Da-duh, da-duh, da-duh-la-da..... BONG!
I haven't previously mentioned this on here (which is surprising - for some reason, I end up telling most people I meet), but a few years back, whilst at university, I appeared on Countdown*.

*For any non-UK b3tans, Countdown is a UK game show based on word and number games, mainly anagrams and the like - think spelling tests without the excitement.

The story begins (as all of my posts seem to) with a drunken wager - I bet two friends from my course that I could get on national TV before them. We thought our way through the daytime TV schedule (we were students - this was our lifeblood). Having briefly toyed with the idea of applying for a cameo role as Bouncer's stunt double in Neighbours, I decided on Countdown, whilst my mates settled on Supermarket Sweep*.

*Again, non-UKers - Supermarket Sweep was a gameshow set in, well... a supermarket. Think getting the groceries. In day-glo sweatshirts.

Although I do have a bit of a natural propensity for solving anagrams, this wasn't the main reason for attempting to get on the show. I had actually thought this through a little bit - at the time, I was at university in Leeds, and it was a mere 10-minute walk from my house, down Cardigan Road to the Countdown studio.

Who says students are lazy?

Anyway, I applied to the show, got called in for an audition... and then didn't hear anything for months. I decided that I probably hadn't been successful, and when Supermarket Sweep got cancelled (with my mates' application still outstanding), all thoughts of the bet left my mind.

Left my mind, that is, until a grey morning in the following November, when the phone disturbed my hungover sleep at about 10.30am;

"Hmmmm?"

"Hi, is that TheMagicDwarf?"* (They used my real name, but you get the picture)

*muffled grunts*

"Great, this is Lively McHyper*, production assistant at Countdown. We've had a cancellation for today's show, and was wondering if you could do us a MASSIVE favour and stand in today?"

*Probably not her actual name. She was Scottish though

"Ermmm... yeah, sure"

"Great! See you in half an hour!"

"Yeah, brillia... HALF AN HOUR?"

"OK, thanks, bye!"

And so I had drunkenly agreed to appear on national TV. Fucksocks. It's fair to say I was in no fit state to appear in MY living room, let alone a couple of million living rooms around the country.

I jumped into a very cold shower, and set off down the road, leaving the sort of note for my housemates I wish I could leave more often:

Gone out for a bit - going for a walk then appearing on national TV in front of millions of people. See you later.

Oh, and can you get some milk?

Cheers,
TMD

Memories from before the show are minimal. The only things I can remember is the make-up department worrying that I looked "a bit peaky" (the hangover was in full swing by this point), and leering a bit over mutton-as-lamb merchant Carol Vorderman. Also, when asked for my hobbies (to be used in one of Richard Whiteley's pun-laden intros), I couldn't think of anything else besides going to the pub with my mates. Nothing. As the researcher who had asked me walked off, I'm sure I heard her mutter under her breath: "yeah, it fucking smells like it, too"

As it happened, though, the hangover actually helped my performance on the show - probably taking the edge off any nerves the presence of the cameras might have prompted. A few rounds passed, and I was actually winning. I even got confident enough to throw a little wink to the camera when I got an 8-letter word (PAINTERS. My best mate's surname is Painter, and when he watched the show he thought the wink was for him. I hadn't even made the connection)

The PAINTERS round had almost ended in disaster - with 2 seconds left the only word I had was PENIS - 5 letters. I feared I was going to have to use the line "I've only got a small one, Richard" (fnarr, fnarr)

Towards the end of the show I was even trying to chat up Carol Vorderman. I had forgotten this until I saw it back on TV, but on one numbers round, I asked her to "give me two big ones from the top, and whatever you like from down below" (fnarrs all round again)

At the end of the show, I had somehow dragged my drunken shambolic arse across the finishing line and had won. This meant I had to do it all again, but this time sober. I went back to the studios a few days later (they film a week's worth of shows in a day, but my first show was aired on a Friday), and actually won two more shows before being eventually defeated by a particularly self-satisfied Geordie bloke (obviously the bitterness has passed. Sort of)

Edited highlights of the three other shows follow:

1. The producer coming to tell "Dictionary Corner" guest Pam Ayers that she should confer in a quieter voice, after I got the same word that they did 3 rounds in a row (never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, me)

2. Carol Vorderman: "Do you want two big ones again, TMD?"
TMD: "Like you wouldn't believe"
(That got cut from the show in the end, I was laughing too much)

3. Me, upon losing: "Thanks, I've had a lovely day" (attempting to use the classic gameshow loser's catchphrase)
Richard Whiteley, attempting to maintain the facade of a live show:
"Well, you've had a lovely four days!"
Me: "Yeah sure, ermm... whatever" (articulate to the last)

So, 3 victories on a national gameshow. Prizes galore and riches beyond my wildest dreams, you may think? Well, you'd be wrong. There was a t-shirt, mug, coaster, board game, electronic game and pen, all proudly bearing the Countdown insignia. There was also a big dictionary, and to top it all off, a Countdown teapot (which actually made a Christmas present for my Nan - I was a skint student, novelty freebies were the best I could do).

However, the real perks from victory and the minor celebrity it brought came when the shows were finally aired. I had already joked with my mates about the certain increase in sex appeal that my new-found stardom would bring, only to be told that the only action I would be getting would be with the blue-rinse brigade.

So you could imagine my delight and surprise when - out on town drinking to celebrate the airing of my third and final victory, and therefore my last day as "reigning champion" - I was accosted in a city centre bar by a shrieking Yorkshirewoman (who I later found to be called Lisa) and the words I'd been waiting to hear: "I recognise you off the telly"

Drinks were bought, studio anecdotes (mainly fictional) were regaled and, as they tend to in QOTW, one thing led to another. Before you could say 'improbable pulling technique', I was creeping upstairs in a mysterious house on the outskirts of Bradford, heeding Lisa's warnings to "keep the fooking noise down".

I had noticed a few children's toys on the way upstairs, and also that Lisa was, I reckoned, a few years older than me (for I was 19 at the time).

"Lisa, these toys - do they belong to your kid?"

"Nope, they're my housemates kids, don't worry - I've not got any nippers"

That question seemingly settled, we retired to her room and made wild, passionate love until the sun rose into the beautiful Yorkshire sky.

Well, either that or I drunkenly fumbled with her top before managing what could at best be described as a semi lob-on, and engaged in half an hour of an exercise best compared with trying to get toothpaste back in the tube.

When I awoke in the morning, I was gingerly redressing, and couldn't help but notice that Lisa looked a little older in the morning light than she had in the bar and taxi the night before. Too much of a gentleman(?) to ask her age outright, I tried to gauge from other factors:

"Lisa, how old's your housemate?"

"Erm, seventeen"

"Really? How old's her kid then?"

"18 months, she was 16 when she had him. Same as I was when I had her. I probably should have mentioned last night, but... my housemate? She's actually my daughter"

Countdown - Grannies love it. Even 34-year-old ones.
( TheMagicDwarf is back like ballroom dancing, Thu 11 Jun 2009, 19:15, 20 replies)

Impersonating a woman
This could have gone in the Festivals question if I'd gotten there quick enough. My mum's sister Valerie was supposed to be going to Glastonbury last year, but in the end she couldn't make it, and asked if I wanted her ticket.

I jumped at the chance. Massive Attack, Jay-Z, Leonard Cohen, Jimmy Cliff, Seasick Steve? Fuck yeah. However, if you've been to Glastonbury in the last couple of years, you'll realise the problem I had at this point.

Photo ID.

Each ticket now has a photo of yourself on it. You can't really substitute tickets between people, to stop touting. And it's unfortunately very effective. So to get into the festival, I was going to have to pose as a 48-year-old woman. But I fucking well did it. It's a good thing I have lovely legs, am a hairless wonder with a surprisingly androgynous face and am fairly short (some people might say I was destined for a moment like this). Doing the classic Moss-chic thing of wellies, a miniskirt (yes, obviously borrowed from a friend) and a hoodie, the family likeness got me past the initial ticket checks, got my wristband and festival bags, and in!

Upon which I was immediately confronted by a BBC TV crew.

"Hi, we're doing some interviews for our coverage this year - what's your name?"

No "do you mind doing an interview". Bastards. I was still in earshot of the security, who were looking on in amusement. Oh crap. Okay, high voice but not too high....

"Valerie!"
"Hi Valerie! Is this your first Glastonbury?"
"Er... no!"
(at this point I realised I was speaking in a Scottish accent. Oh well, too late, plough on)
"So how many have you been to then?"
"...four!"
"Oh wow, a bit of a veteran then! So what's been your best Glastonbury moment?"
"...Radiohead!"
"And the worst?"
"...rain last year!"
"...okay, well thanks Valerie! Have a good festival!"

I'd gotten away with it, thanks to my lilting, breathy Scottish accent (I was almost turning myself on by the end of it) and my monosyllabic answers. But by the end, I was truly able to say that...

...I've been Auntie V.
(cypherspace is not a toaster, Fri 12 Jun 2009, 23:46, 12 replies)

I will never talk to a journalist again
A few years back I was wandering around the shops in the centre of Bristol during my lunch break when I was stopped by a man waving a microphone in my face, “Excuse me sir, do you know what ‘APR’ stands for?” To which I replied “Annual Percentage Rate”. The man who I now recognised as one of the reporters from the local news team then followed up with “but do you understand the difference between ‘nominal APR’ and ‘effective APR’?” I explained that the ‘effective APR’ took into account the monthly compounding of interest whereas the ‘nominal APR’ did not. The reporter gave me a withering look and finally asked if I thought the average consumer understood such terminology, to which I replied “I have no idea, but probably not”.

That evening I was watching the local news and they were running a story about how evil credit card companies were using complicated jargon to confuse people and swindle them out of their hard earned cash. They then cut to their roving reporter who was asking the average man in the street whether they understood such terms as ‘nominal APR’. What followed was a montage of the usual carrot-crunchers they find for this sort of thing, furrowing their collective brows and exclaiming that they “hadn’t a clue”. Right at the end of this montage of Bristols finest minds was my very self, confidently stating “I have no idea”.

I was about to shout “Cunts!” at the telly, but my mobile started beeping away as text messages were received from friends and fellow accountants. Here is a collection of the ones I can remember:
“Don’t ask ME, I’m just an accountant”
“Me lose brain? Uh-Oh!”
“Ha ha you spacker!”
“Step into my office. Why? Cos you're fucking fired!”
“It stands for Am Probably Retarded”
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Thu 11 Jun 2009, 14:33, 11 replies)

Dragon's Den take 2
By popular demand I will expand on my previous post.

I developed a revolutionary system for the intensive indoor farming of Australian crayfish.

I shit you not.

My highlights include, but were not limited to:

- Duncan Banantyne arguing he knew that restaurants would not wish to buy live crayfish but frozen ones. He should know, he quipped, as he owned a restaurant. Until I pointed out that his chef was one of my customers.

- Deborah "don't call me Debs" Meaden who was out for ethical reasons and said at the end "You came for an investment but turned out to be a bit of a wet fish", to which I replied "No, I came here to see dragons and only found pussycats"

- The foppish-haired Australian one that pointed out transport would be "an issue" and didn't like me informing him that they had been shipped from Brisbane a week earlier courtesy of Singapore Airlines, been down to Cornwall for a few days to recoup before heading to London with me on a train and being cooked by a Michellin starred chef that morning before heading to the studio in a taxi.

Unsuprisingly I was cut to about 15 seconds. I stand by my previous comments - they are all cunts.
(Mong The Merciless Older not wiser, Thu 11 Jun 2009, 18:08, 11 replies)

THE BATTLE OF NASEBY
I was suspended four times during my illustrious scholastic career. One time it was definitely my fault, another two times it was because the teachers lacked a sense of humour, and the other time was due to the local BBC magazine telly program, Look East; a magazine programme featuring presenters who were too ugly to get on national TV, wearing shit suits, and showcasing the usual bag of donkey spunk stories about fuck all for the viewing benefit of no one.

It was summer, June 14th, and the PE teacher told us we'd all have to stay behind after school. Fat fucking cunt, that Mr Butler. But he then went onto explain we were going to be on TV as part of a Look East story. Ooooh! Fame! I'll have me a bit of that.

Some fella stood round in the changing room who we assumed was a common or garden paedophile having a butchers at our supple, hairless fourteen year old bodies turned out to be from an English Civil War re-enactment society. Apparently it was the anniversary of The Battle of Naseby and the producers of Look East wanted a bunch of kids to recreate the battle in the background while the ugly fucker presenter did a piece to camera. There were thirty of us in the class, now, I don't know anything except the English Civil War (everything I learned about ye olde tymes was from watching reruns of Dogtanian), but I reckoned there were probably more than thirty people involved in that there battle thing.

So, we spent that PE lesson prior to the TV crew making an appearance practising the fine art of war. We changed into our PE kit and were given a felt tunic to chuck over the top. We looked like a troop of poorly dressed female impersonators. We were also given a long broom handle. This, apparently, was going to be our 'weapon'. Fuck me – I'm surprised anyone got killed at Naseby; I mean, what were they? - swept to fucking death.

We did a bit of drilling, a bit of standing in line and waving these broomsticks about, and then we were ready. And the really cool bit, the REALLY FUCKING EXCELLENT part, was when a few of us who'd excelled in janitorial combat techniques, we're given little squishy plastic packets containing runny red stuff. The fuckers had only gone and given us – a group of teenage boys obsessed with watching Platoon and Apocalypse Now – a load of squibs. We were told how to use them; put them in a special concealed pocket on the tunic and when you 'die' give them a hearty slap, thus breaking the packet and covering the tunic in fake blood. Fuck me.... I really did think I'd died and gone to heaven.... I was stiff at the thought of dying in a gory mess on local television.

Fast-forward to after school. The TV van turned up, the local TV presenter (ugly as fucking sin and wearing a cheap C & A suit), is chatting on camera with our Headmaster and this fella from the re-enactment society. In the background the other lads and I our going through our paces – drill marching, doing a bit of broomstick waving, and generally looking like a mean and moody Roundhead and Cavalier army (only with fifteen soldiers on each side, it looked more like kicking out time at a Weatherspoons pub than a real battlefield, except they'd be a shitload more blood on the ground outside a Weatherspoons). The Look East tosser finishes his little piece to camera and we see the cameraman pan over to us: the big finale. My chance to fucking shine.

I notice where the camera's pointing, break ranks, and decide to do a dying swan routine complete with fake blood directly in front of the camera – my parents would be so fucking proud, I thought. But, to my horror, some other fucker from my class has decided to do the same thing. A twat named Nathanial is hogging my camera time, wailing like a banshee while he slaps the squib on his chest and slumps to his knees. Nat's doing such a fine job that the cameraman actually races over and does an extream close-up of this incredible action, this demonstration of Royal Shakespeare Company-standard death on stage.

And what happened next is how I got suspended for a week.

Without thinking much (never one for thinking things through, me), I raced over, stood directly in front of Nathanial, and proceeded to die. The cameraman looked a bit confused as it did not appear that anyone had pretend stabbed me, but fuck it, he probably thought, and continued to shoot. Then Nathanial reached for me and tried to push me out the way, then I pushed him back. From the corner of my eye I could see my PE teacher, Mr Butcher, start to get a bit nervous. I pushed Nat again, he pushed me again, almost knocking me out of shot. This really pissed me off. I mean, REALLY...

So, with broomstick in hand, I sprang at Nathanial, twatted him across the head with it, and in full view of the audience of Look East (mostly grannies sat in front of the TV doing a bit of knitting), I screamed:

“FUCKING STAY DEAD YOU FUCKING CUNT !!!”

My feet, as they say, hardly touched the fucking floor....
( SpankyHanky, Fri 12 Jun 2009, 8:31, 7 replies)

Son of a gun
First timer and all that so I'll have to remember to make the obligitary crack about the length of this post in relation to my penis.

Anyway it was after an Ireland game, can't for the life of me remember who against but long story short ( it wasn't really a long story ) we'd won 2-0 I believe and one Robbie Keane had banged one in.

As we left I was acosted by a woman in a extremely low cut top with camera man and microphone in tow who wanted my opinion on the game. I leaned in close as she asked me my feelings on the game and did that thing where you kind of lean you head down only to realise I had a quite fantastic view of a quite fantastic pair of tits.

I then to my eternal shame / sheer proudness took a deep breath looked in first at her tits then into the camera before motorboating those big breasts for Ireland.

I was quickly shoved away by a furious camera man and some other guy who I hadn't noticed before. Police took me to one side and it took all my wit and drunken apologies for them not to arrest me I think.

In retrospect I'm sure it never made tv and I didn't even recognise what channel she was from which makes this slightly null and void. But still it was damn close to being a moment in television history.

Apologies to you brunette with large boobies if you read this, but I regret nothing.
(Eoghan, Fri 12 Jun 2009, 0:17, 5 replies)

Not quite on TV, but I think this counts
I once attended a house party of a friend of a friend from Uni, and it was here that I saw one of the best practical jokes I've ever seen successfully pulled off.

A bit of background that you need to know is that one of the guys who's party it was had recently split up with his girlfriend, who had been cheating on him with his best friend. Both his ex and his best friend were in attendance at the party and pretty blatent about them now being a couple, leading to a lot of raised eyebrows, and asking if he was alright. He seemed to handle it fine to me, so I got in with being drunk.

A few hours later the party was in full swing, with the majority of people situated in the sitting room having a good time when the housemates of said guy ran into the room turned the music off and announced that the couple had just disappeared into the guys room together. This was met with almost universal dismay, since shagging each other on your ex's and supposedly best friends bed is just about as scummy as you can get under the circumstances. The guests looked toward the guy in a combination of compassion, and anticipation as to what he was going to do about it.

So what did he do about it? Did he get angry? Did he storm to the room and drag them out? No. He knew them both too well, and had hatched a plan so cunning you could think of a Blackadderesque metaphor to describe it.

Twenty minutes later his ex walks into the living room to find everyone gathered around the TV pointing and laughing at her, calling her a slag, and any other name you care to mention. She looks at the TV and see's the guys room on the screen. Assuming that it must have been a live feed, she puts two and two together and now firmly believes that everyone has just been watching her shagging her new boyfriend on her ex's bed. His best friend then walked in and was met with small cock joke after small cock joke. Looking to the screen, he makes the same assumption. She looked to her ex, who with the best response he could have possibly given just went "You were never that dirty when you were with me".

She ran out of that party so fast, you'd have thought the building was on fire. It was brilliant.

In actuallity the video had been filmed hours before, and was just of his empty room. I'll fondly remember the look of slow horrified realisation on her face for years to come though.
( Furness, Fri 12 Jun 2009, 14:14, 9 replies)

Hands up who remembers Disney Adventures.
For everyone else who was too old or too young in the early nineties to be getting up at six every Saturday morning to watch cartoons, Disney Adventures was one of those kiddies shows with a live presenter in between cartoons. Every week, it was broadcast from a different place, as suggested by members of the audience.

My dad, being the Big Hairy Biker that he is, wrote in on behalf of me and suggested that they go to Santa Pod Raceway in Northamptonshire and broadcast from there. And they did and acknowledged us for suggesting it.

As the presenter said thanks to [Applebite] and her Dad for suggesting the raceway, she also showed a rather attractive picture of me (aged 3 and 1/2) that my dad had sent in with the letter, looking very pleased with myself and clutching a half melted Magnum ice cream in one hand with the rest of it smeared all over my face. On national television. Thanks Dad.

Click 'I like this' if you want me to find the picture and post it.
(Applebite Uh! A cow!, Thu 11 Jun 2009, 17:32, 3 replies)

BIRD WATCHING
I spent one summer holiday from school masturbating furiously over the supine, bronzed figure of the PE teacher who lived next door as she sunbathed in her garden wearing a couple of postage stamp sized bits of fabric over her nipples and a set of bikini bottoms you could floss your teeth with. I’d be up in my bedroom, peeking out a slit in the shut blinds, nearly fainting from the effort of pulling one off seven or eight times in one session. (The woman next door was beautiful, I mean really beautiful. She could’ve been one of Face’s squeezes on the A-Team, that’s how fucking hot she was).

My best mates Terry and Greg wanted in on the action. (Not that they wanted to wank me off, no, but they desperately wanted to see this nubile young woman doing her yoga, meditation and fuck knows what else, wearing little more than a cheeky smile). Terry and Greg popped round one time and we spent an afternoon hunched round my bedroom window, shaking with excitement, watching...

...absolutely fuck all. - The next door neighbour wasn’t in that day. The three of us were sat there getting semi erect gazing out over an empty lawn (nice lawn, don’t get me wrong – but not a sexy lawn). So Terry hit upon a plan. His old man had one of these new fangled video camcorder things...

An hour or so later it was set up on a tripod in my bedroom. All I had to do was press this little red button and the hot lady next door would be captured on video for us all to view and review at our leisure; it was a bit like setting up a trap to capture a fleeting glimpse of bigfoot, only this girl didn’t have big feet and all over body hair. Terry and Greg fucked off and left me to it. I went and had my tea. Watched Thundercats. Drank some Vimto. Then I slinked back upstairs to my room.

She was OUT!!! And she was wearing almost FUCK ALL!!!

I raced over to the video camera, pissed about with the red RECORD button and jabbed the fucker into action... Then I sat back and enjoyed the show as my next door neighbour applied suntan lotion to her lovely long legs and flat stomach. After an hour or so, I phoned Greg and told him I was coming round to his with the tape. I quickly rewound it and nearly fell off my BMX on the way over, I was that fucking excited. When I got to Greg’s, Terry was there too. And Terry’s older brother and one of his mates (apparently this mate had once fucked a real live dog), had tagged along for a bit of PE teacher hot sunbathing sex (well, no sex actually) action.

We sat on Greg’s sofa. A bottle of Pepsi. Some chipsticks. Lovely. Greg fiddled with the VCR and pressed PLAY, and the tape started.

And we sat back.

And an image flashed up on screen. And we watched...

... for about a minute.

“AWWWWWWWWW, FUCK’S SAKE, SPANKY!!!” said Terry’s brother.

At the shouting Greg’s mum burst into the living room (she usually kept out of his way when he had guests round, but she couldn’t abide swearing under her roof), and she froze when she saw the image on screen. She froze like a fucking horrified statue.

Greg shot out his seat and attempted to switch the tape off, spilling Pepsi and chipsticks all over his mum’s new white rug. Then the screen went gray. But the damage had been done. The image had been burned into everyone’s retinas. It seems that in my eagerness to press the RECORD button I’d somehow knocked the tripod, so the camera was no longer pointing into next door’s garden. Instead the camera had autofocused on a part of my bedroom near the window. The place where, after pressing RECORD, I’d stood, pulled down my kegs in one quick motion and angrily cranked one off (with accompanying growling and whimpering noises), as I gazed wantonly at the lovely lady next door applying her Ambre Solaire.

(My mum asked me later that year why Greg’s parents hadn’t sent them a Christmas card like they usually did. I lied and said Greg’s parents had become athiests)...
( SpankyHanky, Wed 17 Jun 2009, 15:33, 6 replies)

OPTOMUFF
Last summer during the few days of brief sunshine we had in London, I was lounging in Regents Park, a few cans by my side cradled in a classy Tesco’s carrier bag, engaged in a heavy semi-professional-level session of sweaty gusset spotting. There’s nothing quite like laying on the warm grass on a beach towel, sipping a can of the cool wet fizzy stuff while you scan the delectable, nubile young ladies having a sunbath all round you. It’s a bit like being in a harem, or an up market beach resort for the young and beautiful, or a really expensive brothel. So, you scan the great expanse of parkland like a lion searching for a tasty gazelle, and you focus in on a girl wearing a short skirt or a bikini, laying on the ground, soaking up the sun who’s positioned in such a way in relation to yourself that you’ve got an excellent view of her clam through a thin layer of flimsy undergarment material. This is the OPTOMUFF view.

The Optimum Perv TO Minge Unadulterated Full Frontal view.

I swear, if I’d have looked any harder and intently at some of these barely-wrapped vag valleys my eye’s would’ve cooked from the inside and exploded in a cloud of boiling hot eye juice.

So, I’m quite happily gazing at a lovely lady’s love canyon (well, I assume she was lovely – fuck knows what her face looked like but she had a very attractive quim poking out from the sides of her yellow knickers), when I hear a voice.

“What are you views on the drinking ban on public transport, Sir?”

I looked up, squinted, some bloke in a suit holding a BBC microphone was leering down at me. (Radio, I think – so not really TV, well, not unless he had one of those invisible camera crews with him). He’d obviously seen I was sitting there getting quietly sizzled on beer and thought he’d ask my expert opinion. Freaked me out a bit, being called Sir. The last time I’d been called Sir was when I was paddling in Camden Lock and a copper advised it wasn’t a very good idea to do this unless I wanted to contract legionnaires disease.

Now, I was pissed, so as the microphone was lowered towards me I replied: “Jesus… would you just look at that arse?”

The fella with the microphone followed my gaze and gulped. His gaze lingered on the fine bikini-clad buttocks of the girl I was perving over, and I could tell he tended to agree. But he pressed on and asked me about having a few drinkies on the underground again.

I thought about it seriously for a bit. I was in ultra-relaxed mode twinned with a code red perv alert, fuelled by Tesco’s ten cans of Stella for under a tenner offer. So I gave this reporter the most incisive, most eloquent, most thought provoking response I could come up with at the time:

“Be a good man and fuck off will you?”
( SpankyHanky, Mon 15 Jun 2009, 10:25, 6 replies)

FERRET ORGY WAS MY DOWNFALL
Not so much seen on tv…

One fine Saturday my dear old mum gave me forty of her hard-earned sterling to go down to the shopping precinct in Coventry and buy a new coat. Now, I fucking HATE shopping. I’d rather have somebody strip me naked, staple my cock to a pole, then raise the pole, turning me into a rather attractive, screaming, fleshy flag, dangling there until my cock ripped off and I plummeted to my death in a spray of blood and fecal matter.

You could say I was not best pleased at the prospect of picking up a new coat. So, I did the only sensible, reasonable thing instead, I went to Highfield Road, the field of screams, and watched my shit footie team play against another shit footie team (Oldham Athletic; this was fucking years ago), and still fucking lose. I went down with my mate Greg, it was a late kickoff – about five-thirty as it was being televised live on Sky, and we ended up sitting round for ages waiting for the match to start. I recall seeing something small, gray and furry crouching on the side of the pitch, it looked like a collection of ferrets having a wild orgy: “What the fuck’s that?” I asked Greg. He shrugged. That was the end of that riveting conversation.

Now, what with it being on Sky, they had a load of attractive girlies doing the American football style cheerleader shenanigans just prior to the match. It was ace. As this troop of girls went through their paces mere meters from me, I remember remarking to Greg: “I’ve seen more camel toes in the last five minutes than an Arab would see in the Sahara fucking Desert in a lifetime.” These girls were beautiful. They were lovely. And they didn’t seem to mind or notice that Greg and I were staring fixedly on their lady parts, trying as hard as we could to mentally undress them, willing to sell our own grandmother’s for an errant costume malfunction and the brief glimpse of some beautiful, sublime, amazing, below-the-belt lipage.

“God, I would fuck her so HARD!” I said. “And her…. And that one too… Jesus, that one over there looks fucking amazing… I bet she takes it up the shitter… just look at her… Fuck, yeah… I bet she’d take it up the shitter and then suck the shitty spunk off you’re helmet afterwards… And that one, that one over there with the massive knockers, she'd look fucking great with my cum dripping off her nose and chin... I'd glaze her like a fucking doughnut... and her mate... and that bird at the back... In fact I'd line them all up and rapid fire fuck the lot of um... I'm up for it, you know, physically... God, my cock feels slimy just thinking about it... gonna have to change my pants when I get home...” and so on…

Then I noticed some fella wearing a Sky TV jacket running like Quasimodo so as not to get in the shot of the TV camera on the sideline, rush up to the humping cluster of ferrets and frantically start pissing about with some of the wires leading away from them. Then he fucked off. Odd.

Then we watched the match. Oldham scored late on and won. Dejected (as always), as we were watching a footie team so shit that they required a bell in the ball so they could find the fucker on the pitch, Greg and I trudged home.

And when I got in my mum and dad were fuming. Shit! The COAT!!! I started making up some bullshit story about the shops being shut when my mum cut me dead. “You were at the football, weren’t you?” Fuck – my mum had developed superhuman powers! How the FUCK did she know that. “I’m not talking to you, you disgust me,” and she trounced upstairs and slammed my parents bedroom door behind her.

My dad said: “Bit of a poor match today, Spanky. We saw it on the telly…”

I felt suddenly releived and started to speak, as they say, football was invented to give blokes something to talk to each other about, otherwise they’d just sit in silence and sigh a lot. But my dad stopped me: “We saw the cheerleaders before the game… Oh, and we heard about fifteen seconds of your running commentary about these girls before they cut the effects mike off…”

Fucking Sky…

My mum only started talking to me again after a week of me making my own dinners; I nearly fucking starved to death…
( SpankyHanky, Fri 12 Jun 2009, 11:29, 7 replies)

Not on TV as such but nearly the silver screen
A few years ago I was down from uni visiting a mate who was studying at LSE. After a heady night out in the East End where much beer and curry was consumed we stopped off at one of his mates halls to continue the party. The fact that he claimed to have the 'finest weed known to humankind' (debatable but it did its job) and Withnail and I on DVD made this a no brainer.

Round about 4 in the morning we decided it was time to leave. Now John's mate lived close to the Royal Courts of Justice while John's halls were down in the west end. The simplest route was to head down the Strand, cut through Trafalgar Square and then home from there.

Somehow along the way I lost everyone else. Not a problem, as even though pissed and stoned this is still my home town and I know my way around. Stumbling on I ended up wandering down a little side street into Trafalgar Square.

As I made my away across my fuzzy brain slowly came to the realisation that there were some people around me. Bit odd for that time of night, especially as it was the middle of October.

But hang on, it's not just a couple of people, there's hundreds of the fuckers!

And not only that they're all in some sort of cult. No joke, they were all identically dressed in black capes, pointy witches hats and had these horrific white masks completely covering their faces!

I was now seriously freaking out but desperately trying to stay inconspicuous lest they spot me and then ritually disembowel me in front of Nelson's Column in some weird phallic fertility ritual.

But it was all to no avail. As if on some psychic signal the whole lot of the fuckers suddenly starts running straight fucking at me!

Needless to say subtlety be damned. I bloody legged it. Straight out the square, round the corner of the National Gallery, flat out for about 10 minutes. I ended up hiding behind a skip, felt like I was about to have a heart attack. I had to have about 4 cigarettes in a row until I was calm enough to move.

Somehow I stumbled back to John's place and crashed out on the sofa. The next morning I wasn't sure if I'd dreamt it or not. There was nothing on the news about some invasion by a devil-worshipping cult tearing up Soho. It was a total mystery.




Then 12 months later V for Vendetta came out, things made a lot more sense and I felt a complete plonker.
(Milo Minderbinder, Fri 12 Jun 2009, 10:12, 1 reply)

Some people will do anything for a bit of cash
I met a guy once, who we'll call John, because I honestly cannot recall his name.

John was a student, and an aspiring actor, who was hungry for a bit of fame and exposure, and also desperately needed some beer money to go on a lads' holiday he'd spent the last of his student loan on. So when the opportunity to appear on telly came up, and get paid for the privilege, he leapt at the chance. Only then did he start finding out the details.

He had agreed to participate in a sex education documentary.
"Erm... okay."
Nothing tacky, a sort of "lover's guide" sort of thing.
"Oh, that doesn't sound too bad."
No, not too bad at all. They were going to film John having an 'erotic prostate massage'.
"WHAT?!"

For the uninitiated (who are probably in the minority given some of the stuff I've read on these pages), an 'erotic prostate massage' involves having a third-party insert a lubricated finger (or two if you're feeling fruity) in to a guy's rusty sheriff's badge in order to stroke the little walnut-sized gland a few inches in. For sexual pleasure. Or mortifying discomfort, depending on how you felt about it.

Now, this was NOT John's bag at all. He certainly wouldn't have been enthusiastic about being digitally-interfered with by a long-term girlfriend, let alone by a stranger surrounded by a film crew.

But, he was skint, and as he summed it up to me, "£250 is £250, and I needed the money." Yep, that's right, he had agreed to rectally-rubbed in glorious high definition for the nation's entertainment, in order to earn what effectively would amount to two nights out on the piss on holiday. The production crew promised him the footage wouldn't be too graphic, and he would have the last word on what could be used in the finished programme, so very reluctantly, he agreed - a couple of hours of embarrassment in exchange for sun and sangria. He had sold his soul.

Filming took place in the masseuse's house. She was a spiritual hippy type, and surrounded the room in candles. She talked through the process as she went, in an irritatingly whispy, dreamy voice, with John, stark bollock naked on all fours, wincing back answers as she probed his holiest-of-holies. The six crew members in the room stifled sniggers. To say the least, he felt self-conscious. And then it got worse.

Unbeknownst to John, or any of the crew present, the masseuse had a big finish planned. "I'm just going to stimulate his external organs now," she cooed, and started wanking him off, as a cameraman who was now audibly pissing himself laughing went in for a close-up. John went crimson and buried his face in to the pillow in front of him, unable to say anything to stop the horror of being filmed ejaculating over his chest and neck whilst being bum-burgled by Mystic Meg. Another cameraman caught a beautiful close-up of his curling toes as he hit the vinegar strokes.

Days later, John had to relieve the horror as he went in to review the sequence in a darkened edit suite. He asked for most of the camera angles to be changed, as he had seen less graphic scenes in a Max Hardcore movie. Humiliated, he finally agreed that the footage could be put out (so that he would at least get paid) and sat back as he watched the finishing touches added to the programme, ready for broadcast to a potential audience of his peers, future employers, and grandparents.

So why do I know so much about him? You'll find you make a lot of small talk about something - ANYTHING - when you have to sit in a tiny room with someone for hours, in front of a computer, meticulously pixelating out their testicles so that the 'experience' can be broadcast.

Length? Impressive, if you've got a big TV.
(Sloppy Giuseppe, Thu 11 Jun 2009, 16:00, Reply)

mandarin
I move in political circles so I'm quite often on the telly-box.

Most recently I was involved in some pretty high-powered talks with the Japanese government with the aim of coming to an agreement over protectionism in their auto-industry.

In typical fashion we managed to get a resolution signed at the 11th hour.

This was the honda accord.
( rofl harris, Mon 15 Jun 2009, 13:38, 6 replies)

Engineer dreams dashed
SpankyHanky reminded me of this one from my school days...

Local TV news show BBC Look East made a visit to my primary school in the late 80s to do a report on the soon-to-be-completed M1-A1 link road (now the A14). My class went on a field trip to the building site that morning and spent the rest of the day inventing apparatus to assist the road builders. We were given the incentive that the best ones would be showcased on the TV report the next day.

Looking at the materials I had available (a stack of firewood-quality timber, some crusty glue guns, a load of rusty chicken wire etc) I soon came up with my genius idea. I was going to craft a gravel-sifter which would sort out the different sizes of stones. I can't remember why I thought this machine would be useful, but it would be relatively easy to build one. I'd used my dad's tools before to knock together go-karts and tree houses, so I pressed on, twatting nails in all over the place and smearing red-hot molten glue all over myself in the process.

The device I constructed resembled a medieval instrument of torture. It was a box with three sliding drawers and an open top. The top drawer had large holes in the mesh, the middle had smaller holes and the bottom drawer had tiny holes, the idea being that the gravel would filter through and be sorted out into different grades. Apart from the wood splinters, it also featured razor-sharp edges where the chicken wire met the frame, hidden nails poking out from every handling point and the main bodywork looked uncannily like old asbestos cladding. I’d painted it in bright red metalwork paint, which wouldn’t dry and smelt dreadful.

All in all, it was a diabolical fucking death trap.

Lacking practical woodwork experience, I'd also failed to factor in that the drawers needed to be slightly narrower than the runners on which they sat, necessitating a colossal amount of force to move them. This problem was alleviated slightly by the application of huge quantities of industrial grease, but the mechanism was otherwise firmly seized-up and moving it required all the strength my ten-year-old arms could muster. Despite its obvious shortcomings, I was pleased with my creation so I demonstrated the treacherous machine to my teacher. Faced with a cornucopia of shit handiwork from my fellow classmates, he witheringly agreed it would be on the report.

When the TV crew arrived, they picked me to be the main focus of the report. I was so happy I may have actually wet myself. We did a quick rehearsal with Stewart White, the legendary East-Anglian news anchor but my wretched contraption refused to budge and I started to worry. Not that he noticed; he was as bored as you might expect and was going through the motions in front of the camera without paying much attention to the students or our work.

The heat from the lights was making me feel ill. Filming started and the cameraman moved round to my spot. Stewart had told us that the audio would be redubbed later and was giving us cues. He gave the signal to do my demo and so I tried to operate the infernal abomination. I was feeling extremely dizzy by now; the paint was coming off on my hands, I was getting high on the fumes and I was about to be humiliated on local television. Prepubescent rage built inside me so I gave it an almighty shove and to my surprise, the drawer moved enough to give the illusion that it worked as expected. Job done, so I thought.

The report was shown the following evening. I sat with my family to watch my moment of glory, my dad had even cracked open a new tape for our top-loader Betamax VCR to record the occasion. The reporters waffled on for ages about the actual road project but just before the end, it cut to our school and THERE I WAS, with my new pal Stewart White cheerfully narrating:

“These students have built tools to help the engineers; this one is a gravel sifter”

Accompanying his dubbed voiceover was a long shot of me dementedly tugging and thrusting at the dangerous boxy bastard, fighting hopelessly against the overwhelming friction as it rocked back and forth. Despite the voiceover track, I could still be heard clearly in the background audio, pleading with the equipment “Please work, come ON! It’s not fair! I hate this! I HATE THIS! Why won’t you move!?!?” Then they cut to the studio right before the part where the drawer finally moved, making me look like a desperate, useless failure. My dad looked at me despairingly before going to make a cup of tea. My mum seemed impressed with my “nice red box”, which did nothing for my crushed ego.

It took me a week to get the fucking paint off my hands, but my shame lingers to this day
( chart cat has an itch, Mon 15 Jun 2009, 5:10, 1 reply)

I was on TV once

It was a bit freaky actually.

I was walking along the high road, just doing a bit of window shopping when I got to Currys. I looked up at the TV in the window, and at that precise moment, there I was!! On TV!!!

What are the chances of that happening?
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Fri 12 Jun 2009, 10:48, Reply)

Airport Security
I was nineteen and working airport security at Stansted. At the time I was sitting at a little desk keeping an eye out for passangers trying to get back into the Baggage Reclaim (which is technically a restricted zone.) I had been briefed that a film crew would be in the terminal filming stock footage of staff going about their business so when I spied the big camera pointing at me I did my best to act nonchalant (all the while thinking 'YAY IM GONNA BE ON TV!')

A couple of years later there was a security breach in another part of the airport with someone from the Daily Mirror getting into the cockpit of a parked plane with a flamethrower or something... another security company was at fault.

So there I was, sitting there watching the news report with my girlfriend and flatmate. The reporter's voice over saying something like 'calls for an inquest into this incident are underway after this embarrassing breach in airport security ' all the while showing the stock footage of me smiling vacantly.

'YAY I'M ON TV!' I shouted
(catbrain likes the hairy scratchings bestest, Thu 11 Jun 2009, 15:09, 1 reply)

I hate my eighteen year old self.
I was on Blockbusters and managed to make an utter dick of myself. Firstly I actually said 'I really need a P please Bob'. Then I answered 'which 'D' followed the yellow brick road?' with 'Doris' - my Gran's name (although she was dead chuffed she got a namecheck) Somehow I managed to win a goldrun and the prize was a weekend in a canoe in Shrewsbury, the highlight of which was being bitten on the ear by a swan whose nest i'd disturbed by being generally crap at canoeing (served me right really). The weirdest thing about the whole experience was being summoned to the Headmaster's office about a month later to be told the school had received a very sexually explicit letter from a viewer addressed to me. Who in God's name writes pervy letters to Blockbusters contestants? And why did they tell me about it? I've not been able to handjive since.
First post. Sorry if it's poo.
(Betty Spencer did a whoopsie on the carpet on, Tue 16 Jun 2009, 22:41, 4 replies)

Phil & the Spanish Commercial Incident
A mate of mine, Phil, is about as bright as your average root vegetable. He’s also been desperate to get on TV since he was an embryo and contines to try his hardest to earn his fifteen minutes of fame on the idiot box. Not sure why – he’s completely talentless and ugly as sin. If he ever visited a burns ward for people with serious facial injuries caused by car crashes or malfunctioning power tools, the nurses would make a bed up for him and shoot him full of drugs until the terrible swelling round his eyes went down. But it won’t go down. He’s just a swollen-eyed, ugly twat.

A while back Phil was on holiday in Spain with his missus. He’s walking through a shopping precinct, bored, when he spots a TV crew and probably goes a little bit hard at the prospect of flapping his arms about on screen for the benefit and pleasure of the viewing millions. Phil races over. He speaks enough Spanish to order a beer or a blowjob, so he struggles a bit. But Phil finds the director who speaks a little English and he figures out the crew are looking for people to give a testimonial on a super-dupa product they’re advertising. Its a Spanish commercial, no fucker’s gonna see it, but Phil doesn’t care.

“I’ve been using your fine product for years,” he says to the director.

“No. You haven’t,” she says back.

“Oh yes I have!” He replies.

“This is a Spanish language commercial,” says the director.

“I speak Spanish!” Says Phil (probably hoping the commercial was for Tenerifes finest provider of beer and/or blowjob services).

And the exchange continued. For about five minutes. Phil wasn’t going anywhere. Phil is now the centre of attention. A small crowd has gathered round. Phil’s missus is looking just a little mortified. Evenutally the director caves in and agrees to do a peice to camera with my mate Phil. Just to get rid of the annoying cunt, I’m sure. They go over to a little stage area decorated with flowers. Phil sits in the nice comfy chair they have there. The crowd grows larger. Some people are taking Phil’s photo or doing a little video on their camera phone. Phil is feeling like the King of Fucking England and Billy Big Balls rolled into one.

The director sits in a chair out of shot. The camera man positions himself behind the camera and starts shooting. Phil is asked a question in high speed Spanish and a microphone is thrust under his nose.

“Si,” says Phil and nods a shitload. There’s a flurry of laughter from the ever-growing audience. The director asks Phil another question in rapid-fire forrin. Phil responds with another: “Si.”

Now he’s starting to feel a little uncomfortable. The lights, the attention, the heat, the crowd... He leans forward and whispers to the director: “Whassthis for???”

And she reaches down and brings up a small, very light weight pink box and hands it over. Phil stares at the box for a while, he still doesn’t have a fucking clue. The the director leans into him and whispers back conspirationally: “They’re towels... For when you’re heavy... For your...” the director thought about the correct word for a while. “... for when you’re having your period.”

Phil placed the box gently down on the floor by the chair, wished the director a good day, and fucked off into the crowd. People wanted to have their photo taken with him as he went.

(He’s still desperate to get on TV, though, the useless puffy-eyed retard).
( SpankyHanky, Tue 16 Jun 2009, 10:50, Reply)

I've never been on TV as far as I know...
... but let me share my story with you anyway.

I used to think I had the most ordinary, uneventful life – I live in a small town, work in an office, and am married to a lovely girl who is a nurse and who is the perfect wife. I have pretty much everything I need, the only cloud is that despite living in a beautiful seaside town, I’ve never felt the urge to take to the water because my Dad had died in a boating accident when I was young.

But now I’ve hit my 30s, I’ve started to feel that something isn’t quite right with my life. I met this girl who started me thinking about my situation in a way I never had before, although she disappeared as quickly as she had come into my life. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, a lot of weird stuff has been happening - for instance, my Dad has now reappeared on the scene, it turned out that instead of drowning, he had suffered total amnesia.

My best mate, over a few beers, has told me I shouldn’t worry about things so much. My mother has told me that maybe it’s time for me and my wife to think about having a family of our own, and that would help me overcome these nagging self-doubts I have.

But I still feel detached from reality, somehow. You know what, I may just overcome my fear of the water and sail a boat towards the horizon, just to see what’s there.

And in case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight!
(Capo, Fri 12 Jun 2009, 12:26, 8 replies)

A few things
I've been in crowd shots at various Gillingham home games, live gigs (Garbage on MTV's 5 Nite Stand in 2002, I can be seen in the crowd turning to a friend and mouthing "phwoar!") and I've walked past the local news cameras in town far too often.

But a few weeks ago my Dad gets a call from one of the members of his bike club. BBC Breakfast are doing a piece on the new swerve test (as has been recently added to the full motorbike test) and the controversy therein. Was he free to appear in the background riding a CB125 around a test circuit?

Well, no, as it turns out. But he quite happily nominates his first-born to take his place. Fine, says I, it's on my day off anyway. No problem. Need to be there at 6? That's great, doesn't even cut into my day.

It was at this point that I should have asked which 6 o'clock it was.

The night before I end up drinking rather more than I should, still assuming that it was filmed in the evening for the next day and that I would have time to recover. It came as a bit of a shock to be woken up at half past 5 with a mug of tea and a pleasant reminder that I was due at the test centre in half an hour and I would be dropped off by Dad on his way to work. Fucksocks.

Luckily my helmet (fnarr) hid my extremely peaky condition, and despite the shakes and the sweats I managed to ride around the circuit at slow speeds while the presenter did her bit to camera. They cut to a pre-recorded interview of the chap from Motorcycle Action Group and I dismounted, in search of more tea and fried pig products.

"That's great" said the cameraman/producer, "we're nearly done, we just need you to demonstrate the swerve test when we return from the clip."

"The sw-what?"

"What all this fuss is about. Just ride at those two cones at 30 mph and swerve around them."

This would be fine. It's a manoeuvre I've done hundreds of times while riding, and I'd have a helmet on to cover my shame, wouldn't I? I got the bike into position, took several deep breaths to calm my nerves and awaited the signal. As the show returned to the live feed I saw the cameraman wave and I set off, doing my damndest to keep the bike upright on wet tarmac. As I approached the cones at slightly less than the required speed I felt the bike wobble and the back end slip slightly. I held on and prayed I wouldn't bugger up Dad's mate's bike. As I passed the first cone I clipped it slightly, seeing it wobble but I made it round the second upright! I had done it! I'd not made a prat of myself on live TV! I'd passed a national bike test while hungover! I'd clearly not watched where I was going, and ridden into a privet hedge!

Arse.

I later found out that you could clearly see a few instructors doubled up with laughter in the background of the clip.
(jamesthegill opens new tabs with his scroll wheel, Thu 11 Jun 2009, 23:14, 4 replies)

Not me, but a friend
Back in the days of student apathy, I lived in Halls (High Hall, Birmingham Uni) that was a short walk away from BBC Pebble Mill. At the time (mid 80s) there used to be a daytime show broadcast from there - Pebble Mill at One, if memory serves - that was shown on national BBC.

It got canned and on its last day, some of my mates went down to join the crowds outside seeing the show off. Using pillow-cases, they made amusing "T-shirts" with marker-penned slogans.

Unfortunately for the interviewer going through the crowds getting their thoughts on the closing of this national institution, he stopped right in front of my mates.

"So" he said on live TV, "why have you come here today ?"

"Show them your T shirt, Troy" said my mates, and interviewer-bloke was stupid enough to say "Yes, show us your T shirt".

The legend "Get your tits out Marianne" appeared on screen for a few brief seconds, Marianne being one of the presenters on the soon-to-be-defunct show.

The interviewer did a double take, said:

"I think he meant 'get your hit records out, Marianne'" and then said the immortal words "and now, back to the studio".

[EDIT]

This is actually on YouTube. It wasn't my mate Troy, but another mate called strangely enough Phil Collins:

You can see it here in the first minute:

the incident in full
( I_Was_Mordred, Thu 11 Jun 2009, 13:25, 1 reply)

gay, but not in a happy way.
Repost. Sorry.


Last week those two gay Scottish interior designers were filming in the house across the road from my flat. They were filming the shot of them mincing down the street, talking piss. I found it really funny to shout “ BUMMERS” loudly out my window then duck and hide behind the curtain, as any real man would. I did it 8 times, every time ruining the shot. They laughed the 1 & 2 time, but by the 8th time the dark haired one shouted, “FUCK OFF”. Somewhat stunned, the only reply I could muster from the safety of my curtain based hiding place was a loud “GAY LORD”. That showed them. They gave up after that and went in side. Although I did ring the doorbell and run away. I only hope my homophobic heckling makes the final cut. If ever you watch a show of theirs from Edinburgh, listen out for “bummers”. That’s me. My mum will be so proud.
(Jeeves, Tue 16 Jun 2009, 11:23, 1 reply)

Not getting on the News
I've done the Blue Peter Dog Sex story more times than is healthy on these pages. So, time for something else.

Not getting on the News

I'm a fair-weather football fan. So, when Reading got to the play-off finals I was there, outside the ground, lining up for my ticket to Wembley so that I might bask in reflected glory.

There were THOUSANDS of us outside the box office in a line snaking down the street, and I'll wager than 90% of us hadn't seen the inside of a football ground since the last play-off failure. Naturally, this was a big media event, and they sent cameras, reporters and big satellite trucks to catch the mood.

It wasn't long before I found a microphone thrust in my face and TV's M*** B****** jumped in with a probing line of questions.

"So, are you queuing for tickets then?"

"Christ – this isn't the Harrods Sale, then?"

"No, really. Are you queuing for tickets?"

"I'm standing outside a football ground, beneath a sign that reads 'Wembley Tickets THIS WAY'. What do you think?"

He stood there contemplating my response, making a sucking noise with his teeth. Realising he was onto a loser, he moved on to the next victim.

"So, are you queuing for tickets then?"

"What? So where does the Park and Ride stop?"

Neither of us got on the news.
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Thu 11 Jun 2009, 12:27, Reply)

Shit, they've got guns!
Many moons ago, a 17 year old Smurf was out for a drive in his parents battered old Toyota Corolla.

Driving along North Station Road in Colchester, I was coming up level to what was at the time, the Midland Bank. As I drew nearer 4 men in balaclavas and brandishing shotguns came pelting out the bank towards the road. I did what any self respecting coward would do, I ducked as low as I could and accelerated like buggery, whilst imagining being carjacked for an escape vehicle or being shot.

It wasn't until I got further up the road and dared to look in my rear view mirror that I saw the camera crew on the other side of the road filming.

It was the Crimewatch re-enactment of a bank robbery that had happened a week or so before.

And yes, I did make it on to tv. From the cameras point of view, as the blokes come running out of the bank they are briefly obscured as an apparently driverless Toyota Corolla accelerates from stage left to stage right.
(Big Smurf Brush me daddy-O, Tue 16 Jun 2009, 20:49, 3 replies)

How TV grassed my Dad up
A couple of years after we moved down from Scotland in the early 1970s, London Scottish got to the rugby union cup final at Twickenham against Coventry, so with my Dad being a rugby fan, he naturally got us tickets.

The stadium was by no means full, so Dad found a spot for us, told me to stay there while he popped off "to see a man about a dog", which I now understand to be another way of saying that he was going to the bar.

After what seemed like half an hour, with no sign of my old man, I decided I'd better wander off and find him. I should perhaps mention here that I was nine years old and wearing a bright orange jumper.

Anyway, I walked up and down the stand looking for my Dad, no trace of him, then towards the end of the match he suddenly reappeared seeming much more cheerful than he had before, despite the result (I guess it wasn't just London Scottish who got hammered that day).

We had an uneventful journey home, where my Dad assured my Mum that no, he hadn't had anything to drink and he'd kept a close eye on me the whole time, and the story would have ended there, except my Dad decided to watch the highlights on Rugby Special the following afternoon. On our recently-bought first-ever colour TV. So we all settled down to watch the match - me, my siblings, and my parents.

It so happens that we were in the part of the ground opposite the TV cameras, and you couldn't help but notice this little orange blob wandering up and down during the entire match - indeed, the commentators even pointed me out (for the benefit of people watching in black and white, I suppose). They also put two and two together and suggested that if I was looking for my Dad, I could probably do worse than look in the bar...

Length? A good week or two till my mum spoke to him again, and even longer before he was allowed back out on his own.
(Capo, Mon 15 Jun 2009, 8:28, 1 reply)

Through the Arched Window.
My father is a farrier and amongst other places he used to work for a near by riding school where I also used to ride.
Another thing this riding school did was something called Riding for the Disabled. This is where mentally and physically disabled children get to ride. As I'm sure you can imagine the freedom riding a horse give a disabled child is wonderful. (I'll let you make your own jokes).

Anyway, Pa was working there when they got a call from the BBC asking if they could make a short film of the riding school. The plan was that they were going to follow a day in the life of a horse.
This would involve him being shod - hence Pa's involvement.
They also asked if they could have a child who could ride and groom the horse. So Pa suggested me.

Now he didn't think to mention this to me until the presenter from Playschool, the one who was in that Doctor Who too, came round for a cup of tea. Now this confused the living shit out of me. People on the telly lived in the little box in the corner, everyone knew that, so how come she was in my house. Anyway that was all I saw of any PlaySchool types.

So I was booked to have time of school and filming started.
There was father, shoeing the horse, mother sweeping the yard, and I am asked to groom the horse get on him and ride him into the field.

Now what I had failed to mention was that I couldn't ride. Everyone figured I could and I had been too frightened to put them right. I mean, I had a horse, and I had riding lessons, but like someone who has had only a few driving lesson, I wasn't competent to be alone. Also I didn't like riding, or give a fig about horses so I never really put much effort into riding. The only reason I had the lessons was that they were free and I only had a horse because we had an empty field.

So I was asked to ride Poddy (for that 'twas his name) into the field. So I got on and let him amke his own way there, the problem came when we got into the field and all the other horses came up to us a surrounded us.
If you ever see the footage then you will notice it cuts when I start to look scared and realise I can't get off the damn thing because of all the other horses which scare me shitless.

So filming ended, I got paid with a PlayAway album and a PlaySchool ballon and went back to school. My Ma, Pa and Uncle told all their friends to watch it and we went out and bought a Video Recorder just for the occasion. ( this was about 1981 they where damn pricey).

What my folks didn't understand was why people kept coming up to them and say things like "We didn't know" and "what happened?".
When my Uncle went into work the next day people just avoided his gaze and muttered into their coffee.
What we didn't realise was that my section was only about half of the film, the other half was about the disabled kids and everyone (who didn't know me or hadn't seen me for a while) assumed I was one of the
disabled kids.

We still have a video.


Sorry for lack of funnies, but it is as long as a horses, and they are damn long.
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Sat 13 Jun 2009, 19:02, 2 replies)

Crash TV
In 1990 I witnessed an air crash (there's not much to do in the north of Scotland).

Local TV news cameras arrived the next day and interview me:

"It was very quick - there was a big bang and a fireball" I say

They interview my mum

"It was just like a sunset" she says, wistfully

They interview my dad (who at that time was a fairly well-respected local figure)

"I didn't see it - I was in the toilet" he says

My dad got top billing when it aired - I was last
( Mighty Nibus who dares gins | @nibus, Thu 11 Jun 2009, 14:25, 1 reply)

It was my 10th birthday
and I'd invited my closest friends to Chessington world of adventures to go on the rides and generally piss about. Having made the hour and a half journey, we discovered that they close all the rides in the winter, but the zoo part was open still. So we went mooching round when we discovered that filming was going on for a new tv show...


Sadly, telling him that it was my birthday couldn't make him reveal his claw hand, but he gave me a fiver and let me be a contestant in the show.
( fuck shit up the best you never had, Thu 11 Jun 2009, 12:25, 16 replies)

I can no longer travel internationally...
...not without considerable difficulty, anyway.

It would seem that I am the namesake of quite a powerful figure in the financial world who caused a bit of an economic furore in 2000, and because our names are so closely matched, I set off all sorts of bells and alarms when I try to travel through customs.

The story goes: around about the time of the Camp David Summit (the negotiations between Bill Clinton, Israeli president Ehud Barak and Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat), a plan was drawn up between several powerful magnates and financiers to destabilise the economy of the Middle East by completely ceasing all trading with Israel's main economic centre - nothing would be bought or sold through their stock exchange system.

This would result in massive shifts in the global stock market ultimately leading to their own personal gain. It was a totally illegal, not to mention immoral, conspiracy.

The plot was discovered before they went through with it, and all involved went into hiding, hence me having problems travelling internationally now when my name comes up on security checks.

I haven't been on a single trip in the last ten years where I haven't been 'taken aside', roughed up a bit, and been made to prove that I wasn't involved in a Tel Aviv-shun program.
(Sloppy Giuseppe, Wed 17 Jun 2009, 14:49, 6 replies)