Life is Healthy

INT. CHOCOLATE LOG FACTORY – DAY.

Two Employees glumly inspect their sales figures.

EMPLOYEE 1
Have you noticed that sales of chocolate logs are a bit, well, seasonal?

EMPLOYEE 2
Yes. Yes, I had noticed that. We seem to sell a lot in December, but then the rest of the year is empty and we end up having to throw quite a lot of chocolate logs away.

EMPLOYEE 1
Perhaps we could diversify and make some other kind of cake or confectionary item?

EMPLOYEE 2
But I only know how to make chocolate logs.

EMPLOYEE 1
Really? They’re just chocolate Swiss rolls, covered in chocolate. Are you sure you can’t adapt the recipe and make something else?

EMPLOYEE 2
No. It’s chocolate logs or nothing.

EMPLOYEE 1
But we’re going to go out of business.

EMPLOYEE 2
Maybe we can persuade people to buy chocolate logs at other times of the year?

EMPLOYEE 1
How? They are a completely Christmassy item. They are as Christmassy as crackers, baubles and tinsel.

They sit in silence for a moment.

EMPLOYEE 2
What about an Easter Chocolate Log?

EMPLOYEE 1
Brilliant!



Like most people I don’t have a clue where the chocolate rabbits fit into the crucifixion/resurrection scenario, but this is just a bit silly, isn’t it? However, I’m look forward to Father’s Day mince pies.

Like many other Apprentice-watchers I am somewhat mystified by the continued presence of Michael Sophocles. But on a recent visit to the BBC I found the following transcript from the final show, which I think reveals everything.


INT. BOARDROOM – DAY.

SIR ALAN

Michael – why should I hire you?


SOPHOCLES
Sir Alan, I’m a good Jewish boy.


SIR ALAN

Are you?!


SOPHOCLES

Well, half-Jewish. I never knew my gentile father though. My mother said that he was driven to suicide in the 1980s when his range of cheap personal computers was ruthlessly undercut by Amstrad. Amstrads had crappy 3” disk drives for fuck’s sake, yet everyone bought them instead. You killed my father. Well now you’re “fired”.

SIR ALAN

You’re not half-Jewish.


SOPHOCLES

I am! I am! I’m half-Jewish!


SIR ALAN

You’re not half-Jewish. You’re 100% Jewish.


SOPHOCLES

You killed my father!


SIR ALAN

No Michael. I am your father.

SIR ALAN

That’s right – you’re sired. Sired by me.


SOPHOCLES

COME ON!

[NAME DELETED]

Um, is it even worth mentioning that I won this task? No? OK, I'll just fire myself. Frances - could you call me a cab please?

(Also available on b3ta.)

So farewell then
Ingmar Bergman
Nxe5++

Mocking advertisements and pointing out the inane lies behind them is like shooting fish in a barrel. And not lots of little fish that are swimming around quickly, making them a bit difficult to aim at, what with water refracting light and giving a false perception of depth, but one fat fish that is so big it’s pretty much wedged into the barrel. A fish that has also been genetically modified to grow a series of concentric circles on its back like an archery target with a big flashing neon arrow saying “AIM HERE ->”.

It’s unsatisfyingly easy, but I was intrigued by the latest advert from Head and Shoulders that promised to leave me “up to 100% flake-free”. That “up to” is worryingly non-specific, isn’t it? By its very definition, percent goes from 0 “up to” 100, so what they’re really saying is “anything could happen”.

On that basis anyone could claim anything:

“Werthers Originals – make you up to 100% immortal.”

(I don’t have dandruff by the way – just healthy-looking hair.)

Britain witnessed a lunar eclipse last weekend. Lunar eclipses have traditionally been seen as bad omens and, lo and behold, the very next day Take That were number one again.




Madame Tussauds has been bought by the company that owns Legoland. So, the makers of countless model people with shiny yellow faces with simplistic features that all look the same except for unrealistic interchangeable hair has been bought by Legoland.



Children as young as 11 could have their fingerprints taken to be stored on passports. Though with 11-year olds these days I just hope there’s enough room on the biometric chip to also store their weight, criminal record and how many children they’ve got.



A 54-year old woman in London desperate to become a mother has resorted to advertising on buses for an egg donor. I expect that she'll have triplets. It’s always the same – you wait ages then three come along at once.

I was rather worried to hear the latest instalment from David Blunkett’s diaries on Radio 4 this morning, in particular an entry from September 2001 regarding national security. He described the problems of damping down fear by telling the public that the government knew what was happening, whilst simultaneously having to get to grips with officials to make sure that things were actually done. He wrote of an old school-friend and his wife, Christine, who lived in Vancouver:

“Christine said that a patient in her physiotherapy clinic had told her a curious story. A relative who’d been in London had found someone’s wallet, and having returned it to them were offered money as a reward. They turned this down. So the owner of the wallet, who was an Arab, said, “Well, I’ve got to do something for you. Don’t be in London on the 11th of November.” I immediately registered the significance of this. The 11th of November is Armistice Day – the one day in the year when all leading politicians from the three parties, the Queen, other members of the royal family and the leading personnel of the armed services are in the same place at the same time. A known time. In Central London. I decided that I should at least tell Tony as it was absolutely clear that nobody had fully thought through the significance. We agreed that there was no way we could cancel Armistice Day, but we were certainly going to have to take increased precautions.”

I know it was five years ago, but is there anybody who hasn’t heard a variation on this story and instantly dismissed it as an urban myth? It’s usually Birmingham in the version I’ve been told, and I tend to reply, “Yeah, I’ll stay away – it’s a right dump.”

What if our whole country were being run according to things that had happened to a friend of a friend?

Education
All exams to be replaced by one that just has one question: “Is this a question?” Anyone who answers “Yes, if this is an answer” will get an A. All exam pencils to be sharpened down to less than 4cm in case pupils stick them up their noses and bang their heads down to commit suicide. Because that happened at my mate’s school. And they gave everyone an A.

Health
All money from Aids and malaria programmes to be diverted into eradicating the world of spiders. Because this woman got bitten by one once and a few weeks later this lump came up on her arm, and she went to the doctor, and he cut it open and loads of little spiders came out and she went mad.

Also more money urgently needed for stomach pumps for Marc Almond. Or was it the other one out of Soft Cell?

ID Cards
Passports to be combined with organ donor cards. Because I heard about this guy who went abroad and he woke up in a bath of ice and they’d taken his kidney. It’s true. You can’t trust them.

Arts
All theatres to be closed down to prevent criminals stealing your car, then returning it with a note saying sorry and two theatre tickets to compensate, so they then know that you’ll be out all evening and can burgle you. Subsidies to be spent instead on a memorial for the kid from the Frosties advert.

Also Countdown to be moved to a post-watershed slot. Did you know that the letters once spelt W-A-N-K-M-E-O-F-F?

Transport
Urgent recall of all 32m cars currently on the road to have their door handles redesigned so that they can’t be opened by serial killers who have hooks for hands. Did you hear about that poor woman? The policeman told her not to look back...

Crime
All homes to be fitted with constantly-monitored CCTV cameras in case a burglar ever breaks in and puts your toothbrush up his bottom then takes a photo of it with your camera. And much stiffer sentences for this crime because it happened to friends of mine and I retched when I heard.

Sport
Sarah Greene and a pool table to be drafted in to boost the morale of all national teams.

Social Security
Channel Tunnel Rail Link to be extended in an extra 250 mile loop winding through the back gardens of everyone in Kent. Then a train will be sent through at 6am every day to wake them all up. Too late to go back to sleep; too early to get up; only one thing to do: baby boom, end of pensions crisis. There was this village this really happened in, you know...

Foreign Affairs
There’s this guy at the Foreign Office, yeah, and he says that Iraq have got these WMDs or something and in 45 minutes we could all be dead. It’s true – a friend of a friend told me...

The Scottish parliament is spending £250 a bird to remove pigeons nesting on the building. The crackdown was imposed when ministers heard rumours of a coup.