen girls are so sylphlike they get their A-Level results photos on the front page of the Telegraph, teen boys lurch about like they were made that morning and the glue didn’t take. You’re fitter than you’re ever likely to be again – stop walking around like you’ve a freakishly heavy head.

4. You need ‘fake ID’. Now that’s just plain embarrassing. To have to proffer some weedy doctored piece of card every time you want to do something normal, like buy Tippex or 12 cans of extra-strength Fusilier Lager from your local shop is demeaning to all concerned. Get old, so you can demand such essentials in a booming, confident voice.

5. You’re all over the scale. Speaking of voices, what’s up with yours? One minute you’re frightening bats, the next minute you sound like Sauron spotting Frodo. Stop mucking about, boy!

6. Why so unwashed? Acne treatment is all well and good, but it needs to be accompanied by actual washing. A spray of Right Guard under the arms every morning is insufficient. You’ve achieved success when strangers can enter your room without being knocked unconscious.

7. You didn’t ask to be born. Sorry, what’s that? You didn’t ask? OF COURSE YOU DIDN’T! Nobody did! It’s not how the system works, for crying out loud! I’m sure this was covered in Biology. To become a man, you need to internalise this existential sense of injustice and only let it out, say, during major sporting tournaments.

September 5, 2012
7 Reasons Ian Dury’s ‘Reasons To Be Cheerful: Part 3’ Is Unreasonable: Part 2

In a late change to the 7 Reasons posting schedule, I am back again. Don’t worry though, apart from celebrating as you normally do when you realise it’s a Jonathan Lee day, you may carry on as normal. Now, tomorrow marks the ninth month anniversary of the 7 Reasons post, 7 Reasons Ian Dury’s ‘Reasons To Be Cheerful: Part 3’ Is Unreasonable: Part 1. To commemorate this occasion I thought I’d bring you part two. So, just to remind you, the last reason to be cheerful that we analysed was ‘jump back in the alley’. Right, on with the show.

8. 18-Wheeler Scammells. Lorries. Big ones. Now, I know you are supposed to get excited when you see an Eddie Stobart lorry, but that’s kind of a tradition. Along with having a fight with your brother and then being told off. Unless you are a lorry-spotter – and I am fairly confident that at least one of you is – I can’t imagine anyone breaking into a wide, toothy grin at the site of a lorry. Unless they’re an illegal looking for a way to get out of the UK anyway.

9. Dominecker Camels. General consensus has it that Dury wasn’t highlighting a type of black and white camel here, but instead referring to the cigarette brand, Camel. Not cool Ian, not cool. Smoking doesn’t make you cheerful even if the cigarettes are in the shape of a mammal. Smoking makes your clothes smell and your bank balance deteriorate far faster than the cool dudes sucking on straws and biros.

10. All Other Mammals. All other mammals? All of them? They can’t all make you cheerful. What about a lemming throwing itself off a cliff? That makes you happy does it? And what about the naked mole-rat? How can anything that looks like a nude Janet Street-Porter possibly make you happy?

11. Seeing Piccadilly. The only feeling I ever get when I see Piccadilly is one of frustration at the amount of people who think it is appropriate to stand in the middle of the pavement taking photos of massive electronic billboards shouting brand names at them. And then they take bloody ages to walk down the stairs to the Piccadilly Line platform too. I can only assume there weren’t as many idiots around in the seventies.

12. Fanny Smith And Willy. I didn’t know this, but apparently Fanny Smith is a professional skier from Switzerland and the logical conclusion would be that by Willy, Dury is referring to Willy Carson. I have to be honest and say that while Fanny is clearly lovely, there are far more attractive things to get cheerful about. Ian Bell batting for example. And as for Willy, the overriding opinion in the internet forums is that he is too small to cause any sort of penetrable excitement. So it looks like you are on your own here Ian.

13. Being Rather Silly. This is a simple one. You should either be very silly or not silly at all. Being rather silly is both pointless and tiresome. Either give it your all or not at all. As in the local pub, you only cause anger with half-measures.

14. Porridge Oats. I don’t like porridge. So the idea of being cheered by them is a totally alien concept. That’s probably a slightly unfair analysis though. So let’s do ourselves a cereal substitution. I like Shreddies. So let me go and pour a bowl to see if it cheers me up. (I am walking to the kitchen. I am opening the cupboard. I am picking up the cereal box. I am getting a bowl. I am pouring cereal into the bowl. I am looking at my bowl of cereal. I am walking back to the laptop). No. I feel exactly the same as I did before. Though maybe slightly frustrated that I now have to wash-up an extra bowl.

August 17, 2011
7 Reasons These Excuses Are Not Silly

Ministers have released the top ten ‘silliest’ excuses as used by benefit cheats. If you haven’t read them yet, you’ll be able to watch the countdown on BBC Three later this year. It’s narrated by Richard Bacon with insights from a bloke who once pretended he didn’t work in Lidl. Understandably. My issue with this programme is that it’s clearly going to be an excuse to laugh at people who are unable to articulate. As such they sound stupid. Having looked through the excuses I am saddened that they are are deemed silly. At least seven are very legitimate. Here’s why:

Ladder Therapy

1. “I had no idea my wife was working! I never noticed her leaving the house twice a day in a fluorescent jacket and a ‘Stop Children’ sign.” – Hardly surprising given that this man is obviously blind. The ‘Stop Children’ signs don’t come in braille you know.

2. “I wasn’t aware my wife was working because her hours of work coincided with the times I spent in the garden shed.” – This man’s wife was clearly hiding the fact that she worked by playing an elaborate game of hide and seek. Every morning she told her husband to hide. He scurried off to the shed and only appeared when his wife returned home and shouted, “I give up!”

3. “He does come here every night and leave in the morning and, although he has no other address, I don’t regard him as living here.” – Shelter are a fantastic charity. For them to be pulled up on this is a disgrace and an insult. I suspect the thousands of volunteers who give up their time to help those less fortunate than themselves feel really great now. Well done ministers.

4. “I didn’t declare my savings because I didn’t save them, they were given to me.” – Is having a basic grasp on the English language seen as a bad thing now then? Surely to declare savings under the pretence that you saved them is fraud?

5. “I wasn’t using the ladders to clean windows, I carried them for therapy for my bad back.” – A man (or woman) with a whole lot of common sense. Instead of spending his (or her) benefits on expensive therapists, he (or she) purchased a ladder. It was just as effective and instead of weekly payments of £40, cost just an initial £15. I don’t understand why ministers have a problem with this. Surely they want people to show initiative? If people can find methods of lowering their outgoings how is that not a good thing? One day this man (or woman) might buy a bucket and become a window cleaner. Good for him (or her).

6. “We don’t live together he just comes each morning to fill up his flask” – Well, this clearly shows that sexism is still rife in the ministerial hood doesn’t it? Just because this woman is single, it doesn’t mean she wants to get into a relationship with every builder whose bum she spies. This woman is perfectly entitled to share her tea bags with whomever she wants. It’s 2011 for goodness sake.

7. “It wasn’t me working, it was my identical twin.” – Which only goes to prove that one half of Jedward always mimes.

May 31, 2011
7 Reasons Not to Hate The British

We didn’t make this – the internet sent it to us, and jolly good it is too. If we were in the habit of coming up with an eighth reason we could add that we’re not French. But we don’t come up with an eighth reason. That’s not our job. We only do seven. Or, sometimes, five with with a lot of extra-shiny-words to distract you. Not eight though. That would be unthinkable.

March 20, 2010