Is It Really Too Much to Ask? (35 page)

When I was growing up I used to go on a great many bicycle rides and they were great fun. But, of course, you can't do that any more because today cycling has been hijacked by thin-spectacled men from the marketing department, and as a result it's become a ‘lifestyle choice'.

This means you can't just buy a bicycle. You need lots of other paraphernalia as well.

You need what's called ‘kit'. A helmet with a built-in camera, brakes made from materials that aren't even on the periodic table, some sideburns, a carbon-fibre boot mount for your car, some ridiculous energy bars and half a pint of special gel to keep your gentleman's area zesty and fresh.

And then, when you have all this, you will meet other people who've made the same lifestyle choice and they'll explain that their gel is better than your gel and that their energy bars are more energetic. So you'll have to throw all your stuff away and upgrade immediately.

It's the same story with fishing. Gone are the days when you could splosh about, netting sticklebacks. Now, you have titanium rods and a range of neoprene waders. If you want to hold your head up on the river, you'll be forced by your bank manager to sell all the natty golf-bag attachments you bought during your recent flirtation with the men of Pringle.

All you need to shoot a pheasant is a gun and some cartridges. But, of course, that's not true because today you need to turn up looking like a cross between King Edward
VII and Pablo Escobar. And in addition to the fancy-dress costume you'll need noise-cancelling headphones, leather wellies, some care-in-the-community fingerless gloves, a pair of yellow sunglasses, a Range Rover and the ability to talk for hours about the weight of the shot in your cartridges. This means the cost of each pheasant you bring down is approximately £1 million.

It doesn't seem to matter, though. For many men nowadays the thrill of buying a new hobby-related gadget far outweighs the thrill of actually doing the hobby. And absolutely nothing proves this more than a trip to see the big five in Africa.

I've just spent a couple of weeks over there with a handful of colleagues who I know from experience travel the world armed only with jeans and T- shirts. Unless they're in the Arctic Circle, in which case it's jeans, T-shirts and an anorak.

When they go to China none of them feels the need to dress up like Chairman Mao. When they're in Japan they don't wear kimonos and slippers. And in France none of them comes down to breakfast wearing a beret. But in Africa they all take leave of their senses and turn up dressed like the zipped and Velcroed love children of Bear Grylls and Joy Adamson. And that's before we get to the kit.

One night a hippopotamus came into the camp, and like any sentient being I was mesmerized by the stupidity of its ears and the idiocy of its noises. But no one else even looked up because they were all engrossed in Richard Hammond's new torch.

When it comes to holding my attention, a torch is right up there with a knitting needle or some lettuce.

But this one was somehow amazing because it had come from an African adventurer's kit shop. Along with Hammond's
trousers, which had many pockets for his foldaway cutlery, his compass and, bizarrely, his massive knife.

Now I can see why you might need a knife when you are carving the Sunday joint or chopping vegetables. But why would you need such a thing in Africa? Do people really imagine that they will be attacked by a lion? It's nonsense because a) lions are too busy sleeping or having sex to attack people, and b) even if one did, do you think you'd have the presence of mind to unzip your special knife pocket, retrieve the blade and stick it into a bit of the beast that might somehow make a difference?

Hammond was not the only one to have succumbed to the marketing man's spell. Our minicam operator had plainly overdosed on the gullible pills because he arrived with a head torch that shone a red light.

‘It doesn't attract insects,' he said from inside what looked like a beehive.

His other new toy was a hammock that featured a shaped bottom section and a ribbed mosquito net on the top. It had probably cost about £2,000 and looked very sleek and impressive. But as he climbed inside on the first night, he discovered as the rain started that while it kept the flies away, it was not waterproof.

Shoes were another big thing among the chaps. It seems that people in the outdoor pursuits industry have it in their minds that in Africa there is very little gravity, so to anchor yourself in place you need to be sporting footwear that weighs the same as a small house.

Plus, because they've also decided there is almost no friction in Africa, the soles must be made from chunky grooved rubber that appears to have come from the tyres of an earth mover.

Americans are very easily conned by the outdoor leisure
industry's marketing powers, which is why they turn up at every hippo watering hole looking as though they've just stepped off the set of
Daktari
. I realize, of course, that American tourists are always more interesting than whatever they're looking at, but in Africa's game reserves they are absolutely hysterical. I saw one with a canvas drinking canteen. What use would that be on a holiday where you are never more than 30ft from a fridge?

I'm not saying that all hobby-related kit is useless. Obviously you can't jump from a balloon in outer space wearing a blazer and slacks, and you can't dive to the bottom of the deepest trench in the ocean in a suit and tie. Sometimes equipment is necessary. But if you are going for a walk, or going on holiday, or going for a bicycle ride, trust me on this: it isn't.

21 October 2012

Many state-educated people have it in their heads that life for those in Britain's public schools is a deeply weird potpourri of silly uniforms, brutal sport and endless lessons about tax avoidance and the benefits of offshore slavery. In Latin.

I sympathize with all this, of course.

You see those Eton boys poncing about in their frilly shirts and their frock coats and because you have no idea what goes on behind the closed doors, you're bound to think they're all a bit mad, bad and dangerous.

It's the same story with Scientology. We have a vague idea that if you follow its principles, you will be able to fly an F-14 upside down and sleep with Kelly McGillis. On the downside, however, you have to believe that humans were transported to earth millions of years ago in a DC-8-like craft by a tyrant ruler of the galactic confederacy. This is hard to swallow, of course, because the DC-8 was a jet. And jets don't work in space.

At this point we should move on to Mitt Romney. I am told that it is not possible to take anything he says seriously because he is a Mormon and, of course, I nod sagely even though – if I'm honest – I really don't have a clue what Mormons do. Are they the ones who can have nine wives but no blood transfusions? Or is that the Jehovah's Witnesses?

You see the problem. We get snippets of information about these organizations and they worry us. Ignorance makes us afraid. That's why I have a morbid fear of the Freemasons. As I understand it, you may not progress beyond
the rank of constable in the police unless you are a member. Which means that every single senior officer has to really believe that if he explains the secrets of the handshake, his tongue will be torn from its mountings and thrown in the sea.

This is why when I'm talking to a sergeant I'm always a bit frightened. Because, thanks to the small amount of knowledge I have about his lodge meetings, I think he is a loony.

But I reserve my greatest fear and trepidation for people who are, or who have been, Scouts. In the olden days, Scouting was very obviously a harmless pursuit. You'd see them in the woods from time to time, tying knots and rubbing sticks together, and then once a year they'd emerge from the treeline and offer to rub grit into your car in exchange for a shilling.

Now, though, we never see them at all. However, like the ebola virus, they're still out there in their millions. And we have scant idea of what they're up to …

Their leader in Britain is a man called Bear Grylls, a survival expert who stays in hotels and likes to be attacked at night by friends and colleagues in wildlife costumes.

More importantly, we heard last week that Scouts are no longer permitted to use nicknames. That is very sinister. Scout chiefs say that nicknames can lead to bullying and argue that this is in some way a bad thing. I disagree.

Bullying gives a man a spine. It forces him to address his issues and work out what he's doing wrong. I was bullied for two straight years at school and I like to think it toughened me up and made me realize that you can't go through life being a hopeless, quivery-bottom-lipped, unfunny prig.

In the early days this is what Scouting was all about. It prepared boys for life as adults. It made them strong and practical. They knew what to do when they were attacked by a fox. They knew that if they worked they would be rewarded.
They also knew how to keep Scout masters out of the tent at night. So when you left the Scouting movement you were more of a man than if you'd never joined.

But now that your comrades are no longer allowed to call you ‘Chubby' or ‘Ginger' or ‘Slob Boy', you will be weak and unprepared to deal on your own with life's little crises, so you will have to rely on the authorities to settle your disputes.

There's more. Jews, Muslims and Buddhists are all welcome but you are not allowed to join if you are an agnostic or an atheist. How mad is that? The movement's leaders argue that this is in the sprit of Robert Baden-Powell's demand that members believe in a higher power.

Hmm. So why are gays allowed in? I can't imagine he'd have approved of that. He didn't even like foreigners very much.

This is the big problem for Scouts. We hear about the hypocrisy and the nonsense. But other than that we know very little. So we fill in the blanks ourselves, assuming that in America it's a front for the neo-Nazis and that in Britain it's a division of the Liberal Democrats, only with more on-message sustainability and inclusivity.

Happily, however, I have a solution. Twenty years ago the Scouts' bob-a-job week was abandoned for fear that little Johnnie – known until then as Fatso – might fall foul of health and safety legislation or get sued by a little old lady for fire-hosing her cat to death.

There was an attempt earlier this year to bring it back. It was called ‘community week' and it saw Scouts planting wild flowers and retrieving shopping trolleys from canals. But, I'm sorry, to take the mystery out of Scouting it's not good enough to have members in a faraway lock, doing what prisoners should be doing.

We need them at our doors, with pockets full of scrumped
apples, offering to clean our shoes and sweep the chimney for 5p. We need to encounter Scouts in our daily lives, helping old ladies across the road and petting guide dogs.

It's the same story, in fact, with all the world's esoteric organizations. Opus Dei, the Masons, UKIP, Tom and John at the Scientologists, Eton, the European Union, the Salvation Army. All of you. Come round this evening and clean my shoes. Not the Jehovah's Witnesses, though. I've had enough of you already. You can stay at home.

28 October 2012

For the sake of English football Manchester United always need to win. Which is probably why, in last weekend's top-of-the-table clash, the referee set about sending the entire Chelsea team off for wearing blue clothes. And then, when that didn't work, he awarded a goal to a player who was so offside he might as well have been standing in Bristol.

As a Chelsea supporter I was very cross about all this. Indeed I spent most of the game wondering what the ref in question would look like without a head.

Today, though, I feel rather sorry for the stupid, blind idiot because it has been alleged that during the game he made derogatory remarks about John Obi Mikel. It was also suggested earlier in the week that he had called Juan Mata a ‘Spanish t***'. (Clue: not ‘twit'.)

I would imagine that this sort of thing has been going on in football since someone inflated a sheep's pancreas and discovered that jumpers could be used for goalposts. But suddenly it isn't allowed any more. So the ref has been suspended and is being investigated for a racially aggravated offence by Plod. In other words, the sharp-elbowed group hug of inclusivity has now landed in the middle of a football pitch.

Football is not croquet. The stands are visceral and ugly places full of rage and hatred. And standing in the middle of it all, trying to keep order, is the referee. Until 2001 he was an unhappily married amateur called Keith who used a Saturday-afternoon kickabout to get back at everyone who
had made his working week so dreary and miserable. I do not know a football referee. I've never even met one. And I bet you haven't, either.

Today Premier League refs are professionals on more than £70,000 a year. But, I'm sorry, that's not enough.

Dentistry is bad. You live in a fog of halitosis waiting for the day when you accidentally catch AIDS. And I can't imagine it's much fun being a North Sea trawlerman either. You spend all day in a fish-scented cloud of diesel smoke, vomiting, and when you get home a bureaucrat tells you to throw the six cod you caught back into the sea.

But worse than both these things – worse even than being a dentist on a trawler – is the job of a Premier League referee. No. 1) you have to wear shorts. No. 2) there is a very great deal of running about. And No. 3) every single person in the entire world would like to eviscerate you, in front of your family, on the internet.

Can you imagine what life would be like for a surgeon if he had to go through his working day with his assistants, his nurses and even his patient telling him loudly and constantly that he was useless, that he was bent and that he worshipped at the altar of onanism? ‘Call that an incision, you effing w*****?'

Then there's the business of making mistakes. We all do that. I make millions, and so do surgeons, even when they are in a warm room, wearing long trousers and listening to the calming strains of Pachelbel's Canon.

A football referee, on the other hand, is not listening to classical music. He can't sit back in a comfy chair to ruminate over a steaming mug of tea on what he should do next. He is running at top speed, often in the rain, trying to keep on top of the action in a game that is played 20 per cent faster now than it was just five years ago. He is being told to eff off at every turn.

And then he thinks he sees something happen and must react without a moment's pause. I think I would be useless. I think you would be, too.

But Premier League refs are not. Because more than 92 per cent of the decisions they make are subsequently proved by slow-motion replays to be correct.

To achieve this level of accuracy, they train hard. Not just so they're as fit as the players they're monitoring but also so they can see like a bird. Seriously. They do eye exercises to improve both their peripheral vision and their ability to spot, through a fast-moving pack of tangled limbs twenty yards away, who's doing what to whom.

In short, then, the man in black must have the stamina of an athlete, the eyesight of a pigeon, the reactions of a kingfisher, the legs of a male model and an autistic indifference to the opinions of other people. And now, on top of all this, he must also behave like a vicar.

Last weekend Mark Clattenburg, the ref at the Chelsea game, was having an off day. He must have known this because 35,000 people, including my son, were reminding him very loudly, and with uprooted chairs. It is entirely possible that Juan Mata was reminding him also. So what's wrong with saying, ‘Shut it, you Spanish t***'?

When Richard Hammond is being annoying, which is when he's awake, I refer to him as a ‘Brummie t***'. He, in turn, often calls me a ‘lanky t***', and both of us regularly call James May a ‘boring t***'. No harm is meant by any of it.

But we are now reaching the point where, even on a football pitch during a vital game between the two best teams in the country, people are expected to address one another like promenading ladies on a Victorian pier. It's absurd.

And, of course, it's all the fault of a man called Ed Miliband who runs the Labour party. He is leading the charge to
make it impossible to tease anyone because of their colour, their facial disfigurements, their religion, their size, the colour of their hair, their sexual orientation, the country of their birth or their sex. Only last week he added a new one: we can no longer poke fun at those who suffer from mental illnesses.

Of course we can't go around tipping people out of wheelchairs and hounding fatties to death. But there should be a distinction between genuinely unpleasant behaviour and harmless banter. Otherwise we end up with a situation where I can't call Miliband an ‘adenoidal t***', but I can call him a ‘t***'. Which is why I just did.

4 November 2012