Call the Midlife (34 page)

We can buy time but we can’t buy time back. We can’t grab the pay-cheque, and then having missed out on a precious family afternoon at Nanna’s as a result, ask to swap it back again.

We say ‘time is money’ when what we should be saying is TIME IS EVERYTHING.

When I think about my radio show and how to fill it every morning, it’s not as daunting as you might imagine. Sure, it’s three hours long, but it’s already scheduled to be full of records, news, sport and travel, before I even begin to get a look in. If I break the issue down, it’s much less of a worry bomb – and it’s exactly the same when it comes to planning the rest of our lives.

Getting whatever time I have left organized to work for me, as opposed to me working for it, has become a huge priority over the last year. During which I think I’ve reached a eureka moment.

My biggest enemy isn’t time itself but the voice in my head that keeps screaming for me to get on with it because the best is no longer yet to come. When surely the opposite must be true.

When we enter the second half or final third of our lives – mental, physical, social conditions notwithstanding – we will in fact be in a much better place to enjoy our lives as never before.

Guilt over opportunities missed or mistakes made is time’s favourite weapon to attempt to knock us off balance and bring on a withering paranoia full of wrong decision-making.

All we have to do is to remember not to fall for such a transparent and unsophisticatated tactic. The greatest thinkers become wiser the nearer they get to their own mortality; great conductors are revered ever more as they enter their ultimate decades; surgeons, doctors and pioneers continue to hold the key to their professions’ futures as each day goes by and each new lesson teaches them something they thought they already knew but didn’t.

Modern marketing is stupidly against us but it will have no choice but to change when we show it that we have declared that the game has changed.

Time can be looked at as an arrow, pointing either forwards or backwards, or simply as the universe’s version of a Post-it note, to let us know when things happened. Can we slow time down? Does time actually matter?

Yes to the first question, and no to the second. Time is like football, overhyped and over-egged.

We are surrounded by clocks telling us time is important just as we can’t move for adverts, newspapers and sports channels bleating on about a game, the playing of which makes up barely ten per cent of the content it drives.

Well enough is enough.

I’m calling time on time.

But the future, now that’s something else.

The future is nothing to do with time. The future is a direction of travel.

The one unique and brilliant advantage it has over the past is …

WE CAN STILL GO THERE!!!

So come on, buckle up. Let’s get on with it.

Top Ten Most Irritating Phrases:

If someone says out loud, like really, in real life, the words, THOSE WERE THE DAYS, do yourself a favour and either slug them in the mouth or run for the hills. Because whatever the heck it is they’re talking about, they don’t actually mean it.

THOSE WERE THE DAYS are the most nonsensical, annoying, brainless, pointless, worthless, needless, groundless four words of the modern age. The people that employ them are just speaking out loud because they think that’s all one has to do to be listened to. They truly believe it’s far better to fill a potentially useful void of silent thinking space with mindless detritus rather than risk a moment of slight unease waiting for something actually worth saying to come along.

DON’T EVER WASTE SILENCE.

People who do should be gifted their own special circle of hell. Sandwiched somewhere between pay-day lending barons and online gambling tycoons.

For Christ’s sake:

THESE ARE
THE BLOODY DAYS.

These
, get it? Present tense.

Muppets.

The past is for Happy Snaps, Facebook, graveyards and crematoriums. Days long gone, dead and buried, don’t hold a candle to the
here and now and what’s still to come.

The future is the freedom of not knowing. The future is about to go live in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 – Blast-off Land! They say we can’t time travel. They’re wrong, we bloody well can. And we do, all the time. ‘To infinity and beyond!’ Buzz was right.

‘Still to come . . . !’ That’s what we want. And never before have we been in a better position to make the most of what that’s going to be and everything it encompasses.

If you are in or approaching your forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, or who knows even way beyond, you should be throwing your hands up in the air to give thanks.

We have never had more strings to our bow, more knives in our drawer, more rabbits up our sleeve than we have right now: more wit, more wisdom, more experience, more patience, more tolerance, more knowledge, more vision, more of everything of what we need to have the roller-coaster ride of our lives.

All of it effortlessly and unconsciously being prepared for our disposal via the various legs of each of our journeys thus far. The grand culmination of where we came from, where we’ve been and who and what has influenced us on the way.

At the age of forty-nine, I couldn’t be further away from dreading reaching my own half century. I cannot wait for the big Five-O. Bring it on. What downsides could there possibly be?

I can’t remember my eighteenth or my twenty-first, and now I know why. Because they were so unimportant compared to where I am, what I’m doing and how I’m feeling now. They didn’t mean anything because there was nothing for them to mean.

My belief is beggared when I talk to people of a similar age to me who seem to have honed a whole act out of claiming to feel the opposite of how I do. Why pretend to be like this? What’s the point? What good is it going to do them?

Since becoming aware of their legion I have become more adept at avoiding their natural habitats: bars, reunions, late-night chats, the ‘Can I have a word?’ chats. ‘Can I have a word?’ is almost always code for ‘I have a whole heap of negativity and
I would just love to dump it all over your happy head, if you don’t mind.’

Well, I do mind. No thank you. Not any more. People who really need a chat will most likely already be on our ‘concern radar’. That’s how it is between friends real friends.

This faux ‘chat’ condition bizarrely can befall even the most intelligent of people. I met an erstwhile friend recently who came across as if he was ready for the nursing home even though he’s only slightly older than me. I’ve got to tell you, I have absolutely no idea what door he thought he was knocking on. Most annoying of all, there was no sign of any rational, cognitive process of contemplation, deduction, deliberation or resolution to any part of his conclusion.

As far as he’s concerned, all that remains is to annoy our GPs and threaten to burst anyone’s bubble who dares smile in our direction.

What the f@#* is that all about?

And we’re talking about an attractive, intelligent, fit, healthy, once extremely prolific ladykiller here. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and I grew yet more incredulous with each weary word of his unremitting woe and general despondency.

Stupidly, I began to reason with him. An hour later, I swore to myself never to see him again. And I haven’t.

In much of today’s developed world there is a growing pandemic of inaction and excuses perpetrated by a lazy media low on resources, low on confidence and lowest of all on ideas. They are befuddled by what to do save send their paranoid yet still precious days peddling their ‘worry more’ and ‘enjoy less’ dogma. This bunch of deathly desperadoes represent the vanguard of the official midlife crisis; no can do, no thank you, collective. They are the doom-mongers whose disciples’ main achievement is to have collectively and stupendously given up on themselves and everyone else.

Broken Dreams Inc has just moved in.

Right next to the ‘Those were the days’ scrapyard.

But they are wrong, my friends.

Say again, after me:

THESE ARE THE DAYS.

They always have been and they always will be.

Never Go Back: Bollocks to That

The most fun I never had on the television was hosting my Nineties cult music and guest show
TFI Friday
. It looked like a blast from the outside, but for those of us who worked on it, it was a permanent treadmill set to panic, flying by the seat of our pants week in week out, until it eventually came crashing down around our ears. My hubris and all-round mental and emotional fragility being the final fatal nails in its rock ‘n’ roll coffin.

I always said I’d never bring
TFI Friday
back, despite constant calls to do so, until last year when Channel 4 requested not a series but a one-off anniversary special. ‘Now, that could be interesting,’ I thought. No pressure, all the fun we forgot to have back in the day, and ultimate closure. (Bearing in mind I walked away from the original series with ten shows to go – never a fan of goodbyes.)

Fuck it, I’m going to be fifty in a minute.

It’s all our yesterdays once more.

It’s time we gave ourselves permission to party again.

Making Programmes: What I Love

Tuesday, 2 June 2015

TFI – 10 DAYS TO GO AND COUNTING

Shit, fuck, I mean really. I am so bloody excited about this now. Christ, I hope Channel 4 like what we’ve come up with enough to order a series or perhaps even two. I mean, I know they must secretly want to. The airtime they’re giving our trails is unprecedented. This can’t all be for just a one-off.

The thing is, ninety minutes, which is what they’ve given us for this special, half an hour longer than
TFI
used to run for, just isn’t long enough. The huge advantage of having done hundreds of hours of live entertainment television is that we can imagine one draft running order after another. This means we can save both time and money without having to go to a rehearsal, but after some intense deliberation we decide almost everything we have prepared for broadcast is too good to leave out.

What to do then?

As opposed to the original show, which consisted of three or four parts depending on the ad quota, this one-off will be made up of no fewer than six parts. All but one consisting of a live music performance, all of which have now been confirmed: Years & Years and Rudimental representing the here and now, Blur bridging the past and present, and the sizzling combination of Liam Gallagher collaborating with Roger Daltrey for a unique version of ‘My Generation’ featuring a band consisting of the Stone Roses, Ian Broudie and Zak Starkey just to ensure people are truly blown away.

As the industry stands at the moment, merely by being back on the air we will instantly become the UK’s biggest live music show.

It’s great being reunited with Will, my old producer,
TFI
on-screen sidekick and one of my best pals. The two of us really do work well together. It’s like we’ve never been apart. The truth is we are two television nerds who take great joy in intricately piecing together a TV running order, item after item, second by second, changing the odd word here, the odd camera shot there, whatever it takes to build to a moment or disguise what might be coming up to wrong-foot the viewers.

Guest-wise, we’re looking at lots of members of the public who originally appeared as young adults, teenagers, kids and even babies returning for a well-deserved curtain call and a chat about what they’ve been up to since. We are particularly looking forward to meeting the six-month-old baby with exceedingly big hair; he’s sixteen now, still with an amazing barnet apparently.

Celeb-wise, it looks like we have confirmed Lewis Hamilton, who was top of our list. We wanted a big Brit who had never really been seen in a
TFI
-type situation having some fun and being able to relax. Also looking good is Amanda Seyfried, the sassy and super-cool female lead in
TED 2
– big rude toy bear comedy sequel, bound to be huge. Peter Kay has agreed to be our in-house DJ, Jeremy Clarkson has recorded a wee
Top Gear
skit for us and we have walk-ons booked for Olly Murs, Mark Carney – the Bank of England Governor, my old friend John Sentamu – the Archbishop of York, and the
TFI
legend that is Shaun Ryder.

Also in the mix are a gorgeous old couple who’ve been married for seventy years and a wheelbarrow full of puppies in our all-new-for-2015 ‘What’s Cutest?’ slot.

Have to be careful, though. Getting far too enthusiastic on social media. I tweeted the Liam/Roger collaboration, whereupon we were inundated with calls of – How? Where? Really? You sure? Followed by a few calls from Liam’s camp asking us to be a bit more ‘low key’ where his appearing was concerned. Not the exact phrase they used, but I’m sure you get my drift.

Interesting development on the publicity front. After suddenly feeling the need to kick up a storm from next Monday right up to transmission on the Friday, I call my old friend Matthew Freud to
toss around a few ideas. He enlightens me as to the ‘new way’ publicity works nowadays.

‘PR is as much about what happens post an event today as it is pre an event. For example, Comic Relief USA, which recently took place, may only have been watched by 3.5 million people but the sketch where Chris Martin sings with the
Game of Thrones
cast was rewatched over 10 million times on YouTube within twenty-four hours of originally being broadcast. Based on viewing figures on the night alone therefore, there’s a good chance Comic Relief USA would not have been recommissioned, but thanks to the post-broadcast social media traffic, it almost certainly will.’