Red Nose Day

(As a disclaimer before I enter into a rant, this isn't about charity for one second. To prove this I made sure to donate £10 to Oxfam before slating Comic Relief)

For all of you not in the know, Comic Relief was invented about 25 years ago by some British comedians to give to African charities. They sold red noses, did silly sketches and it was wholly honourable. Now it has become BBC's biggest 'charity event' of the year and has taken over every facet of consumer media for a few weeks every other years. 

Celebrities like Kate 'yes, I can laugh at myself, honestly'  Moss and Jonathan 'I better be getting paid for this' Ross do oh so hilarious and fantastically altrustic things so as to help raise money for African and UK charities. Big corporations like Subway, Walker's Crisps, Sainsbury's and British Telecom are now in on the scam and sell a load of Red Nose related shit, a small percentage of which goes to charity.

A few years ago they took just four of the participating celebs and guessed at their total worth; Sting, Bono, Chris Martin and Paul McCartney totalled in the region of £1.5bn. That's just four of them - add to that maybe 100 'celebrities' and you would probably have a total well over £2bn. This year Comic Relief raised £40m.

Now I am not knocking raising money, far from it. Any attempt to make people give more to those who need it more and slightly level up the global financial see-saw should be commended. And that £40m came from the wallets of the British people, who have had to bail out a few banks in the last three months. It's the hypocrisy of Comic Relief that needs to be highlighted and stamped out.

Subway is a global, multi-billion dollar firm. It makes fucking billions every year from selling unhealthy sandwiches to the masses, no doubt buying their produce from the cheapest source at the expense of the poorer half of the earth. Now that's capitalism and you can argue about that all day, but offering 31p in a pound by flogging cheap Comic Relief ringtones and then trying to say its a 'giving' corporation is disgusting. All it did was get more people in buying special 'Red Nose' meatball marinaras for £3.29. And how much of that £3.29 went to charity? 5 fucking pence.

Sainsbury's too needs to be shown for the two-faced shitting empire it is: slowly killing the UK farming industry, making thousands unemployed while at the same time selling coffee, sugar, bananas, beef and spices that have mark ups of thousands of percent but only cost them pennies - at Africa's expense. But giving a few pennies to the very continent it is screwing over through Jamie 'I'm even more obnoxious with this fucking nose on' Oliver and his over-priced foods.

Comic Relief, like most celebrity charity events, allows these horrid uncaring people seem caring while at the same time improves their profile and most importantly gives them yet another stage to promote their self-brands. There is no honour in it and there is no grace - the two things that charity should be based on.

Charity is important, and the Government should do more to make sure the haves give a lot more to the have nots (maybe tax multi-millionaire fuckers like Gok Wan and Cheryl Cole a bit harder, for example). But don't try and scam from the indebted and the poor through corporate bullshit and celebrity endorsements. Comic Relief is another thinly-veiled way for those who have everything to look saintly while those who have not continue to be the victims.

CHICKEN AND RIB TIME! Kebab and Burger Centre

It doesn't make sense does it?

Every day I see this sign outside the restaurant as I come out of Manor House station and it drives me crazy. Think about it. 'CHICKEN AND RIB TIME!' says to me this place sells chicken and ribs. And that's fine, there definitely aren't enough places in London that sell fatty meats. If I wanted chicken or ribs, I would definitely consider an establishment that is promoting itself as a place where both chicken and ribs are ready to go, ready to eat, any time. All the time. There is even a picture of a chicken, holding a rib, looking at his watch. Perfect.

But then they are telling me it's a 'Kebab and Burger Centre'? This makes no sense, my Turkish friends. You just told me, not three inches ago, that your restaurant ticked along to chicken and ribs. It's 'CHICKEN AND RIB TIME!' for God's sake. And now it's a place for burgers and kebabs too? Does the watch-wearing, rib-guzzling chicken know about this?

Why not call it 'CHICKEN AND RIB AND BURGER AND KEBAB TIME!' or the 'Chicken, Rib, Kebab and Burger Centre'? Or just 'Takeaway Hut' or 'Top Foods'?

So what are you better at 'CHICKEN AND RIB TIME! Kebab and Burger Centre'? Is it chicken and ribs, or is it burgers and kebabs? I mean you are a burger and kebab centre. But you are also a place where it's chicken and rib time.

It bugs me so much, every night, that one day I am going to smash that sign to fucking smithereens. The go next door for a kebab, because they are just called 'Manor House Kebabs', and you know what they are good at.

Heroin Chic

There are certainly a few odd looking people in London. Big, fat, weird, smelly, scary, skin-diseasey odd looking people.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not penning this from my ivory tower. The whole 'scratchy beard, pale complexion and hobo hoodie' look I sport definitely harks towards some sort of serious chemical dependency.

That said, undeniably there are some curious looking folk within zones one to six. Public transport seems to bring out the best of them, especially the Number 29 from Wood Green. It’s a bendy bus, so you know people aren’t paying to get on.

Here are some of my favourite spots, so far:

· Future Lady: I saw her today on the way to the tube. She was dressed like someone who had travelled back in time to prevent a nuclear holocaust and was desperately trying to replicate the fashions of the time, to minimise any anachronistic slips. Giant head phones.

· Bad Mum: reading a copy of ‘What Every Parent Needs To Know’, using a map to the Child Appeals court as a book mark and drinking a can of extra-strength lager. Good luck with that one, Chief.

· Japanese uber-tasche:A tiny little Japanese fellow who was immaculately dressed, with possibly the best moustache I have ever seen. It was grey, and curled up at the sides. Me and Lee followed him down Bond Street for longer than was cool, trying to think of elaborate ways to outflank him and photograph his facial horns. He must get that every single day.

· Shoeless: He just didn't haven't shoes on, on the steps of Nelson's Column. He looked, well sad.

Dermatology

"When the horns came through, the skin condition made a bit more sense"

The Gods of Fate

Have things got bad? Have I had to seriously consider what a penis might feel like against my gums while fingering a filthy £20 note? Well yes, they have.

Why is it that when you’re in the straights you feel more desperate? Is it the loneliness? The claustrophobia? The unexplainable horniness?

I decided to tempt the Gods of fate today. The soul crushing drudge of working through the recession in a complaints department made something snap, and I brought a scratch card.

I delay it; not straight away, you see. I like to divide up the fictional money in my head, imagining how the £100,000 would be spent: How many hookers are too many? Are you alright not giving to your div cousin? Do people still have a problem if you wear mink?

After finally imagining travelling India and living a life of intellectual pursuit, there’s scratching to be done. Using a pound coin is a no-no, for two reasons:

I don’t want to anger the Goddess of Luck by being brazen with my wealth.
I don’t have one (sob).

Best go with a 50p, not too flashy but not embarrassing like a 2p. 

Scratch. £100,000. Scratch. £25. Scratch. £400. Scratch. £1. Scratch. £100,000. Gasp. Scratch. £900. Fuck.

Then comes the self loathing. It’s instantaneous and heavy, like a giant bird shit on your head while all the cool and attractive people laugh at you with their white teeth and muscles.

“Do you want a can?”

This guy on my bus last week was a full blown nutter. I’m not a fan of that word; never the less, this big mad-fox-eyed Shaun Ryder look-a-like managed to plunge the number 29 to Trafalgar Square into a state of panic. He was a real life nutter.

Everyone had a strained look of “I’m really trying to pretend this isn’t happening, although I am acutely aware that this might end in me getting kicked to death” as he paced down the bendy bus. It was happening though, but luckily it didn’t end up in an old lady getting a kicking. 

When something like this happens though, my mind instantly leaps to all those photos from the internal cameras on public transport where some anaemic looking, shirt wearing office worker (i.e. me) gets stabbed in the neck with a William Hill pen 47 times for politely suggesting to the maniac that maybe listening to Dub music really loudly and yelling might not be for the morning commute, it might be suited slightly better to say…3am, in Fabric.

Anyway, aside from randomly shouting at people, calling them “trannies” and declaring “Yeah, I was raised by Yardies, bruv” this chap was having in-depth conversations with himself along the following lines:

“Do you want a can mate?”
“Yeah, I do, can I have one of yours?”
“Yeah mate, no problems bruv”

This is the sort of teeth gritting tension you don’t get on the tube, only the bus attracts this level of terror-inducing psychopath. He managed to shut off an entire section of the bus and keep everyone firmly away from his vicinity. And all it took was an external/internal monologue, some wild golf ball style eyes and a lifetime of substance abuse.