Is It Really Too Much to Ask? (36 page)

I think it was the much-missed Keith Waterhouse who invented the ‘I have never' game. The rules are simple. You tell a group of friends something that you have never done in your whole life and those that have done it give you 10p.

Keith's sure-fire winner was ‘I have never taken a dog for a walk'. But I could always retort with the incredible but true ‘I have never bought anything from Marks & Spencer'.

And there are other nuggets in my repertoire. I have never seen a single moment of
EastEnders
. I have never seen any of the
Godfather
movies. I've never smoked a joint. And I've never been on a London bus.

The only problem with the game is that after about five minutes people are struggling to think of mundane things that they alone have never done. So things become sexual. And embarrassing, as ten people around a bottle-strewn table try to claim that they too have never had intercourse in a public place or by themselves in front of a computer.

Once, having been cleaned out by a chap who had never been to Scotland, I was so desperate I came up with, ‘I have never used a tampon', knowing that half the table would have to cough up. Amazingly one man gave me 10p, though obviously I won't mention his name here – only that it begins with a J and ends in Ames May. Apparently he uses them to clean hard-to-reach parts of his cooker.

Anyway, a survey revealed last week that the smuttiness and tampon admissions are unnecessary because millions of people in Britain have never done anything mundane at all.
Some of the findings are not surprising: 37 per cent have never read anything by Shakespeare, 68 per cent have never been skiing and 36 per cent have never been to a football match.

But most of it is just too amazing for words: 23 per cent of the nation – that's more than 14 million souls – have never been on an aeroplane while an equal number haven't even been to France. Also 17 per cent have never wired a plug; 6 per cent have never used a mobile phone; 16 per cent have never sent an email; and 30 per cent have never ordered a takeaway cup of coffee. But for me the biggest surprise is this one: 19 per cent have never eaten anything from McDonald's.

Of course, we all know the problem that lurks behind Ronald's cheery grin. McDonald's is fundamentally evil. We don't know why we know this, but we do. Which is why whenever three or four protesters are gathered together, they head immediately for the golden arches.

It doesn't matter whether they are fathers fighting for justice, or anti-G8 communists, or students campaigning on behalf of Brian May's badger; all of them feel certain that their cause will be strengthened if they go and kick a hole through Ronald's windows.

It has been argued in the past that no two countries where McDonald's operates have ever gone to war with each other. And that's true. Apart from when America invaded Panama. And when NATO bombed Serbia. And Libya, obviously. And Russia bombed Georgia. And so on. ‘You see,' scream the protesters. ‘Evil!!!'

Then you have the comedian Robin Williams, who once said of his new son: ‘I have a dream where one day he is saying, “I would like to thank the Nobel academy.” And a nightmare where he is saying, “Do you want fries with that?” '

My children have had Big Macs in the past but now they are full of righteous teenage anger they would not have one again. This is partly because they know for sure that McDonald's is pouring acid into the sea and partly because company executives like to unwind after a busy day by clubbing puppy dogs to death.

Mostly, though, it's because they know as a fact that McDonald's has bulldozed the entire Brazilian rainforest to create pasture for its beef herds. Yes, that's right. It has severed the world's lungs to increase its filthy profits. This is the level of evil we are talking about here. Top baddies such as Blofeld and Osama bin Laden pale into obscurity alongside the corporate savagery emanating on a day-by-day basis from the company's Illinois headquarters.

And that's before we get to the damage done by its products. A Big Mac is a heart attack in a bun. A Quarter Pounder has exactly the same effect on your well-being as licking the debris at Fukushima. And a McNugget is basically a piece of battered excrement. Eat any of this stuff and you will swell up until you are the size of a Buick. And then you will burst, showering everyone within 400 yards with thick, yellow fat, and spiders.

However, the problem is that after a night out, when you are weary and hungover, there is nothing that hits the spot quite so well as a Big Mac and fries.

I have tried everything in these circumstances: pills; hairs of every dog I can think of; worcestershire sauce with a splash of tomato juice; and once an injection of vitamin B. All of them work – the injection works brilliantly, in fact – but none works quite as well as a Big Mac.

It's as comforting as your childhood teddy bear, and as tasty as the tastiest thing you ever put in your mouth. And when you've finished, and it's down there in your stomach,
absorbing the sick, you know that despite everything your head may be saying, all will soon be right with the world once more.

I am plainly not alone in thinking this because in Britain McDonald's serves 2.5 million customers every day. Around the world it serves more than 75 burgers every second. To date it has sold more than 245 billion and that means, all on its own, the company has a bigger economy than Ecuador.

So when I read that almost one in five British people claims to have never had a Big Mac, I draw a simple conclusion. Either many millions of people are missing out on one of life's greatest pleasures, or Britain is home to a great many liars.

11 November 2012

Twenty years ago I would land at Heathrow after every trip to America and kiss the tarmac, thanking every god I could think of that I was back in the land of the free.

Back then in Britain we were allowed to smoke and smack our children and rush about the countryside on horseback.

Footballers could call one another names, children could cycle in home clothes, we could drink irresponsibly and park on a yellow line while we popped into the shop for some milk. We could use cameras to film school sports days, abuse useless counter staff and get on a plane with our toothpaste. It was nice.

America, meanwhile, was drowning in a thunderstorm of petty bureaucracy that meant every janitor was armed with a walkie-talkie and a gun and encouraged to shoot anyone who broke any of the laws, no matter how bonkers they may have been.

You had to wear shoes while shopping. It was illegal to deface signs telling you it was illegal to deface signs. You were not allowed to swim in the pool if you'd had a tummy upset within the past fourteen days. Drinking in the street was prohibited. And you were not permitted to take any smoking material on to federal property. You couldn't even use a police car park if there was a cigarette lighter in your vehicle. It was madness.

In Soviet Russia you were allowed to do everything but vote. Whereas in America twenty years ago you could vote. But do nothing else. And it's still bad today. In the summer
my daughter was carted off by the police for smoking near a fruit machine while under the age of twenty-one. And we had to produce photo ID before being allowed to rent a locker. It was almost as though they'd studied the ancient British laws governing London taxi drivers and high sheriffs and thought, ‘Ooh. They look good. Let's insist New York cabbies carry a bale of hay in the boot, and ban people from taking fish into a cinema in Colorado.'

And it's even worse if you are part of a television crew because you'll need a permit before you film anything. And even when you get a permit, there will be a problem. An example: you can get permission to film on Wall Street. But it does not entitle you to film any of the buildings. And have you tried to take a picture in this concrete canyon without any office block appearing in the back of the shot? It's pretty tricky.

Another example: you can close a street in Detroit but you must give every single business whose door opens on to the street in question several weeks' notice of the closure.

And if you don't, an angry policeman will arrive to tell you the mayor has chewed the district attorney's bottom and that the DA has chewed his bottom and that now he's going to chew yours.

However, I was in America last week and I have some good news. Because while the fools in state and federal government continue to cut away at every basic human freedom, people are starting to find ways round the nonsense.

There's a bar in Los Angeles where the roof does not quite meet in the middle. This means that, technically, it's open to the air and that means you can smoke. And at the fabulous Roosevelt hotel in Los Angeles, there is no smoking allowed anywhere. But no one stops you if you do. In fact, they'll even bring you a saucer, saying you can use it as an ashtray.

It gets better. Because although we were forced to have a highway patrol officer in attendance while filming on the road, he was empowered to let us do what we wanted. Which meant that last Saturday I went past him on State Route 111 in southern California doing 186mph.

So to sum up: they've made a law that requires me to have a policeman on site, and by doing so have enabled me to break the law he's supposedly there to enforce.

But it gets even better. We also wanted to film some aeroplanes that needed to be flying at 300mph about six inches off the ground. To make sure that didn't happen, the authorities sent along an aviation inspector, who turned up and promptly moved heaven and earth to make sure that it did.

Everywhere we went it was the same thing. Normally if you make one little mistake on your visa waiver form you are sent to the back of a three-hour queue. This time I'd made lots. I couldn't be bothered to rummage around in the overhead locker to find out what my passport number was so I'd made one up. I said I was staying at a Premier Inn. And that I had been on a farm, and in Africa and that I had done a bit of genocide. None of which bothered the Homeland Security chap one bit.

Plainly, then, everyone is becoming content to let the politicians huff and puff and introduce silly laws to appease tiny but very noisy minorities. Just so long as the people employed to enforce those laws don't. This is very cheery news because, of course, what happens in America happens here shortly afterwards.

At present we are in a mess. You couldn't shoot a badger. Then you could, but only if your shot was monitored by a government official. And then you couldn't shoot a badger again.

You couldn't build a conservatory on the end of your
house. Then you could, so long as it was less than 27ft long. And then you could build a chemical plant as well, and your neighbours weren't allowed to object four times – only twice. Provided they weren't smoking at the time, or under arrest for hugging a teenage fan thirty years ago, or for taking make-up samples home from work just before the police arrived to search the building for evidence of a crime they said hadn't happened.

It's time we started to behave like modern-day Americans and used our nous. These badgers are killing my cows. I shall shoot them. No one will be inconvenienced if I stop here for a moment to buy stamps. And if I'm warned by someone's employer that I face prosecution for telling counter staff they are morons, I shall write back saying they are morons too.

25 November 2012

Every so often someone with too much time on their hands works out how much of our lives we spend at work, or eating, or looking for cooking utensils that we haven't used for a while.

Well, last week, while waiting for yet another flight, I worked out that I spend, on average, twenty hours a month sitting around in airports. That's ten days of my year spent in a cloud of idiotic perfume, looking at watches and trying to make the Wi-Fi work. Simply so that I can get on what is basically a bus. And there's no point complaining to the authorities, because it's ‘security, sir'.

This is the problem. So long as there is one man out there with a grudge and a stick of dynamite, governments have a perfect excuse to stick their fingers in your bottom, look at pictures of you naked and rummage around in your handbag. You can shout as much as you like, but it will make absolutely no difference.

If you abuse the staff, they won't let you on the plane. If you refuse to let them look in your underpants, they won't let you on the plane. If you ask them not to take photographs of your breasts with their X-ray cameras, they won't let you on the plane. It makes my teeth itch with rage. But happily, last weekend, I came up with a solution. We simply get rid of terrorism.

In the early seventeenth century the world was troubled by religious division. I know, I know. Hard to believe, but there you are. Anyway, some Catholic Brummies felt they were
being persecuted by King James I of England and decided it would be best if he, his family and all his Protestant muckers were killed. They decided, therefore, to blow up the House of Lords during the state opening of parliament. And the Gunpowder Plot was hatched.

Unfortunately, from their point of view, there was much plague around at the time and, as a result, the state opening was delayed for more than six months, by which time the gunpowder had spoilt. So they went off to buy some more, and while this was happening one of the group accidentally told some of the king's men what they were up to.

The House of Lords was searched and in the undercroft soldiers found Guy Fawkes standing next to a big pile of wood. He claimed he was a servant and they went away. But the next day they went back and the idiot was there again. So they looked under his wood and found all the gunpowder, and that was the end of that.

Fawkes, then, was a terrible terrorist. Such a moron, in fact, that today people of all faiths celebrate his subsequent execution by burning his effigy, eating sausage rolls and keeping the neighbours awake with various loud noises. In short, our forefathers turned him into a figure of ridicule and as a result we've had a Protestant monarch ever since.

Today, though, things have changed. We put Che Guevara on a T-shirt and think he looked rather cool. People say that Osama bin Laden had kind eyes. We've dug up poor old Yasser Arafat to see if he was murdered. And in Northern Ireland former enthusiasts of terror are allowed to take up serious positions in the government.

This is all wrong. Instead we should rename Guantanamo Bay as the Che Correctional Institute because that would annoy him. Every year on 2 May – the anniversary of bin Laden's death – the free world should be invited to go round
to one another's houses for a piss-up. And all those IRA boys should be put on floats, dressed as clowns and paraded around town centres so we can laugh at them and their failure.

Nobody would ever dream of giving a failed terrorist community service. But that's exactly the sort of humiliation I'm after. I'd very much like to see the shoe bomber cutting all the grass in Hyde Park. With nail scissors. And it'd be a hoot to make the underwear bomber clean all the stained glass in Westminster Abbey. With his tongue.

We could even bring back
It's a Knockout
and howl with Stuart Hall-style laughter as two teams from, say, the Real IRA and al-Qaeda splosh about the streets of Corby in yellow onesies and big shoes. We could then see them for what they are. Not ogres. Not heroes. Just sad, pathetic, misguided losers whose big idea ended in capture.

At present we see terrorists as swivel-eyed, hook-handed madmen with hearts of stone and nitroglycerine for blood. Wrong. The authorities should show us pictures of them naked. Crying. Begging for their mums. We need to see what they really are. Humans who've gone a bit wrong.

There's another advantage too. At present, Muslim extremists are told that if they explode in a shopping centre they will have a jolly happy afterlife full of many good things. This means that from their perspective there's no downside. But if the bomb fails to go off and they end up as part of an insect-based bushtucker trial on
I'm a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!
, they may well think twice about putting on the vest.

When you are a serious, religious, committed zealot, you do not want to spend the rest of your days sucking worms from between the toes of Nadine Dorries. Or working out how long we spend on the lavatory. And you certainly won't want to be remembered every year as an excuse to get bladdered on mulled wine. Ask Guy Fawkes about that.

I realize, of course, that none of my ideas will be taken seriously, which is why I have devised a back-up plan. All Western governments abolish, immediately, all security screening at all airports. Because nothing tells a terrorist he's failed more than a show of complete lack of interest.

Sadly, though, this won't be adopted, either. Because governments are interested in the contents of your bottom. Obama Barack wants to look inside your handbag. And airports like it too. Because the longer you have to wait, the greater the chances you'll end up buying a tin of horrible shortbread with a picture of Windsor Castle on the lid.

2 December 2012