The time has come for me to pass the baton of cool, which I never really had a firm grip on anyway, to my 15 year old nephew. In under ten minutes, he added over 200 songs to a personalised Spotify playlist for me. Which was desperately needed, because I had been listening to Nightmares on Wax since 2002.
Amidst Skepta, Bugzy Malone, Twenty One Pilots and Mungo’s Hi Fi was Snoop Dogg – I’ve heard of him! And Damian Marley – I’ve heard of his dad! Boom, still got it.
When I’m not listening to 200 new songs gifted to me by my musical muse of a nephew, I’m listening to podcasts these days. Bloody love me a podcast. I didn’t pay attention in school and now I’m trying to get smart. Continue reading
It’s official. I’m statistically funnier than my sibling. Which makes me funnier than three entire people in this world – no mean feat. Or at least, if I read the fine print on a recent YouGov survey, I am like 46% of Youngest Sibling: ‘more likely to think they are funny’.
Which sounds to me like YouGov are trying to passive aggressively infer that we’re not as funny as we think we are. To which I say, knock knock. Who’s there? YouGov. YouGov who? You Gov me cos I’m funny. Continue reading
This is my love letter to our bodies. To our incredible, complicated, beautiful bodies.
I don’t know about you, but I spend an inordinate amount of time wishing my body was a different shape. I focus on the bits I loathe and I never, ever think about the fact that my body is functioning day and night to keep me alive. That the acid in my stomach dissolving all the food I wish I hadn’t eaten, is strong enough to dissolve razor blades. That I use around 200 of my muscles just to take one step. That this little old body of mine, the one I stare at in the mirror with contempt and scrutiny, produces 300 billion new cells a day, just to repair and renew while I’m busy destroying.
I’ve just been to see Dawn French in her new stand up show, Thirty Million Minutes. Continue reading
How do you know when someone doesn’t have a television? They’ll tell you.
That’s a funny joke, based on the fact people without TVs like to gloat about it. I am one of those people. Just like 1% of the nation, I don’t have a television and haven’t had one for five years. I’m pretty smug. Once you arrange your sitting room furniture so that it’s not all pointing at a box in the corner, it feels creepy to even consider owning one. Once you acquire an air of superiority that comes with appearing to live a life more virtuous than anyone else, you don’t want to go to Dixon’s and buy a flatscreen. Continue reading
Spotting the long queue of drunk people waiting for the bouncer to pronounce their admittance to the nightclub, I felt that familiar ‘I hate queues’ feeling one gets when one is faced with a queue one has to join.
However, there are not a lot of nightclubs in the world (one, actually) where I can do this, so I did it. I went straight to the front.
Gaz and I have had a personality swap – like the yin and yang of Chinese philosophy, I was mostly drunk with a dash of sobriety, while he was a little bit drunk and a whole lot sober. Now, we’ve swapped. Which is probably not the illustration of the yin-yang Chinese philosophers were hoping for, but the shoe fits.
Whereas I’ve spent the last 15 years being a prat, Gaz has always been pretty pratless. He just doesn’t seem to open his mouth as wide, cause any offence, or wake up hating himself, covered in bruises. Except the ones I gave him, while drunk.
