Apps Fab

How did we function before techies came up with the ever expanding range of indispensable applications now available as phone downloads? Want to identify that mystery tune playing in a bar? Ask Shazam! Lost the TV control? Get Remote! Job interview? Consult iTie! - the clue-is-in-the-name nifty neckwear tutorial that is yours for £1.19; although best not to go for the ‘Pratt Knot’ if you’re up against sarky Suralan in the boardroom. Flashlight, meanwhile, turns your mobile into a torch - essential for when you’re left fumbling in the dark, struggling to connect your key with the front door lock. That’ll be because you disabled Blooterd - the monitor app that emits a piercing alarm when you’re approaching your lager limit. No such gizmo? It’s only a matter of time.

image: www.iphoneincanada.ca

Product Placement

A new government ruling is to allow product placement on TV. What fun if advertisers drive storylines! Here’s how I imagine a future episode of Corrie, for example: ‘Nice blouse, Eileen. So slimming.’ chirps Clare (wardrobe by Peacocks) Peacock. ‘TK Maxx - designer labels for less. Jason gave it to me for Christmas along with two cases of delicious new lychee flavoured diet Bacardi Breezer, a BOGOF deal at your caring sharing Co-Op down the precinct, now open until midnight. Me and Sean got so tipsy, I spilled some down my front but thanks to Vanish and a 30 degree wash in Persil Bio, it’s come up lovely.’ Cue loud bang. A blown out tyre sends Steve Sprite-large-fries-and-a-Big-Mac-donald’s taxi crashing out of control, pinning Clare against the front wall of number 11. ‘Typical! Should have gone to Kwikfit, not Kevin Webster’s’ snipes Norris. ‘Need a personal injury lawyer?’ as the immortal Blanche (RIP), pictured above, might have offered. ‘At National Accident Helpline  blah, blah, blah...” 

image : spin1038.com

A Right Shower

Could an apparent inability to predict anything much beyond the next five minutes explain TV weather presenters’ efforts to distract us?  Dazzled by her acid bright outfits and maniacal grin, who can recall what Carole Kirkwood just promised for ‘Eng-lind’ or ‘Scot-lind’? A tsunami might be headed for Wales but all we’re thinking is how Sian Lloyd looked better as a redhead and Lembit Opik? How could she? Freezing fog or fluffy clouds? Sorry, I was too busy trying to work out little Matt Taylor’s curiously hybrid accent and as for the cadaverous Daniel Corbett, he could be announcing Saharan sunshine but I’m cowering behind the sofa, hands on ears, fleeing the Childcatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Forecasting rain, giggly Tomasz Schafernaker , a weatherman with a nice sideline in beef-cake for the boys (as on his cover for gay mag Attitude, above) once threatened ‘a muddy sh**e’ at Glastonbury * and after their woefully off-the-mark promise of a barbecue summer, that just about sums up the Met Office’s prognostications.

Come Dine With Me?

When the pop-up supper club craze started, eating in a total stranger’s inner city squat, transformed for one night only into a borderline illegal restaurant, felt cool and original. Disillusioned with megalomaniac chefebrities whose chains bred like rabbits (before bunny became terrine in their kitchens), we were quite happy to pay some barking mad, amateur wannabe £30 to sling together a three course meal with entertainment - drag queens, poets, Bollywood dancers, burlesque, Elvis-aoke, et al - in their front room, as at Tony Hornecker's Behind The Pale Blue Door in Hackney (pictured) where I watched a fabulously exotic drag queen called Rozalla flip pancakes like a demented pyromaniac to a Beyoncé track -some compensation for nearly breaking my jaw on the toughest beef ever - never mind Wellington, this was more like chewing Crocs. Then came Come Dine With Me - unmissable TV wherein the hosts’ vegetable towers are inversely proportionate to towering egos and culinary nous that imagines a square desert plate dusted with chocolate powder the sine qua non of fine dining; it was,only circa Fanny Craddock. But when Virgin TV gets in on the act with Restaurant In Our Living Room, you know the trend has jumped the shark.. and shark, as any foodie will tell you, is so last century

Pinkcloverclub.com

Get on an altruistic tip by pimping your unlucky-in-love GBF. That’s gay best friend à la Stanford Blatch, Carrie Bradshaw’s mincing walker in SATC, flagged up by pinkcloverclub.com as an ideal candidate for their new free dating website for gay singletons; although in Stanford’s case, a Barneys carrier bag pulled over his homely mug might outweigh any amount of purple prose. Here, unlike other dating websites, the hopeful’s profiles are submitted by spin doctor pals. Hence, we learn (from his sister, Helen) that James (31) in Droitwich Spa is ‘a champagne quaffing, abitious (sic) and creative, smart cookie’ who is ‘very good at compliments and strangly (sic) addicted to cage fighting ..but not for the violence.’ So, he’s in it for the cross-dressing, then? Well, if it works for Alex Reid. So, if you’re, male, between l8 and 55 (his only criteria), James offers ‘free hugs.’ All hearts and flowers to Gaydar’s graphic poses, log on for a laugh and - who knows? the man of your dreams; Stanford maybe?

Shockings

That’s ‘shockings’ as in shocking stockings, but see also ‘shites’, as in shit tights. According to the style glossy posse, this season’s hot hosiery trend is all about patterns. Any bets, though, that the majority of well turned ankles at this week’s London catwalk shows will be sheathed in sheer nude or twenty shades of solid black? I tell you, it’s a wicked conspiracy by bitter, frigid, skinny mag hags to make their shaplier sisters appear utterly preposterous. Know that chunky lace swirl designs make anything other than anorexic pins look like thick bolts of upholstery fabric destined for a DFS sofa factory, while Su Pollard-style sparkly lurex brights are fine if you’re going for the Big Bird off Sesame Street look this autumn. Designer Henry Holland’s revolting ‘graduated’ numbers and ‘mock hold ups’ for Pretty Polly are plain plug-ugly, Betty ..and as for his alphabet tights, do those letters spell V-I-C-T-I-M?
House of Holland mock over the knee tights at www.tightsplease.co.uk

Urge Overkill

Urge Overkill
Remember them? Their cover of Neil Diamond’s Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon appeared in Pulp Fiction. The same track is blaring from my local supermarket’s speakers at 9 am on Sunday. Neither this nor a random segue into Nickelback, The Sugababes, U2 and - I kid you not - Suzi Quatro’s Can The Can is what we ever need to hear, bleary eyed, in search of a breakfast fix. Increasingly, it seems businesses can’t resist the Urge - to inflict pointless muzak; the result? Aural Overkill. Next door at the newsagents, Kiss-FM and jingly-jangly adverts on newly appeared plasma screens are locked in cruelly cacophonous competition while at dinner in a once sedate bistro, I can’t hear my date speak over the full 12 inch remix version of Curtis Mayfield’s Move On Up played a disco-decibel level. Even the dentist is at it: is Barry Manilow’s Can’t Smile Without You an attempt at subliminal advertising? In the words of Deep Purple, ‘Hush!’

IMAGE: http://jonashley.files.wordpress.com

Box Set Bullies

 Best never to mention any blockbuster series you missed when it first aired on TV. Before you can say ‘Mad Men’, the box set of seasons 1 to 60 will be forced on you by well-meaning pals who’ll then systematically bully you to watch until you too become a die-hard fan. The reason I missed most of The Wire, The Sopranos and Dexter - all currently gathering dust and still goading me from the sitting room bookshelf - is that there are only so many hours in one lifetime and frankly, no matter how ‘genius’ the script or acting, I’ve got bigger plans for precious downtime than to spend it with a bunch of Baltimore, New Jersey or Miami low lives. Who needs annoying Friends like Joey, Rachel and Phoebe? And as for plane crashes on mysterious tropical islands, write me off as a Lost cause.

PC Tits

I say the PG Tips chimps - long since on the dole, no thanks to a bunch of silly monkeys/ animal rights campaigners - are more capable than the PC tits that sit on countless quangos set up at our vast expense. Does the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, for instance, really imagine that banning terms such as a black day ‘with its hierarchical valuation of skin colour’ is of pressing concern to sensible Ulster folk? With our finances deep in the red (apologies to any Sioux or Cherokee readers) what sort of madperson - that's as opposed to ‘madman’ which might disenfranchise 50% of the population - is paid to come up with this nonsense? I’m guessing the same sort of eejit - a term presumably OK on the grounds that it is omnisexual? - that would ban the use of ‘master bedroom’, ‘barmaid’, ‘white knuckle ride’, ‘leather pouffe’ and ‘tall story’ -  the latter, on the basis that Sandi Toksvig might feel short changed? I’d complain to the PM but worry that addressing someone as Mr Brown is inappropriate.  

Crocs of s***!

I’d be lying if I claimed to be shedding anything other than crocodile tears over reports that Crocs - purveyors of lumpen plastic footwear to mankind and George W Bush - is struggling in the jaws of recession; the US manufacturer’s share price is down a staggering 90% at around $3.50. Frankly, I’d rather inject an artery with quick-dry cement and risk a fatal clogging than wear these less-than-killer clogs. ‘Clogs’ - the very name conjures up images of naff 1970s prog-rockers and sturdy Dutch lesbians clomping around dam and dyke. ‘But they come in such cute shades.’ Really? Because Technicolor Smurf is a good look? Comfy? Try Gucci loafers! Driving up the autoroute from Marseilles, I thought the citizens of one Provençal town had seen sense and barred them. Orange: Fermé aux Crocs proclaimed a banner. A closer inspection revealed some wag had added the acute accent to a sign for a local wildlife park