There's a special layer of hell reserved for Clarkson

The most shocking thing to me about Jeremy Clarkson's suspension is that he is even still a thing.

Each day at lunch, I sit in the staff room reading Four Four Two whilst one of my colleagues watches repeats of Top Gear on Dave. This is annoying but a vast improvement on the Vernon Kaye fronted Celebrity Family Fortunes with some of the worst joke writing ever known to mankind.

So as I lunch, I am "treated" to a large number of Clarkson's "witticisms." The fact that the Metro was able to come up with a list of the top 10 gaffe's that he has made which barely scrapes the surface of his bigotry should give an idea to anyone who isn't completely familiar with him just what a massive twazzock he actually is.

It is 2015. It astounds me that there is such a bigoted presenter being given £8.4 million of licence payers money (around 0.25% of all fees collected) to basically offend everyone in the entire universe under the guise of being funny. I'm amazed even more that people still find it funny. But then I guess I'm a liberal with too much faith in people who likes to think no-one fines bigoted humour funny any more. I wonder if he realises that in this day and ages, it's actually possible to be funny without offending people.

I used to watch Top Gear. I liked the challenges they do. This is the entertaining part of the show to me. I really don't care about cars (I actually got rid of mine in August and have felt liberated since doing so, but that's a different story).

However, I gave up watching the show around 7 or 8 years ago because I could no longer deal with Clarkson any more. Which is a bit of a shame as I actually quite like Hammond and May as presenters.

I have seen petitions to have the overgrown hobbit reinstated. No only are they generally poorly written but a number of them are supported by the same people who have vilified footballers such as John Terry and Luis Suarez for racist behaviour previously.

It seems to me (and I am not saying that I am not guilty of this myself) that people will - at least up to a point - support transgressions of individuals that entertain them so that they can continue to be entertained.

This lack of objectivity is something that perhaps we all - myself included - need to be aware of when making judgments on celebrities.

For me, however, Clarkson being suspended is not enough. The Sixth Circle of Hell would be a more fitting punishment.

I hope the BBC gets rid of the knobchunk nice and quickly and spend the money saved on making something at a similar intellectual level, such as In The Night Garden.





"Jeremy Clarkson has three daughters, and I hope they all go blind. Not one of them, in one eye - all of them, in all their eyes! Come on! It's just a joke, like on Top Gear!" - Stewart Lee

Bucket List Item 38: Watch Matilda the Musical

I love Roald Dahl. I may have mentioned it once or twice in passing.

I also love Tim Minchin. He shares a similar world view to me, is an amazing musician and makes me chuckle. Sometimes I think he is far too intelligent. For example, I saw him once do a philosophical joke. I studied philosophy at uni for three years (admittedly I've forgotten most of it now) and the joke went over my head.

When I heard that he'd written a musical based on Matilda I got excited. It was a bit like that time when Ben Folds and Nick Hornby collaborated. A mixture of a musician I like and an author I like gets me excited. These two art forms don't generally cross over much.

I suggested to my girlfriend Jo that instead of getting each other a physical present, we arrange a day out for each other. Shortly after I suggested that, I started hoping that she remembered watching Matilda was on my bucket list. When we told each other what we had planned, and she revealed she'd got us tickets, I had a big grin on my face!

In fact, last week, I actually watched two musicals based on Dahl's work. Our staff conference at work involved us going to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at Drury Lane which was extremely enjoyable.

Whilst the Hornby/Folds album is good, and Charlie is great, the mixture of Minchin and Dahl blows both of them out of the water.

I'd heard lots of good things about Matilda from people who had been but I was still not prepared for how great it was and how the songs would be stuck in my head for the next few days.

The characters - especially the grown ups - are brilliant characatures that match the Quintin Blake illustrations from the book. I hadn't seen the posters outside the Cambridge Theatre so I didn't realise that Miss Trunchbull was played by a man and definitely let out a giggle when the reveal happened. Although to be honest, I was giggling throughout.

It was also very faithful to the source material and the parts where it diverged fitted in so well that you almost forget that they've been added.

I'm struggling to go on without adding any more spoilers. However, I urge you to go see it if you have any interest in Dahl, Minchin, musicals, theatre or laughing as it is quite simply the best show I've seen.

Review: Left Behind by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B Jenkins

Both Emily Bronte and my former English teacher will probably be please to discover that I have a new least favourite book.

I'm not sure exactly how this got on to my Kindle. It is possible that Satan himself put it there.

Either that, or I read the synopsis on Amazon which is actually quite intriguing:

"After millions of people around the world vanish in one moment, in what many claim to be the Rapture, Rayford Steele begins a search for the truth amidst global chaos."

The Walking Dead is brilliant because it takes the zombie apocalypse and deals with how people cope afterwards. The premise of this book, as stated above is that a large number of people just instantly vanish. Poof. Gone. How are those left behind going to deal with it? It's a neat concept, right?

However, this book cannot live up to that in any way, shape or form. It is apparently only 256 pages long. It felt more like 256,000. It took me forever to plow my way through this pile of dirge.

I have a problem with leaving things uncompleted. I realised by at least a quarter of the way in that I didn't like it but forced myself to finish it just in case it redeemed itself.

Not only that, but apparently there are another 12 books in this series. I have no idea how they can stretch it out to that and have absolutely no desire to find out.

Why didn't I like it? It is just really poorly written. Where there is dialogue it is bland, uninteresting and it is very difficult to distinguish any different tone of voice between the characters.

The plot itself drags its feet. It suffers from the religious context which it feels the need to explain over and over and over. It then spends large sections of the book explaining to the read why Ray - the main character - decides to convert to Christianity. It does it in such a preachy way that it is obviously intended to convert the read. I'm an atheist, but whilst I have no problem with a religious context in a story, this basically feels even more like propaganda than the leaflets Jehovah's Witnesses leave with you when you tell them to go away.

The characters really have very little personality. They are very shallow (in the way that they are written, rather than in their actual personality). Where there are hints of something interesting - the lead character having conflicting feelings about flirting with a woman other than his wife - they are very brief and killed off quickly. They are extremely one dimensional and have no internal conflict to make their stories any better.

They also have instantaneous changes of heart or opinion. Immediately after the disappearance, Ray basically says: "oh, it must be the rapture that my wife was talking about. I'd best repent." When one character falls for another, it's within about 3 minutes of meeting her.

They have made a film version of this and have cast my least favourite actor, Nicholas Cage, in the lead role. Apt for what is my least favourite book.

I would have given this zero stars on Goodreads if that was actually possible. I urge anyone not to waste their time reading this book.

Yo, Adrian! I love you!

Last night was a particularly stressful experience. I have written before about how I support West Ham. It's not a particularly rewarding past time. In my lifetime, we have won 5 trophies:

* The FA Cup - when I was not even 1 year old. I don't remember that one.
* the Inter-Toto Cup - which as everyone knows is the only European trophy worth winning
* the Championship Playoffs twice. I'm counting it, even if it's not a real victory and the trophy is only 10 centimeters tall
* The Cuitat de Barcelona trophy in 2013. A two team tournament that I didn't even know we'd won.

As you can see, it's not as rewarding trophy wise as supporting Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal or even
Liverpool.

So when we do have great victories, they mean a lot more. And I think that makes the years of everyone telling you how they like it when you do well and that you're their second team a bit more bearable.

Last night was torture though. Me and some colleagues had considered going to see our game against Everton. I'm glad it didn't happen. I struggled to deal with the emotions at home. Had we been at the ground, I think I might have actually had a heart attack.

A quick summary of the game: West Ham go 1-0, Everton have a player sent off and still manage to equalise, taking the game to extra time (and past my bed time). Everton take the lead in extra time only for Carlton Cole who is worth his weight in gold to come on as a substitute and score with his first touch a minute later which prompted the game to go to a penalty shoot out.

A penalty shoot out that I had to watch through my fingers as the tension at this point was unbearable.

No-one wants to be a goalkeeper. It's the job of the least popular kid in school to take this role. Everyone wants to be a striker, and I remember games at school where you would often have games with absolutely no defenders as everyone wanted the glory.

Even West Ham's current goalkeeper, Adrian, wanted to be a striker. It wasn't to be and now he makes a living as a goalkeeper. A thankless task, really. As he tweeted the day before the game, great goalkeepers never with the Ballon d'Or. They never win a golden boot, just get a golden glove that everyone forgets about. They rarely get any real recognition.

That's why I was so pleased when at the end of an epic penalty shoot-out, with the scores at 8-8, Adrian - who is my new favourite player because of this - got to be the hero. 

And in such a cool way. The confidence he had to take off his gloves during his run up to take the penalty - the psychological effect it must have had on his opposite number Robles who had just missed his penalty - saying "I'm not going to need these any more, the game is over" - was awesome. He was cool as anything, and it just exuded confidence to do it during his run up. 

It was the best thing I've seen in a long time, and he deserved his moment sliding on his knees towards the fans. The moment of glory that goalkeepers rarely get. 

He gets my vote for Hammer of the Year. I'm calling it now.

Everything Is Awesome

When I was in primary school, my parents came home one day with a big orange box. The box had about a million pieces of Lego in it. I think they had bought it from parents of a child who had grown out of it and it contained a wide variety of random pieces. This was back in the days when if you bought Lego, you just bought a selection of bricks rather than the packages you get these days of Hogwarts or a pirate ship.

I can't remember if I was very excited, but in retrospect I really should have been. That one box of Lego provided me with many hours of fun throughout my childhood, attempting to create many different things out of what was available.

I was slightly OCD, however, and everything had to be the same colour. I couldn't have a house with mostly red bricks and a few random other colours to make up the numbers. That annoyed me and if I was playing with other children, I would secretly rip apart anything they'd made which didn't conform to my monocolour brick rules and rebuild it appropriately.

The orange box disappeared one day. I am assuming that when my parents thought I had grown out of Lego, they sold it onto the parents of another family who I hope enjoyed it as much as I did. I'm not sure you can ever actually grow out of Lego.

Recently, my life has converged around a few Lego-based things and I started thinking about all the things I used to make.

My cousin sold me his copy of Lego Marvel Superheroes on the Playstation 4. I'm fairly sure it is the first and currently only game that I have fully completed. 100%. Platinum medal. All of that jazz. I'd previously played some of Lego Star Wars, although I didn't get into as much. Possibly because superheroes are much cooler than lightsabers, no matter what anyone says.

The humour of the game, and of the TV shows (I have only watched one, so I am assuming it runs throughout the other ones) is simple, childish... but still brilliant. It draws you into it's universe and reminds you of a simpler time when all that mattered was making sure that all your buildings were made of the same colour bricks. Well, that's what it reminds me of anyway.

Shortly after completing the game, Lovefilm sent me the Lego Movie which I got around to watching the best part of a year after everyone else. I was worried that I would be disappointed after everyone had told me how amazing it is. I was not disappointed. The main part of the film is brilliant and then the metaphysical ending where it turns out Will Ferrell is actually a real life human being rather than a Lego overlord was unexpected but perfect.

I started working in London a couple of months ago and have been using my holiday to take half days and do touristy things. There is currently an exhibition of Lego art called the Art of Brick  which, aptly enough, it is in Brick Lane. When I heard about this, I decided to treat myself to a visit as a birthday present to myself.

The exhibition is all work from an American man named Nathan Sawaya who quit his job as a lawyer to make Lego art. As a job. That is so incredibly cool and inspiring. I kind of want to be him. Especially after you watch some of the videos at the exhibition and realise he is actually a very lovely chap.

I highly recommend this exhibition - it is on until April 2015 and costs about £15 but is worth every penny. I've included a couple of photos to give you an idea of the artwork on display. The first couple of rooms feature replicas of other artworks which are cool, but it is not until you get into the rooms where he has created original pieces that you start to see how amazing his work is.

After all of this recent Lego based excitement, I have obviously bought my niece some Duplo for Christmas. Well, I say it's for my niece....

My 10 favourite books

My good friend Lisa (the one who looked so delighted at throwing ice water over me) challenged me to do the 10 favourite books list.

Now, my life is run almost entirely by lists. I have a list of things to do today, of which writing this is on it. It almost certainly wouldn't get done if it wasn't on the list.

I can also get quite obsessive about lists as well. Coming up with my 10 favourite movies took the best part of a couple of months. You've got to get these things right. Well, I do.

"Books, records, films... these things matter."

It's seriously the sort of things that will bug me if I get it wrong, so you may well see this list edited at some point in the near future.

So, I would like to thank Lisa for challenging me and taking up a large part of my weekend as she knows I'm crap at backing down from a challenge. However, as it has been spent thinking about something that I love, it's really not all bad.

I've been reading since as long as I can remember. One of my first memories is attempting to read the Narnia books and having to stop frequently to go to ask my parents what a certain word meant. I never did make it all the way through the whole series. 

I really enjoy being able to hide away in my own little world with a book. Or rather, to hide away in someone else's little world which we are sharing for however many pages the book covers.

I am perhaps far too excited about the fact that my new job means commuting for 2 hours a day which I will be able to dedicate to reading. 

Reading is important to me. When I was in Porto recently, I went to a very pretty bookshop called Livraria Lello. (The picture here is someone else's as you can only take photos for 1 hour a day). I chose this over more traditional tourist attractions - although admittedly Porto is slightly lacking in them as the train station is number 6 on Trip Advisor's list - because there is a certain beauty about books and visiting a pretty bookshop is something that appeals to me.

This is even though I've only bought one or two physical books in the last two years. The year that Amazon went really heavy on their promotion of the Kindle, I was suckered into buying myself one for Christmas. 

I thought I would hate it as books are really pretty and smell nice. I was wrong. I absolutely adore it and it is one of the best purchases I have made. Not only for the fact you can get lots of classics for free or close to it, but for the fact you can carry around with you hundreds of books effortlessly. It has a built in dictionary so I look up more words (even the effort of picking up my phone to search the internet for a word's meaning is enough to disrupt my flow when reading a book). It is really lightweight and much easier to hold than a weighty tome. If I want a new book, I can get it in seconds.  The main downside is being unable to share books with people, but I'm sure I can cope with that. 

I am currently reading a proper book (A Child of the Jago, since you asked) and it is nice to do so occasionally, but I feel that by the time I retire they will be almost obsolete.

Anyway, in alphabetical order (because attempting to put them in order of preference would take another week), here are my 10 favourite books:

Bill Bryson - Notes From A Small Island

Bryson's writing helped ignite a love of travel in me. This book in particular made me realise that there are awesome things around me and is possibly part of what prompted me to go driving around England last year.

Douglas Coupland - Girlfriend In A Coma

Chosing a Coupland book is hard because the older stuff is in my opinion superior to his recent output and I read it all quite a while ago now. I picked this one simply because it is what inspired my screen name monkeyinacoma.  

Roald Dahl - George's Marvellous Medicine

Dahl is one of my favourite authors and it is difficult to narrow it down to one book, however this is the one that I read over and over as a child, so much so that it fell apart.

Nick Hornby - High Fidelity

Sometimes, a book will become a favourite due to the time of your life when you read it. I think this is one of those books. It made me feel like I was actually coping quite well with my life in comparison whilst at the same time wanting to be Rob Flemming. 

Aldous Huxley - Brave New World

This was a toss up between Brave New World and 1984. I read them both for my A-Level English and was amazed at how much better they were than anything we had been made to read in English previously. I really enjoyed the dystopian themes in both novels which appealed to the moody teenage version of myself. I think these two books are what made me fall in love with reading again after spending many of my teenage years focussed on computer games. I prefer Orwell's writing overall but Brave New World is in my opinion a more attractive piece of writing. 

Rachel Joyce - The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

An old man writes a letter to a former colleague. On the way to the postbox, he decides to hand deliver it and begins a journey from Devon to Berwick-Upon-Tweed. I found this book so instantly likeable and there are themes of reconciliation and rejuvenation and finding a sense of purpose running through it that just seemed to resonate with me. 

Andrew Kauffman - All My Friends Are Superheroes

Kauffman has a very definite voice and it is one I am envious of. His brain is also full of brilliant ideas that I wish I had. This is an exceptionally cute story where all the characters have a superpower (of sorts) and I was hooked from pretty much the first few sentences.

Frank Miller - The Dark Knight Returns

Batman is far and away my favourite superhero. He has been since I was 8. I'm not sure exactly what it is that attracts me to the character other than that I really want to be him. This was the first Batman graphic novel I read which was - to my shame - only a few years ago. I have since read a large number although none compare to this one. There are almost Shakespearian themes running through it with Batman and the Joker's stories seeming to mirror each other in some way. I cannot recommend this highly enough.

Chuck Palahniuk - Choke

I tend to binge on things. Last year, I read through Palahniuk's back catalogue having previously only read Fight Club and Choke. Sometimes he can be a bit hit and miss (Pygmy being especially hard to make it all the way through). He has his thing of repetition and this can sometimes be awesome and sometimes a bit too predictable. I like author's who have their own distinctive style and Chuck usually manages that. I picked Choke as it's the only one of his books that I have read twice so far and there must be a reason for that.

Kurt Vonnegut - Welcome to the Monkey House

I only read this last month but it has made such an impression on me that it makes the list. It's the first Vonnegut I've read and is actually a collection of short stories but even after reading the introduction, I knew I would enjoy it. The way Vonnegut talks about himself in that introduction made me warm to him instantly and the wit and charm in that introduction pervades through his writing which still seems fresh and original around 50 years later.

Ice Ice Baby

I went away on holiday with minimal internet access for 10 days and when I return home, I discover that people are throwing ice over themselves, telling me that I have to throw ice over myself and criticising others for throwing ice over themselves.

Most importantly, I have discovered that Tweak and Antmonkey are the people who hate me the most.

These are some of the criticisms I have heard:

It is bandwagon jumping/just a fad

Bandwagon jumping has happened since the dawn of time. People want to do stuff that other people have done and looks like fun. Life, in my opinion, is about experiences. If someone else has an experience that looks enjoyable, why shouldn't someone else want to do the same? Although admittedly, pouring a bucket of ice water over your head doesn't look enjoyable. But I guess being a part of something does.

And the fact that it's a fad? So what. So were pogs, speak and spells, bell bottoms, shell suits and the #nomakeupselfie. The world goes through fads as people try out new things. And that's just fine.

It is silly

Lots of things are silly. Silliness is what makes life fun. And that's just fine.

Not everyone is donating to charity

This strikes me as slightly holier than thou. Sure, some people are doing it just for the hell of it, because it's a challenge. And so what? They've not obliged to donate to charity just for doing something they want to do. I always find it difficult asking other people for donations to charity for something I'm going to do anyway. People shouldn't feel they have to donate just because they want to join in with a trend/have been nominated to do so. And that's just fine.

You shouldn't need a gimmick to make you donate to charity

This I can agree with. You shouldn't. The fact that you are one of the 40% of the world population on the internet, able to read this means that you are likely to have above average wealth. As such, perhaps you should be donating a small part of your income to those less fortunate than you. Being holier than thou for a second, I donate a small sum out of my salary regularly because I can. Not everyone is perhaps as fortunate enough as me to be able to spare that regular donation. And that's just fine.

You are donating to the "wrong" charity

There are two strands to this. The first is that Macmillan have hijacked the fad to try to raise funds for their own cause, rather than for ALS/MND. If this has been something that they have done on purpose, then it strikes me as a very bad move as it will lose them a lot of goodwill, and them issuing a statement on it may not actually have helped as intended. Having said that, people are able to donate to whatever charities they wish to, and if some people have chosen to donate to Macmillan, Cancer Research or anything else then that is fine. They are still helping people in some way, which is a good thing.

The second strand is that other charities deserve the support more. This is something that is pretty hard to compare, really. I think it just comes down to what personal opinions you have and what charities are close to your heart. Personally, I prefer to donate to charities that attempt to combat social injustice, such as Amnesty, Shelter or Wateraid. Other people chose other charities. And that's just fine.

They will just waste the money you donate

The argument is that it will be spent on PR, staff salaries and they will just be wasting the money. So what? So will I. I will just spend it on beer. At least a portion of it might do good this way. And that's just fine.