Me And My Misopohonia 5/19/12

Last night, the American television network ABC aired a programme about 19 year old Emma Riehl, who suffers from misophonia – literally, a hatred of sound.

The neurological condition means that sufferers endure high states of anxiety triggered by certain sounds; their inability to tolerate them often forces them into a life of solitude.

  

I have suffered from misophonia all my life – I just didn’t know it. In recent years, my tolerance to particular noises is so low, it has drastically curtailed activities that most people take for granted.

  

Take eating. Many of my friends think I have an eating disorder because, when we visit a restaurant, I rarely eat anything.

It’s not that I don’t like my food – I eat like a pig at home; I just can’t stand the sound of other people’s noises, and the tension in my stomach makes it impossible to consume anything other than several drinks to calm my nerves.

  

I can’t stand the sound of a fork twisting pasta at the bottom of a plate or, worse, the scraping of a spoon at the bottom of a yoghurt pot. So bad is my response to the latter, I can no longer eat breakfast in a hotel restaurant when I go away.

 

My brother, to whom I am very close, drinks coffee at very high temperatures. I have to leave the room when he drinks, as the tension while waiting for the slurp as he descends upon the liquid, makes me feel not just annoyed but angry – and I am not an angry person.

  

Tapping, chewing, scraping – many people find these noises irritating, but I really cannot be around them. Last week, I had to ask my cleaner to stop chewing; to me, the noise was like a hurricane, and I felt like hitting the gum out of her mouth – and I am not a violent person, either.

  

My life as a television critic is spent with the remote control permanently in one hand, as I have to hit the mute button if anyone is eating or drinking on screen. Characters or presenters tapping at a keyboard is another sound that drives me to distraction, just as it does in real life.

A few weeks back, I appeared on Radio 4’s Today programme and, while waiting for my item in the studio, John Humphrys’ sidekick was tapping at her keyboard. My palms started to sweat and I dug my nails hard into them, so extreme was my feeling of fury.

  

“Excuse me, but are you going to be doing that throughout?” I asked. I knew I would not have been able to carry on through what felt like a hailstorm coursing through my every vein.

  

I can move carriages up to ten times on a train if I can hear somebody texting – which they are allowed to do in the quiet carriage. Indeed, I once became involved in a row when somebody objected to my intense sighing and mumbling about the noise. Long-haul flying became a nightmare, with the sound from other people’s headphones – another personal hatred.

They say that misophonia is a rare condition and little understood. It is also very different from hyperacusis, which is the over-sensitivity to the loudness of a sound. Alas, I have that, too, and spend the little social life I have asking staff to turn down the music in bars and clubs.

  

Alas, there is no known cure. Ear-plugs are a no-no for me, as the sound of my own breathing similarly drives me to distraction. Some recommend therapy – but I am sure that whatever noise the therapist made would counter any effectiveness of the treatment.

  

So, for the moment, I just have to live with it, as I suspect my misophonia will only stop when I am six feet under.

Even then, I wouldn’t rule out the earthworms getting on my nerves.

  

Dying Is An Art 5/12/12

There are many things I was told throughout my childhood that turned out not to be true.

If you swallow chewing gum, it will wrap around your heart and YOU WILL DIE! for one.

If you don’t go to sleep, the Bogey Man will come and get you (subtext: AND YOU WILL DIE!).

If you don’t look right, look left and right again (I think that was the order), as the road expert Tufty tells you, a bus will come along and YOU WILL DIE!

Small wonder I didn’t die of a heart attack caused by fear, long before I reached adulthood.

  

I am convinced that the reason I, and so many of my friends, never experimented with drugs was because of a very effective poster campaign during our teens. It was, basically: if you take drugs . . . yes, you guessed it . . . YOU WILL DIE!

  

I was brought up with a fear of dying from a very early age, not helped by a church background that instilled in me a fear of the afterlife – heaven, if you were good; hell, if you were bad. Good meant have to take eternal afternoon tea with all the old fuddy duddies from church, and hell was just being very hot. I didn’t fancy either much.

  

Then, at Durham Road Junior School in Newport, on the last Friday of every month there was a roll call at the end of assembly, listing the pupils who had met a bad end for not adhering to Tufty’s road safety instructions.

  

“Steven XX, stepped out from behind a parked vehicle. Dead. Jane XX, ran into oncoming traffic. Two broken legs.”

  

The headmaster saved up the broken limbs and fatalities as if they were our reward for good behaviour: look what might have happened to YOU, had you not listened to Tufty! Be grateful, give thanks, you are ALIVE!

  

My secondary school, Brynteg Comprehensive in Bridgend, did not deal with death much better. Musical instruments were allotted to pupils for just one year at a time, and I was in the clarinet queue.

  

One morning, the headmaster announced in assembly that the lead clarinet player of the orchestra had been killed on his mo-ped on the way into school. There was barely a beat of breath between that announcement and his next sentence: “Would Jacqueline Stephen please go to the music room at break.”

  

The music teacher handed over the box containing the clarinet as if it were the Crown Jewels. When I opened it, the reed was still damp, evidence that the poor lad had been practising even before he took his fateful journey. I didn’t want the instrument anymore, and every time I put it to my mouth after that day, it was as if all I could taste was the dead boy’s spit.

  

I’ve been thinking a lot about death this week, as I have many friends who have lost their parents in recent weeks, and I have had my fair share of friends die recently, too. There is a sense that for every one who goes, I am taking another step closer to that final gate, and it doesn’t feel good.

  

I’ve also been thinking about it because on Monday, the next part of the brilliant series Seven Up hits our screens. I was just a year younger than the participants when this brilliant documentary series first aired in 1964 and I have followed their fortunes and disparate lives every seven years since.

  

The original experiment was to bring together working class and middle class children and see how they interacted; it was a social experiment – nature versus nurture – and the results were often surprising, and sometimes less so.

  

As the group moves towards their sixties in 56 Up, there is something desperately poignant about those early years that saw them so full of hope, excitement and joy, and something equally so desperately sad about knowing that they, too, are next up to the gate: arriving, as Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man speech in As You Like It says, “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything”.

  

  

Tom Jones - Truly Unusual 4/29/12

The room fell silent.

And I mean silent, as if we had been thrown into a state of suspended animation.

We were all pretending not to notice.

We were trying not to whisper.

But it was all to no avail.

AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHH! It’s Tom Jones!
 
Call me sentimental, call me a groupie, call me Welsh . . . I don’t care. Because when Tom enters the building, the building knows it.

Awesome does not even begin to cover it; you feel that if you were just to touch the hem of his perfect suit, all would become well in your life.
 
I was in a London hostelry on Thursday lunchtime when Tom arrived for a long day of interviews. An orchestra of jaws hitting the floor echoed in the room; waitresses sprang into action, as if they had been electrocuted; food hovered in mid- air, forks taking a reverential pause, every prong star-struck in the great man’s presence.
 
I nearly self-combusted, pretty much as I had done a few years back, when I interviewed him for the ITV show This Morning. I could barely get my words out. He was adorable: polite, articulate, professional, sweet, incredibly humble and not at all starry.

And, I kid you not: on Thursday, when he took his seat in the restaurant, the previously clouded heavens above the glass roof separated, casting a single, pure light on our man and his table. I swear to you: it happened.
 
The man is a superstar. Listen again. SUPERSTAR. His voice is phenomenal; his genius unquestionable; and, huge credit to his manager son Mark – Tom is the best run act in show business. Without question.
 
Jones’ ability to re-invent himself, appealing to different generations, while still holding on to his core audience, is a tribute both to his and his son’s talent.

The entertainment business is incredibly tough and longevity rare; possessing talent is not enough – we only have to look at the list of failed reality show winners to know that; you have to know the audience, too.

And you specially have to know when to take a punt on giving that audience something different and changing their perception. It is no mean feat to be performing for nearly 50 years and, incredibly, still maintaining a formidable presence in the charts – and on both sides of the Atlantic.
 
Along with will.i.am, Jessie J and Danny O’Donoghue, Jones is currently appearing on The Voice UK, the BBC1 Saturday night talent show for wannabe singers. His track record brings immense credibility to the panel, and his charisma and charm bring a sprinkle of stardust that you just cannot manufacture.

You either have it or you don’t. And Jones does. By the bucketload.
 
On Saturday night, in a rather embarrassing off-key opening singalong among the judges (well, two were off key), Jones was, simply outstanding: at 72, he still has it, and his voice still takes your breath away.
 
I was seven when It’s not Unusual was released as a single and, when I had my first record player three years later, it was one of the singles my parents gave me from their enormous collection. Even at that age, I knew that there was something special about the voice.

Tom’s being Welsh like me was an added bonus, of course, and I remember playing the record over and over again, hurling the microphone from my parents’ tape-recorder and acting, for all the world, as if I was on the Vegas stage.
 
Las Vegas is the place that made Jones a truly international star and he performed there for a week a year until 2011. It is the place where women threw their hotel keys and underwear onto the stage – the latter becoming a trademark of his concerts.
 
I have seen Jones perform just once, in Cardiff Castle’s grounds some years ago. It was, without doubt, an extraordinary performance and, when I got to interview him, I felt honoured. I still do.
 
This week, we had a brief chat when he left the restaurant. He was, as ever, delightful; after a long day of interviews that must have been exhausting, I thought it incredibly gracious of him to take the time to say hello again.

In a world where so many “stars” with minimal talent act like divas, we are blessed not only with someone who is truly a great star with a great talent, but a really nice man, too.

I salute you, Sir Tom.

Always have, always will.  

Simon Says . . . Too Much? 4/22/12

This has not been a good week for Simon Cowell.

On Friday, the journalist Tom Bower published the music mogul’s “unofficial” biography (Sweet Revenge: the Intimate Life of Simon Cowell), which exposed, amongst other things, an affair with ex-X Factor judge Dannii Minogue.

In the days leading up to publication, the papers were packed with stories about Cowell’s apparent inability to commit to one woman, along with headlines about Dannii’s alleged feelings of betrayal.

Cowell allowed Bower access to his lifestyle and he was also happy for friends to talk to Bower. I know this because Bower phoned me and I declined to be interviewed, even though Simon had no objection.

So, has Cowell just been uncharacteristically naïve in, effectively, giving the thumbs-up to the project, even though he has not “collaborated” per se?

It can’t be comfortable to be painted as a cad with several women on the go (Sharon Osbourne has now stuck her two penneth in by announcing this), nor as someone who talks about women in what have been described as derogatory terms (it is claimed that he said the affair with Dannii was “just a few bonks”).

But has he really done anything so terrible? To me, it is a complete non-story: “Single man has sex.” So flamin’ what! And is talking about a couple of bonks really so bad? That’s not kissing and telling; in my book, that’s nothing more than recalling fondly.

Also, let’s not forget how kind Simon has been to all his exes, who remain his friends. He gave ex-fiancee Mizhgan Hussainy a house reported to be worth $8 million; his previous girlfriend, Terri Seymour received one of lesser value (if I were Terri, I’d ask him for a big extension to make up the shortfall!).

Is it "paying" someone off (as has been reported) if you give them a house when you want to move on? No, it’s showing incredible respect and acknowledging that when a relationship ends (and they do, for goodness sake), it does not have to be the end of friendship; it is just the start of a new kind of relationship.

To me, recognising a new beginning in the end is a sign of incredible maturity. All I end up with at the end of relationships is an overdraft the size of a house, having bailed out another loser.

I have known Simon for many years. He is mega smart, very focused, very funny and very kind. He has been adorable to my family and friends when he has given us tickets to his shows on both sides of the Atlantic; and he has been a supportive friend who has offered good advice when I have gone through bad times.

I admire him both personally and professionally, and to have achieved huge success in the US as well as the UK is an achievement of breathtaking proportion. If he is harsh in his judgments over the panel choices in his shows, it is because he has to be; vast sums of money are at stake, and if the product is not right, even more heads will roll.

This isn’t just entertainment, it is big business, even more so in US television, which eats people for breakfast and spews them out mercilessly.

Simon sacked Cheryl Cole from US X Factor because she simply didn’t cut the mustard; she had a great opportunity and blew it by not playing hardball and putting herself out there the American way.

Simon may be an emotional person and, at heart, a romantic, but is also the consummate professional, and he hasn’t worked this hard for this long, building a formidable reputation, to see some girlie tantrums blow it all away.

He will ride the storm of this book, as he has ridden so many others. The man is a genius. A very nice genius, too. Complex, but nice.

So, Simon: do I get my house now?

Eggless At Easter 4/8/12

Eggless at Easter.

I admit to feeling a little bit sad.

It’s a horrid time to be alone, and even worse than Christmas, when at least you can gatecrash people’s parties or go to the pub to mix with other loners.

I used to love Easter as a kid. On Good Friday, my brother and I would be dispatched to “Jean the shop” in the village of Coity to pick up the hot cross buns, and eat them, still warm, at the kitchen table. Saturday night would be like Christmas Eve, in sleepless anticipation of the cache we would find at the bottom of our beds, come Easter morning.

The violet foil that was the Cadbury’s egg with its brown cellophane bag of buttons; the pot of gold that was Crunchie; the mini eggs stashed like private jewels in a chocolate case that opened with all the joy of cracking a safe. I loved them all.

I can’t remember when the eggs stopped, although I suspect it was during my teens, when concerns about my body outweighed the chocolate. But although I have never had much of a sweet tooth, there is just something about an Easter egg that brings out the chocolate lover lurking in my savoury depths, and, this morning, I am really craving an egg.

My oldest school-friend posted on Facebook that she is feeling lonely, and I know what she means. Despite the chocolate, there has always been something faintly depressing about Easter.

I blame the church. As soon as the joys of Christmas were past, the hymns we sang in Hope Baptist Chapel in Bridgend, where I grew up, definitely took a turn for the sombre in the months leading up to Easter. Green hills far away, rugged crosses, bloodied limbs – it was all a reminder that lovely as Jesus’s birth was, we should not forget the real meaning of Christmas – which was a very gory death.

Then came Easter Sunday, and the hymns took a bit of an upturn. “Jesus Christ is risen today, Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-le-eh-lu-u-jah!”

Hallelujah, indeed.

And we would go home from church to secretly stuff our faces full of chocolate and spend the rest of the day in disgrace because we had “spoiled” our dinner.

But as an adult living alone, Easter is the most depressing of all holidays and seems even more of an exclusive – and excluding - family time than Christmas. At Christmas, people tend to stay at home and catch up with friends and family; at Easter, they all head off, usually to catch some sun after the depressing winter they have invariably endured.

Quite why they do this is beyond me. Last week, I caught an easyjet flight to Malaga that was nothing more than a flying crèche; Cardiff’s Apple store yesterday had nine appointments free in the Genius Bar. I wanted my computer to have problems just so that I could take advantage of them.

So, being at home by myself, I have decided that this year, I am not going to be eggless and lonely. I am going to go to the shop and buy up all the 50% discounted eggs, head for the pub, watch the rugby, and not think about crosses and blood.

Let’s think resurrection, not recession.

Cadbury – my gullet awaits.

Walking Tall - My Life As A Giant 4/5/12

This has been the worst week of my life.

On Monday morning, I woke to a furore not seen since elephant no 3 was refused entry onto Noah’s Ark for being too single. My crime? I had written an article in a national newspaper simply stating what everyone has known for years: that I am very, very tall.

During my secondary school years, Bridget the Midget topped the charts and I suffered endless ignominious slights from people who simply did not see what I saw when I looked in the mirror. Where they saw diminutive performers Jimmy Clitheroe, Peter Glaze and Titch (of Titch and Quackers fame), I saw Jane Bunford who, at 7 feet 11 inches, was the tallest English person ever born in the UK.

I can’t pretend that the comments did not hurt. Every time I walked into a room, people would move away, terrified that I might bump into pillars and bring them tumbling down, Samson-like, on their heads. Men who had married women of a diminutive stature would look on in envy as my frocks fell, sylph-like, from my delicate frame; dwarfs ran terrified to cupboards to hide, so immense was my stature.

I learned to live with my height, and there is no denying that it has brought me many benefits along the way. I have been given tickets to the giraffe house at London Zoo, passes and free champagne on the London Eye, and given a complimentary Conquer Your Vertigo programme at a major Los Angeles clinic.

I believe I have deserved those perks: as I was on constant call to replace light bulbs in every place I worked and saved many an executive from having to call out for a ladder, I have seen these things as merely part and parcel of the package I brought to the table.

But the downside has been immense. All men prefer tall women. Danny de Vito, Woody Allen, Verne Troyer – I will always be at an advantage when it comes to pulling. At two foot eight, Verne could be said to be punching above his height, but why should we deny what is an absolute truth: size is everything.

The social network marketplace went into meltdown when I explored the possibility that short people might not attract the kind of attention that I, as a giant, have encountered. Small people everywhere spouted forth incredible bile, claiming that it was not my height that had caused such widespread approbation, but the fact that I had spent so many years boasting about it, not only in print but everywhere I went socially.

I went on television to defend my position this week, but was met with the usual size-ist reaction from presenters far shorter than myself, and also a psychologist of the kind much favoured by daytime programmes these days.

It was not my height, they said, that was the problem; nor my acknowledging that I was, indeed, very, very tall; but that I had dared to voice it in public and blame small people’s attitudes for the devastation wrought in my life on a daily basis.

What can I say?

I am a giant.

I always will be.

And I have the column inches to prove it.

Are You Not Being Served? 4/2/12

La La means I love you – and, hopefully, haven’t lost you.

Yes, there are many things I miss about Los Angeles since returning to the UK full time in November. I miss not being in a one-industry town in which nearly everyone you meet lives, breathes and talks TV and film (well, apart from the realtors who are too busy whingeing about the lack of tenants).

I miss the sun, the palm trees, the outstanding drama on telly, sunsets over the Pacific – leaving these things behind has been a real wrench.

But the thing I miss more than anything is the service.

The phrase that drives me nuts in the UK is the one on the other end of the phone when I call to complain that my latest purchase – let’s just pick a vacuum cleaner at random - isn’t working. “It should do” is the inevitable response.

Yes, I know it should work; that’s why I bought it. It’s a vacuum cleaner. I didn’t buy it to place on my mantelpiece and admire it from afar.

Having established that said vacuum cleaner should work but doesn’t, the next question is invariably: “Have you turned it on?” No, because I have managed to get through 50 plus years on the planet without understanding the basic rules of electricity.

This is all supposing that you can get someone to answer the phone in the first place, of course, and the verbal obstacle course just gets worse with every communication. “You have four options”, so I press number one. “You now have six options”. So I press number three. “You now have 12 options”. Finally, after you have endured three birthdays and whittled your options down, there is light at the end of the tunnel. “You now have two options”. Could it be, at last, that a human being is imminent? The tension is unbearable. I press two. “You now have 103 options” - and you’re back where you started.

Personally, I blame the music that now pollutes almost every working environment; it just isn’t conducive to concentration and putting the customer first. Lloyds Bank in Queen Street might as well have “Disco” tattooed on its black horse, so ridiculously loud is the noise throughout the entire branch.

In Starbucks, you need a megaphone to get yourself heard above the racket. A visit to O2 requires you to down Valium if your nerves stand a chance of surviving the background – or, more accurately, foreground – music. As for Mocha bar, a 60 piece brass band would be drowned out by what they play there.

This has been a traumatic week, as I ventured into town to sort all sorts of problems and suffered the musical ear-bashing in every place I visited. There was, however, one glorious exception – an oasis of calm for my otherwise nerve-racked body: the Apple Store in St David’s 2.

I have to confess I am an Apple girl through and through. My loft is an Apple cemetery, stacked with every Mac that has hit the shelves since day one. The turquoise desktop like a finely carved torso; the blue laptop that could pass for a handbag; silver laptops whose beauty brings tears to the eyes – I have loved them all. And now, in the Apple store, there are more of these divine creatures: a sea of white and silver like a heavenly host, reaching out to welcome me and starve my purse of the little money I have in it.

The store also has the best and most knowledgeable staff of any Apple store I have ever visited. They really are geniuses at the Genius Bar, and if I could pocket Nick and carry him around in my bag, always at hand to sort my computer problems, I would.

He has made me promise to stop using the word “nightmare” in relation to the numerous difficulties I have been having with my new computer and the Lion operating system. I just want Apple to promise to pick up the damned phone when I call. It doesn’t take a genius to do that.

Of course, as readers of this blog will know, there were things that drove me mad in LA about the service – not least, when people promised they could do things and either couldn’t or didn’t; and I always said that the slogan most suited to Best Buy was Best Buy Somewhere Else.

But, for the most part, service in LA was in a different league. Lucky my stuff is still in storage over there.

I am never more than a hair’s breadth away from my next Virgin Atlantic flight – all supposing I can ever get anyone to answer the phone at the damned place, of course.

Marc's Cherry On The Cake 3/25/12

Nicollette Sheridan’s Edie Britt did not stick out like a sore thumb on Desperate Housewives; it was more of a sore torso.

The final series of what has, for me, been one of the most brilliant TV dramas ever, is ending with more than a touch of controversy (and I don’t just mean Mike’s inability to buy a change of shirt). Nicollette Sheridan has been in court, suing the show’s creator, Marc Cherry. She claims that he got rid of her for reasons other than those he claimed (you will have to read up on this elsewhere; I don’t want to enter the legal minefield), and it’s allegedly all heading back to court.

Obviously, I know nothing of any of this, other than what I have read about the court proceedings, but as a TV critic, I was always 100% behind Sheridan’s departure – in fact, as passionately as I was against her arrival in the first place. To me, her character never worked; she just sort of landed on Wisteria Lane with about as much at-home-ness as ET arriving to address the Senate.

It wasn’t just that she was new. The central four – Gabby (Eva Longoria), Bree (Marcia Cross), Susan (Teri Hatcher), Lynette (Felicity Huffman) – have made relationships with several newcomers, including, among my favourites, Katherine, played by the sensational Dana Delaney (now the star of Body of Proof).

I could just never get to grips with who Edie was supposed to be. She was a vamp, certainly, yet without the charm of vampishness that Vanessa Williams has brought to the part of Renee – who, despite outward appearances, still has layers that often expose her vulnerability. By comparison with both Renee and the foursome, Edie was . . . well, very one-dimensional and predictable.

I’ve been pondering these matters today as I’ve sat indoors, despite it being a beautiful sunny day outside, catching up with the series – the eighth, which will be its last. If you’re in the UK and watching Channel 4, don’t read on if you don’t want to know what’s coming up (even though some papers have already ruined the surprise).

I’ve been weeping uncontrollably at Mike’s funeral, as characters’ flashbacks of him steer them in different directions in their lives. If you are still reading, you would be well advised to stock up on Kleenex as you prepare to say goodbye to this wonderful character – and Hatcher delivers her best performance ever.

Yes, yes, I know that it will be the end for everyone soon, and I have stocked up on tissues for that day, too (anyone on for a DH end-of-life party, by the way?); but Mike’s death took me by surprise.

I don’t know how I’m going to live without the show. Eva Longoria’s beauty and Gabby’s hilarious selfishness; evil Orson and his determination to destroy Bree, the wife who spurned him; the gorgeous Tom, who has yet to realise that Lynette and he belong together; Susan as grandmother, supporting her daughter as she prepares to become a mother – I have loved every minute (even the daft bits).

It’s a shame for everyone that it’s ending on such a sour note and in court; but for some of us, Ms Sheridan’s exit really was the Cherry on the cake – literally and metaphorically.

Ready, Steady, GOOOOOOO! 3/25/12

The selection of teams during games lessons probably ranks amongst the most humiliating experiences of anyone’s school life.

In Brynteg Comprehensive in Bridgend, not once was I ever chosen to be a captain and do my own picking; no, I was always among the last four – not the bottom of the barrel but the dregs under the barrel - and praying that I would never be last and have to witness the disappointment on the faces of the golden nuggets who had been snapped up first.

They were Susan, Alison, Mandy, Caroline – the girls who smoked in the toilets during break and mitched off lessons when the Radio 1 Road Show came to town. How they ran out of the school gates when news of Tony Blackburn’s arrival spread.

But their naughtiness counted for nothing when it came to the last double lesson on Friday afternoon, when teams were chosen and hearts broken.

It had nothing to do with how good you were at sport. I was a very fast runner and a pretty good hurdler, too. I wasn’t too bad at the long and high jumps, and I also remember scoring three goals during one hockey match and thinking that surely this would be enough to get me cherry picked first next time.

But not a bit of it.

I remember Mrs Davies saying to me, after my glorious hockey triumph: “You’re too competitive”. I was very competitive; I still am - but to me it has always been a virtue. I’m not saying that I missed my chances at the Olympics, but the only day I’ll hide my light under a bushel is when I’m six feet under – and even then, I wouldn’t count on it.

Was it a lack of competitive spirit that gave the Welsh rugby team their third Grand Slam in eight years?

Is it a lack of belief that has taken Cardiff City to both the FA and Carling Cup finals?

Is it reticence that is driving Swansea City up the Premiership when everyone predicted they would be back down in the Championship at the end of the season? Of course not.

It is competitiveness of the highest order that lies at the heart of each of these team’s successes and, at the helm, managers and coaches who know how to harness that competitiveness in something that we often lose sight of – team spirit.

Apart from Craig Bellamy, I couldn’t name one player who has played for Cardiff City, but I follow the team’s progress and still cried when they lost the Carling Cup penalty shoot-out.

I can’t name even one player in Swansea City but rejoiced when they beat Manchester City.

I can name all of the Welsh squad but think of them as an extraordinary collective whose closeness as a team is one of the keys to their success.

Being a team player is tough.

While you bring your individual skills to the table, you also have to know how to use those skills in order to best bring out the skills of others.

You have to know when to pass the ball – literally and metaphorically – and you have to be there for each other on the bad days as well as the good.

I was in New Zealand when Wales went out to France in the semi-final of the Rugby World Cup. When Sam Warburton was sent off, the stadium went silent; at the end of the game, we left like one massive funeral procession, our hopes and dreams already a distant memory.

The next day, I happened to be in the same bar as several members of the team, who turned up to watch the All Blacks/Australia semi-final. They were cheered when they entered and enjoyed celebrity status as fans gathered round to have their pictures taken.

They were dignified in defeat, humble in the limelight, and they were undoubtedly the team of the tournament. It felt good to be Welsh.

It still does. These are incredible times for Welsh sport and, in particular, Welsh teams. We know that young people hero worship sports personalities and now they have three teams to look to for inspiration.

Each one is a great symbol of hard work, dedication, self-belief and, in aiming to be the best, they show the importance and true meaning of competitive spirit: great team work.

During the two and a half years I spent in LA, I witnessed at first hand such a positive attitude among the people I met. They were undoubtedly competitive, in a town in which so many are competing for the ultimate accolade of living the Hollywood dream.

To me, if you don’t aim high, you’ll never know how high you can reach, yet back in Cardiff, I am constantly reminded of the adage with which I was brought up when growing up in Wales: Never hang your hat higher than you can reach.

Thankfully, and goodness knows how, I managed, and continue to manage to ignore it and, for me, I will always not just hang but throw my hat as high as I can, always in the belief that I will be able to leap to catch it even before it begins to fall.

You can never be too competitive.

Finally, in Wales, our sports teams seem to have woken up to that.

Now, they just need to spread the message to everyone else.

Escape From Alcatraz (The TV Show) 3/13/12

Alcatraz.

It’s one of those words that sends a shiver down your spine.

It’s that movie you vaguely remember about a bunch of blokes who swam away from the horrible guards on a rock in the middle of an ocean no one had ever heard of.

Well, it seemed like that when I was growing up in Wales at the time. But then the biggest excitement our parents allowed us in Newport was a Cadbury’s flake sticking out of a Mr Whippy cone of a Sunday afternoon.

I saw Alcatraz "The Rock" last year. I was living in LA at the time and, as everyone told me how much I would prefer San Francisco, decided to head up there for the weekend.

I hated it. If I tell you that Alcatraz was the highlight of my SF week-end, that will give you an indication of quite how much I loathed it. And I didn’t even get to Alcatraz. Just the view of it was enough to make me feel better after the horrors of SF.

No restaurants serving after 9pm, an attitude to women dining alone that was positively prehistoric, and by far the scruffiest, dirtiest place I had ever been in the US.

Apart from that, I loved it. Ha!

But I will go back. If only to visit Alcatraz. Which is more than I can say of the TV drama. That, I hope never to visit again.

It promised so much. Big hype, big sets, dramatic music . . . but ultimately never delivered. A better example of style over substance it would be hard to find, and in the absence of a decent script (barely any script, come to that), it relied on stereotypes against a glossy background (grey, of course – apparently, it’s the new black, amongst people who know about such things).

So, we had the unshaven hunk with a mysterious air; closely followed by the petite, pretty, blonde, female cop, whose partner had (of course!) been killed; and then the proverbial Fat Bloke who, quelle surprise, got on rather well with said blonde, when she declared that she wanted him to be her new sidekick.

He could hardly contain himself (actually, that’s a lie: he looks as if he could contain not only himself but at least three families of refugees and a multi- storey car park). I predict his sad demise round about episode eight, series two, all providing the doughnuts and the Big Macs don’t get to him first.

Then there was the proverbial Bad Guy, who turned out to be running what appeared to be a cryogenics spaceship and . . .

To be honest, this IKEA showroom killed it for me at the end of the episode, because by then I really didn’t know where I was and, more importantly, didn’t know whose side I was supposed to be on.

For me, it’s important to know for whom you are rooting at the very beginning of a show, and Alcatraz didn’t have a clue. The hunk who drew us in turned out to be a nutcase and, worse, a nutcase convict from another era.

They missed a trick here and they should never have made him a killer in the pilot episode. There was just too much happening and they over-egged the pudding to such a degree that we had – and still do not have – any idea who the hero is.

Any show, TV or film, must address the fundamental question that any viewer or cinema-goer asks before their seat is even warm: whose side am I on?

After episode one of Alcatraz, I’m on the side of . . . well, any side that isn’t the channel it’s on.

Not only is it the poor man's Lost; it's the poor man's Lost behind bars.

A sad case of not getting my Rock off.

Or this jailhouse not rocking.

LA's Part In The Killing Of The Stuff Monster 3/6/12

Stuff.

It’s everywhere.

Books I bought but never read over 35 years ago when I went to university; clothes I have had since my teens, in the belief that I will one day grow into them again; an Apple computer cemetery in my loft, full of information I no longer need and probably never did in the first place.

I feel as if I am in an episode of Dr Who, as the Stuff Monster comes to get me from the moment I rise, to the moment I go to sleep. Then, often in the night, the Stuff Monster wakes me to tell me that there is Stuff I haven’t dealt with: bank statements, credit cards, mortgages . . . I can spend two hours in the small hours, moving money around online just to keep my head above water. Yet still I wake drowning in the Stuff mire that has become my life.

So, this week, I made a momentous decision: I am going to kill the Stuff Monster. I don’t want an interest only mortgage that I will never be able to pay off, yet have to spend the next seven years worrying about what happens when the bank comes knocking for payment in full when the term is up.

I don’t need John Fowles’s A Maggot, a book to which I gave a scathing review many years ago and have no intention of reading ever again; I don’t need the broken Apple laptop that now I am too embarrassed ever to declare that I owned, let alone be seen with in public.

I do not need the eight ladles in my cutlery drawer, evidence of my having lived, at one point, in four different countries at the same time. I don’t need the pine warehouse that is my entire downstairs – furniture bought in Camden market when the man I was going to live with told me how much he loved it and was looking forward to sharing when he left his live-in girlfriend after she lost enough weight so that she would “be attractive enough to meet someone else” (in summary: he didn’t, she did, and then he decided she was attractive enough to be worthy of him, after all).

I don’t need the drawers full of single ear-rings, the lone partner of a pair I once loved and thought that maybe, one day, I might happen upon, despite it having been 30 years since its sister disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Likewise, the single black Chloe shoe, whose partner disappeared on a Cardiff street after a rugby international under circumstances I have never fully been able to explain.

The recession has hit most people hard, some very much harder than others; and yes, I know that I still have a better life compared to most people in the world, let alone the country. But all changes in circumstance have to be addressed, and often we miss the obvious and lose sight of what it is that really matters: it’s not Stuff, it’s people.

We cling on to easily replaceable Stuff, mortgages included. In Paris, hardly anyone owns a property, and the rental market thrives. Many years ago, I made money on a property I bought at the bottom of the market and sold at the top; but property is not the sure-fire investment it once was.

When I sit down and really think about what gives me most pleasure in life, it is my friends and family and, a lot of the time, meeting new people. After two and a half years, I recently returned from Los Angeles, where I met so many people from around the world, all with different stories to tell. I loved the experience of living in a country that wasn’t a European one – much as I love our Continent, I had always wanted to experience the United States. While LA is not typical of the States as a whole, I thrived on the energy of a city that has been built on what I love most: film and television.

It has been wonderful to be back amongst the people I have known for decades, but of course there are things I miss about LA, not least the weather. But there are other things LA gave me that, being back full time in the UK, have made me realise that the life I had carved out before I left may not fit as well as it once did.

I am now 53 years old. I am single, have never married and have no children. I am a veritable tiny purse when it comes to relationship baggage. But as a woman of my age in Cardiff, the city in which I was born and which has developed to become a truly cosmopolitan European city, I find little to occupy me socially.

While I have many friends here, most are in partnerships and have children or grandchildren, and their schedules are hectic. After 28 years in London and also six in Paris – both cities that cater wonderfully for the single person of any age – I find booking meet-ups with friends a month in advance (and invariably having them cancelled half an hour before) extremely tiresome.

I know that people have lives and I am glad that they are content in living them to the full, having entered new phases of their lives; it has made me realise, however, that I, too, have entered a new phase and must look to what I do to enjoy whatever remains of my life.

Two weeks ago, a friend said to me: “Let’s say you have 25 years left; you have to decide how you want to spend that time.”

Twenty-five years. I recalled how quickly the last 25 have gone and how I regretted not having done so many things – learnt a couple of languages, travelled more, written more books.

It was a Eureka moment for me.

I don’t want to spend the next 25 years waking in the middle of the night to do sums and then spend the rest of every day worrying about why those sums don’t add up. I don’t want to be sitting by myself in a restaurant or bar, wondering what might have been if I had made different choices. I don’t want to die in a whacking great big house in Cardiff and nobody know I have gone until my editor questions why there is a blank page in the paper.

So, I am selling everything. When I announced it on Facebook, my friends reacted with horror, wondering how I could sell such a lovely house. But all I am selling is bricks, mortar and Stuff that has been clogging up my life for longer than I care to admit.

I made Stuff my emotional fortress, but it’s time to burn the drawbridge and return to concentrating on my first and only true love – my writing. My friends and family are still there, irrespective of whether that Etam dress I bought for £17.99 in 1973 goes in the bin.

It is time to shed skins and brave the world once more.

What’s the worst that can happen? I’m not even going there.

At the moment, I just think I have nothing to lose but my chains.

Open, Sesame - I Wish 2/27/12

My Auntie Muriel died this week.

Well, I call her my aunt but she was, in fact, our next-door neighbour for seven years, when my family moved from Cardiff, where I was born, to Newport.

I was four years old and was excited to have new friends, the children of Auntie Mew and Uncle Les: Tim, Jeff, and, after a couple of years, Lynette. Tim was the closest to my age, and we attached long planks of wood to square pieces, fitted them with elastic bands and pretended we were The Beatles.

When I was eight, I drove Auntie Mew and Uncle Les (who passed away three years ago) to distraction one Saturday morning, when I played the entire Sound of Music soundtrack eight times.

We kept in touch until the end of her life, and when I last saw her the Christmas before last, she was amused that I still had the towels she gave me when I went to university 35 years ago: two bath towels (one orange, one lime green) and two hand towels (pink and white).

It is her funeral tomorrow and I am feeling unbelievably sad. I saw Tim when he brought his mother to Cardiff but haven’t seen Jeff and Lynette for decades. It will be good to meet after so long, albeit on an occasion tinged with so much sadness.

It is doubtless nostalgia that has seen me, today, looking through my stuff for evidence of that era. In 1969, my dancing partner, Janette (Under 16s Juveniles were allowed to partner girls in ballroom dancing) won two trophies at the national championships in Butlin’s Minehead, and I find a book from my grandparents to celebrate the event.

“To dear Jacqueline,” it says. “With love from Grandma and Grandpa, on the occasion of winning the both trophies for dancing at Minehead, Sept. 1969.” The attention to punctuation moves me to tears.

It is called “A Book of Girls’ Stories”, and one highlight on the dust-jacket is Kathleen O’Farrell’s story “about Jenny – who did not get her eleven plus but found out that she had a special gift of her own.”

I turn to page 87 to find out what Jenny’s gift was. She was a girl with dreams, but someone who was put off from fulfilling them. “Perhaps . . . these other girls were right . . . If you didn’t dream dreams and make wonderful plans for the future, then you couldn’t be disappointed.”

Oh, dear. Page 93, and Jenny is already very, very depressed. I pray that she discovers her gift quickly. Phew. Page 94, having just passed a field, she is back on course: “No matter what happened, there would always be such things as lambs.”

Jenny takes Wuthering Heights out of the library for the second time (add masochism to that depressive streak) and arrives home to find that her mother has fallen down the stairs (please, please make her discover that gift quickly).

This gives Jenny the opportunity to write to her mother while she is recovering in hospital and, lo and behold, she discovers that she is, according to her mother “a born writer”.

She recalls Auntie Flo, who had been looking after the household after the accident: “It’s the door – the door Auntie Flo told me about – she said another door would open. And now it has.”

Well, let me tell you something, Jenny, old girl, publishing is in a dire state. The editor may love your book but then he or she will pass it to the 12 year-old people in marketing who know nothing and they will reject it. So you’d have been better off listening to your friends.

Then again, you could go down the path of Jenny in Barbara Ker Wilson’s Pony Mad, who finally abandons her donkey passion in favour of “dreams of becoming a world figure-skating champion”.

So many dreams – and for girls, too. Small wonder I thought big when I was growing up; small wonder I have been disappointed when life hasn’t delivered.

A Book of Girls’ Stories sits next to A Child’s Garden of Verses, Peter Pan and Wendy and, again, from my grandparents, for my 10th birthday, The Golden Treasury of Poetry. It was the book I turned to for a poem when I auditioned for the first National Youth Theatre of Wales in 1976, and, there it is, on page 30: A. A. Milne’s The Four Friends.

Ernest was an elephant, a great big fellow,
Leonard was a lion with a six-foot tail,
George was a goat, and his beard was yellow,
And James was a very small snail.”

I rehearsed it over and over in front of my mother in our kitchen in Bridgend, where we had moved in 1969. I was successful and, in the production Oh! What a Lovely War, sang I’ll Make a Man of Any One of You.

Between the books sits my stamp album. Like everything else from my childhood, I have priced it (8/6), in my eagerness to preserve order in every area of my life.

I note my strange obsession with Hungary, and the precision with which I have mounted my favourite stamps with photograph preservation corners.

I can’t stop crying today. Yesterday, Wales won the Triple Crown, and I was ecstatic, but wept uncontrollably all night. It was six years since my beloved cousin Sarah died at just 34, and with Auntie Mew’s funeral tomorrow, just the sight of my grandmother’s beautifully curved writing makes me long to be a child again.

A child like Jenny, full of dreams and hopes, eyes gleaming in the knowledge that she may have a future as a writer.

A child who knows nothing of death and the inevitable difficulties that life will throw in her path.

A child whose Auntie Flo points her to a door that opens on nothing but an endless future, full of possibilities.

Family F*****g Non-Friendly 2/27/12

Family-friendly.

They are two words I have come to loathe. I can cope with dog friendy, animal friendly, and even cyclist friendly (at a push – but gosh, they can be a pompous lot in their silly Lycra), but family friendly? No, thanks.

It’s a phrase that crops up on an almost daily basis now. There are family friendly tax perks, family friendly restaurants and, as I have discovered in recent weeks, family friendly sports clubs.

It wasn’t a problem I had in the US, where the LA Sports Club was an exclusively adult only zone. True, there were men who behaved like infants in there, shouting and jeering from their treadmills as they watched baseball on the in-built TV screens, but there were no screaming brats.

Since the New Year and back in the UK, I have been trying to find a decent sports club near where I live in Cardiff: one with a good gym, a pool, and a nice bar/restaurant to relax in after a workout.

First, I went to David Lloyd, where I thought I might take up tennis (although quite why I wanted to do so at my age is anybody’s guess – it seemed like a good idea at the time).

The cafeteria area was swarming – and I mean swarming – with children, running around yelling, while their parents sat drinking coffee, exerting no control over the monsters. On my tour, I was shown list after list of tennis leagues featuring said monsters, and, with a migraine fast coming on, I made my excuses and left. Game, set and match.

Another friend recommended the Village Hotel in Whitchurch. After driving around the car-park, trying to find a parking space for 20 minutes, I entered the foyer to find yet another crèche – even more screaming children and, worse, the disgusting, rancid smell of Starbucks coffee (is there no place left sacred from the infiltration of this vile chain?). I asked between what hours children were allowed in the pool and was told pretty much all the time. When I visited the pool, I swear a tap-dancing killer whale could not have taken up more space than the creatures in it.

Don’t get me wrong – I like children. I was one myself once. But it seems as if the whole of society is now so geared towards being family friendly that grown-ups wanting a bit of peace have no chance.

I have just endured yet another gross half term, entering every bar and restaurant to find dozens of little people screaming for burgers. I have battled with the Everest of push-chairs in doorways, queued behind fathers too lazy to take to take their kids to the park while their wives go shopping, and endured the screams at the end of the day from children bored out of their skulls watching their parents sit drinking.

Again, it is something I never saw in LA. On the rare occasions I saw children eating out, it was in establishments that specifically catered for them – in US terms, that means burgers and balloons.

The importance of the family unit has consistently been stressed by every British government, and the need to hold the family unit together by offering perks that benefit it is always close to the top of the agenda. But as an older single woman who, in Britain, is already made to feel consigned to the scrapheap of life, not being part of the family friendly picture serves only to intensify that feeling.

As a single person dining alone in LA, I was never made to feel like a second-class citizen and shunted off to a corner of the dining room, for fear of contaminating people who had managed to find their life’s soul mate. The same is true of Paris, where I spent six very happy years.

But in the UK and, indeed, most other parts of Europe, I am made to feel a nuisance even for deigning to set foot outside the door by myself.

Heck, I can’t even have the Chateaubriand or paella in a restaurant, because it is “for two persons only”.

I can’t take advantage of any Groupon or Living Social meal or holiday, because they, too, are for two people.

I can’t take advantage of special deals on the railways, because the really good packages are for families or groups travelling together.

Many package holiday deals continue to add “single supplement extra”.

Let’s get one thing straight: as a single person, who has never married and never had kids, I am likely to spend more than the average family. I don’t go into a restaurant and order a salad between four and a jug of tap water. I like good food and wine and am willing to pay for the best of it.

All I ask is for a pleasant, quiet, family free environment in which to enjoy it.

Is it really so much to ask?

LA Not So Reverential 2/2/12

The horror! The horror! as Joseph Conrad wrote.

My ex-landlady (the Morticia of previous blogs) from Los Angeles reappeared to me in a dream. I have not seen her since our court date, after I successfully sued the rental company for money that had been withheld from my deposit after I left the apartment.

In the dream, she was showing a property to a European gentleman who was looking for locations to shoot his next movie.

Interestingly, it was Morticia’s obsessive updates to me regarding a European gentlemen tenant in the building that had been one of the main reasons for my departure, so there must be some unconscious connection there.

Anywhere, the nightmare – dream is way too nice a word for what was going on in my head – continued, when I discovered that I was moving back into my old apartment.

The old apartment with the dated cupboards, the crap cooker, the broken window, the grotty bathroom basin – the “very high end” establishment, as Morticia described it to the judge. Trust me: high spec in LA just means expensive. Never mind the quality, feel the width of your shrinking pile of cash.

Never have I been so grateful to wake. But it set me thinking about the things I DO miss about LA.

Obviously, now living in Cardiff, the second wettest city in the UK, I miss the warmer climate.

I miss walking to Santa Monica pier at the end of the day and watching the sun go down while sipping a frozen Margarita.

I miss my friends at Wine Expo, the Santa Monica wine bar and shop that boasts the best selection of Italian wine I have ever seen – on either side of the Atlantic.

Strangely, I miss the long-haul flying. Twelve hours without a mobile phone is a long time in media land, and I used to welcome the peace in the air, doing nothing but watching films and taking advantage of the many goodies on offer.

I miss the Virgin Atlantic and Air New Zealand cabin crew.

I miss Thierry in the Air New Zealand lounge at LAX.

Most of all, I miss the optimism of LA. I loved being in a city whose very heartbeat was film and television; and while there were undoubtedly many hangers on in that environment, I will repeat what I have said many times: Hollywood may be bollocks, but it’s still the best bollocks in the world.

Today, the sun is shining in Cardiff. I have just enjoyed a great four days with my mum staying with me for her birthday - the only downside being Maddie the bichon frise emptying her bladder (again) on my lovely rugs. I adore the dog, but now suspect that in some strange part of her brain, she thinks she is “rewarding” me for giving her copious amounts of chicken and gravy.

I have also just had lunch with my very pregnant friend Jane, who is about to drop at any second; in fact, I thought that her broken waters were about to join Maddie’s urine on the carpet, so was relieved when she had to leave to go to pick up her daughter.

Both occasions were reminders of why I returned to the UK: friends and family. I made a few friends in LA and remain close to them, but even some of them still find the distance between their new life and people they have known forever, difficult to cope with.

At some point in the spring, I will go to Paris for five days, and that will be another reminder of why I returned. From King’s Cross, my favourite city in the world is a little over two hours away on the Eurostar.

On a Sunday morning, I will to the Café Philosophe and listen to an incomprehensible debate in French. I will cross the road to the Bastille market and move between smells of melons, roses, cider, cheese and bread, and I will cry with joy at this glorious onslaught on my senses.

I will go for lunch in Bofinger, where they will remember me from past visits and sit me in my favourite part of the restaurant under the stained glass, domed ceiling.

I will see the friends I made during the seven years I lived in this great city and think how blessed I am to have all this on my doorstep.

And I will remember LA and everything that is great about it.

But I will know, in my heart, where my true love is.

The Bitches of Beastwick 1/24/12

Dear Lord, please save us from Karissa and Kristina Shannon, the ex-Playboy mansion twins currently contaminating our TV screens in the UK.

The pair – well, both pairs, courtesy of Hugh Hefner’s compulsory plastic surgery for his girlfriends – are appearing in Channel 5’s Celebrity Big Brother, an entertainment show that brings “celebrities” (D-Listers – no one in the UK has ever heard of the twins) under one roof for three weeks and subjects them to all sorts of humiliations.

The twins are no strangers to reality TV and know what to do to get camera time. They have flaunted their bodies since day one, wandering around in skimpy outfits and bikinis, extolling their own beauty, and believing that every blonde and, indeed, every woman in the world, is jealous of them.

The reality is that they have revealed themselves to be spiteful, bitchy, stupid and, yes, gullible, when they were fooled into thinking they had become big stars in Japan. Their interview with the fake Oriental TV host will (one hopes) be on YouTube for decades to come.

This week, Karissa blew a gasket when Denise Welch, a terrific actor and one of the wilder women in the entertainment industry, pulled at her trousers during a “Girls Night Out” session in the house.

Initially, there was no reaction, but then you could see the “Ker-ching!” on Karissa’s face, and off she stormed to the diary room, where housemates receive not only instructions but vent their grievances, to declare that she wanted to leave.

She claimed that she was the classiest woman in the house and felt disrespected. Really? The social network was immediately awash with pictures of the twins, happily bearing their backsides for the world, and, presumably, getting paid handsomely for it.

There is a bit of a debate going on about the incident, the pro-Karissa lobby (albeit a very small lobby that you could fit in an eye bath and still have room for a multi-storey car-park) having one line of argument: just because you take your clothes off for a living, that doesn’t give anyone the right to show your private bits on national TV, is the general gist of it.

I get the point.

But anyone with any savvy (and, let’s face it, the twins’ management presumably has it by the bucket-load – or so the girls never tire of telling us, anyway) will have checked out the show and seen that nudity, drunkenness and lack of respect for anyone’s personal space are at the heart of the format.

The twins have used Denise’s behaviour to “up” what is, to me, bullying of the older woman. Denise is 53 and should, said the twins, act her age. I suspect they never said the same to their octogenarian boyfriend who funded their lavish lifestyle and made them the ghastly stars they have become.

No, taking your clothes off for a living does not make you fair game for every grope and lewd comment, any more than being a prostitute makes you fair game to be raped. But the twins have put up with far worse on the other side of the Atlantic; the only difference in the UK is that they are in an uncontrolled environment that, quite frankly, their management should have checked out more thoroughly beforehand.

Ex-Page 3 girl Nicola McLean has joined the twins in their bullying of Denise, and it is playground behaviour of the worst sort. Nicola’s attempts to manipulate the voting by getting the twins onside - and they have done the same with her – has turned this threesome into The Bitches of Beastwick. Yes, Denise drinks and, under the heat of TV lights, the effects of alcohol are heightened – as is the pressure.

The twins’ ageism also extends to Frankie Cocozza, a young singer who was recently thrown off The X Factor after going off the rails. The twins attack him for what they call sexual harassment but, just days ago, thought he was just like any 18 year-old kid.

Again, they changed tack and decided to go down the “We’re going to sue” route. Now, they attack him even for opening his mouth but, well done to him, he ignored their bullying on Monday and went off to comfort Denise.

In that one action, he revealed himself to have more maturity than those two airheads could ever conjure up on their deathbeds.

Here’s news, girls: you are not, as you think, going to win this. You are the very worst Los Angeles has to offer and, in the three years I lived there, trust me, I am placing you right down there with the worst of them.

You are not beautiful; you are not clever, funny, talented or interesting. You have ridden on the back (literally or metaphorically, who knows) of an old man who has financed your very dubious stardom.

You may be able to fool LA but it doesn’t wash in the UK, where the concept of fun (which is clearly anathema to you – get your management to look that word up) rules, in what is essentially a game show.

Come Wednesday, I hope that the British public, who are voting for the winner (what a waste of time your nomination scheming has been – Duh!), get your tight-arsed personalities out of the house.

And while we’re on the subject, Karissa . . . My arse is SOOOOO much better than yours.

And I’m 53.

Hollywood Goes to Frankie 1/7/12

A small slice of Hollywood has turned up in the Celebrity Big Brother House on Channel 5 in the UK.

Reservoir Dogs actor Michael Madsen is in there, along with the famous twins who once shared Hugh Hefner’s bed – and they’re all looking a bit baffled.

Unbeknown to Madsen, who was second in, the first housemate - actor Natalie Cassidy - had been given secret tasks, one of which was to tell Madsen that she was his greatest fan and loved him in the movie Free Willy. He looked as if he had been hit over the head with . . . well, a wet fish.

Later, she had to go to the twins and speak with an American accent and then tell them she had done a lot of modelling. Lovely and talented as she is, Natalie is no Playmate bunny, and the twins could not hide their incredulity. It was hilarious.

As the show was being broadcast, the whole country of Wales was in shock, too. Grown men sobbed. They shook their heads in disbelief. They clutched their foreheads and held on to each other as if clinging for the last moments of life on a sinking ship.

What could possibly have happened? Who had died? Which national hero had passed away, who might be capable of eliciting such outpourings of grief?

The reason for the national tragedy quickly became apparent: Gareth Thomas – the Welsh international rugby player who came out as being gay in 2009 - had entered the house.

For those not in the know, the Channel 5 show (bought from Channel 4, who dropped it last year) returned on Thursday night and introduced us to the 13 celebrities who will spend the next three weeks holed up together. As each one mounted the fateful steps, Twitter went into overdrive as people began the predictable round of complaints.

These were B list celebrities, Channel 5 is awful, why do people humiliate themselves like this – on and on and on. My voice was a very small one in the wilderness of criticism because, quite simply, I think this series promises to be brilliant, and Gareth Thomas is 100% right to be there.

From the outset, it was inspired, and Cassidy just got funnier and funnier as she completed each task with seemingly relative ease – and none of them were easy, as they had to be performed “immediately”.

She even managed to kiss sacked X Factor contestant Frankie Cocozza on the lips - twice (poor Frankie was totally intimidated throughout and reduced to a rare humility in the presence of Madsen). By the time she completed the last – getting everyone to join hands, delivering a motivational speech and subsequently crying – I was helpless with laughter.

It was an award-winning performance and I suspect her agent is already inundated with offers for when she returns to real life.

The decision for anyone to participate in a reality show is one not to be taken lightly. I criticised Welsh rugby international Gavin Henson for taking part in The Bachelor because he did so at a time when all his energies should have been directed at training for the Rugby World Cup. The Bachelor – a US format - is a desperately tacky show that requires great acting, a fantastic personality and an ironic wit to carry off the central role successfully – and Gav . . . Well, bless him.

Strictly Come Dancing and Dancing on Ice in the UK are shows that are almost foolproof in their ability to resurrect celebrities’ careers, because they have self-improvement at the heart of their formats. Similarly, I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here! which reveals quite astonishing levels of endurance in the most unexpected individuals.

Celebrity Big Brother is a tougher nut to crack because, in the essential task of “just being”, the housemates’ weaknesses are more exposed.

Gareth will do brilliantly. I have no doubt. He has overcome the biggest obstacle he will ever face – having the guts to come out in the macho rugby world.

Having endured an embarrassing interview by ruthless TV commentator Eddie Butler on TV, he subsequently declared his homosexuality (although I am not suggesting that Eddie has hidden powers as an outer of gays) and transformed himself overnight. Suddenly, here was an articulate, witty, immensely likable person and a fantastic role model.

His performance on the Ellen de Generes show in the US was breathtaking and brought him immense support on that side of the pond – no mean feat for any personality. There is a film, starring Mickey Rourke, being made of his life. And he will never be short of shoes, having impressed Christian Louboutin so much, he was given a pair of slip-ons embroidered with his tattoos.

"Alfie", as he is known in Wales, is being spectacularly managed and his arrival in the Big Brother house should be greeted not with derision but with encouragement and praise (and please get behind him to win by joining my Facebook page, “Alfie to Win Big Brother 2012”).

The man inspires nothing but pride.

Wales has conquered yet another little piece of Hollywood.

Go, Alfie, go!

What A Difference A Daylight Robbery Makes 12/5/12

31ST DECEMBER 2011

New Year’s Eve is my most hated day of the year. I can count on one hand the number of remotely good New Year’s Eves I have ever had, and this year looked like being another damp squib as I continued to ponder where I might go.

When I was a child, I loved waking on the first day of the New Year to find the pile of hats and whistles at the foot of my bed – the cache my parents brought back from the dance they had been to the night before.

My sleepy eyes stretching to take in pink crepe streamers dangling from the top of a shiny purple cone; red and blue plastic nursing waxed coils of inflatable whistle; jewels of sweets in a nest of tinsel – the glamour of a world I didn’t know but imagined, as I sifted through the evidence.

Sometimes, my parents had a New Year’s Eve party. Before the guests arrived, I would watch my mother prepare the food – creamed chicken in vol au vents (French food, no less! I thought Mum and Dad could speak a second language), sausage rolls and, my favourite, deep-fried fish balls. My brother and I were allowed to choose a small plate of food to take to our rooms to enjoy our own private party. And I thought I was the luckiest child in the world.

When did New Year’s Eve go so wrong? Was it when alcohol became part of the equation and aspirin replaced paper hats as the main fare of New Year’s Day? Or was it when I found myself without a date when all of my friends were sifting through a mountain of invitations? Maybe, as with most things, the shine went off it when I simply grew up.

By far my worst New Year was Millennium Eve. I had broken up with my boyfriend ten days before Christmas after I discovered he had gone off with a nurse when I was away. We were in Soho Pizzeria in London and, upon my suspicions being confirmed, I left the restaurant with great dignity. Halfway up the street, I changed my mind, ran back and gave him a “How could you do this to me!” rant in front of the whole place. Every nurse in Casualty and Holby City got a bad review from me after that. Sluts, the lot of them.

So, on the biggest New Year’s Eve in my lifetime, I was alone in front of the television, listening to bagpipes. Quite why anyone has the nerve to call that portable windbag a musical instrument is beyond me, and much as I love Scotland, the bagpipes make you understand why God chose to put the country so far away from everyone else.

As a single, older person, your New Year’s Eve choices are limited. Billboards in town are advertising late night drinking and DJs, which is a euphemism for glass in your face and a noise level that will make it impossible to phone the police and report said glassing of face.

Formal dinner dances are no fun on your own and come second in loneliness only to going away and staying in a hotel, where you then end up paying for the privilege of couples ignoring you.

We have huge expectations of New Year’s Eve, yet most people hate it. Far from feeling like a new beginning, for most of us it reinforces how little we have accomplished since the last one; and as the recession continues to bite, these days it also reinforces how much less money we have than we did a year ago.

But I still made the effort and went to the Cameo Club, which continues to be my favourite haunt in the city. Why change the habit of every other day for one night? And, at a mere £5, as a bagpipe avoidance solution, it was a snip. Shame the loud music drove me out shortly after midnight, but a small group reconvened in my house for charades.

Bring on 2012, I thought, waking with an optimistic song in my heart.

1ST JANUARY 2012

The New Year did not start well. After a very enjoyable Christmas catching up with family and friends, I was looking forward to 2012 with renewed optimism after what had been a difficult 2011 (after a difficult 2010 and 2009, come to that).

On New Year’s Day, I went to two of my local pubs to bring in the New Year with a few more people, and I returned home ready to start real life again on January 2nd (yes, a Bank Holiday, I know, but I figured I had already had enough time off).

I worked through the night in my living room, reviewing TV and contacting colleagues in LA, which I have to do during the early hours because of the time difference.

Suddenly, I became aware that the house had become very cold and went to check to see if I had left any windows or doors open. Everything appeared secure, and when I went to bed, everything seemed in order.

I awoke to a freezing house the following morning and noticed my kitchen window flung open. There were black footprints over my kitchen floor and dining room carpet. Then, I noticed footprints on the clearly destructed window.

I could not immediately see anything missing and called the police to report the break-in. But suddenly I noticed that my handbag was not in its usual place. Running hysterically through the house, I soon realised that it had been taken, along with several valuable possessions and a lot of cash and credit cards.

I never carry a lot of cash – friends’ experiences of being mugged on the streets always having been a deterrent; but this was an exception owing to the extra long holiday and the banks being shut.

The police were fantastic, from the desk officer who took the call to those who came to interview me and take forensic evidence. Likewise, the Lloyds Group insurance people I spoke to. Kind, understanding, sympathetic and helpful – I could not have asked for more.

I have returned home to find my home having been broken into when I lived in Bath, but Neighbourhood Watch were there so quickly the thieves escaped with nothing. The devastation felt by the violation of one’s personal space is, however, incalculable, and the knowledge that someone was in my home, just feet away from me, robbing me of my possessions, is something that, at present, is something from which I do not feel I will ever fully recover.

How did I not hear them? Why would they enter a house where it was clear someone was at home? Or, did they think the house was empty and, upon seeing me investigate the cold, pull the window shut and hide outside until I turned the lights off?

What if there had been no money in the bag? Would they have passed through the rest of the house and, upon finding me in the living room, coshed me over the head and helped themselves to everything they could?

The questions have been endless. The What Ifs, the Buts, the If Onlys – and, as the officer who took my statement said: hindsight is a wonderful thing.

When he handed me the statement to sign, I read through it and said it was fine – apart from the misplaced apostrophe in the possessive pronoun “its”. He asked when it was correct to use an apostrophe in the word, and, in the middle of my tears, I gave him an English punctuation lesson. It’s weird what shock does to you – and what it does not take away: namely, an obsession with language. Already, I was forming what I was going to write about the incident.

I was reminded of the story about Dorothy Parker who, at a theatre performance, laughed hysterically throughout but, in the next day’s paper, slaughtered the production. When asked by the gentleman who had listened to her guffawing throughout why there was such a disparity between her response and the review, she replied that she had not been laughing at the production, only what she was going to write about it.

The only upside of any bad experience for a writer is the knowledge that it is more material, and my grammar lesson was a tiny chink of light that reminded me that I was still me and would at some point return from what I now perceived myself to be, in just a few hours: a “victim”.

There are many situations in life capable of turning us into victims: the speed at which we shake that label off depends, for the most part, on our respective abilities to be re-active or pro-active. You can rant and rail against the hardships life throws at you for weeks, months, years; but in the end, it is only you who can change anything in your life.

There is a wonderful Maupassant short story in which one man tells another that he will ruin his life for the hardship he has dealt him. Decades later, having endured a terrible life and lost pretty much everything, the man meets the other, who had promised the wrath of terror; he congratulates him on having done exactly what he had said he would, destroying everything he held dear. Oh, that, the man shrugged; I forgot about that straight away.

The knowledge that it is we who are ultimately responsible for everything that happens to us is often a bitter pill to swallow, and it’s certainly true that there are many people – damned thieves included – who have no conscience when it comes to harming the lives of others. But it is how we respond to what is inflicted upon us – deliberately or by chance – that is the real sign of a great human being.

When the Stephen Lawrence “guilty” verdict was announced on Tuesday afternoon, it put my own burglary in perspective. Doreen and Neville Lawrence lost their wonderful young son at the hands of murderous, racist thugs; far from becoming victims, they fought for justice for 18 years, and this week, in part, they got it.

There is, indeed, evil in the world. People lie and steal and kill, and do all manner of things to defenceless human beings that it is hard to comprehend. But, when we feel at our most helpless, there are also many human beings who can surprise us with their compassion and kindness.

For me, this week, it has been the goodness shown not only by the police and insurance staff, but of so many strangers and friends on Facebook and Twitter, who offered messages of support after my ordeal. I felt alone and frightened, but was instantly surrounded by offers not only of practical help but emotional support.

It was uplifting, heartening, and transported me from the role of victim to one of survivor.

As for the people who robbed me. Enjoy the money. It won’t last. The love and support of my friends and family will.