Britain + Christmas = Lunacy

Picture Munich on December 23rd. The Germans know what snow is about. They know that if it snows you put chains on your tyres and drive normally, you won't crash and die. They know that the shops close for a single day, and that it makes no difference to their lives. They know to do their Christmas shopping before the last weekend when the shops generally have sod all inside them.

Now picture London. None of the above applies because us Brits are not quite as sensible as the Germans.

What makes me say this? Well today I decided to venture to Tesco today to pick up a few bits and pieces. Holy hell was that a mistake. Not only did it take me 15 minutes to get into the Tesco complex, but then I should've really attached ice skates to the wheels of my car to deal with the car park. Somehow I managed to pirouette the car into a space and walked inside Tesco.

You know the scenes in Africa when a UN truck draws up with food and drink etc. whereby thousands of hands grab at whatever they can get? Tesco looked like this. It was absolute chaos. The humble shopping trolley turned into a fairground bumper car. The PA system kept telling everyone in the most patronising voice possible that 'Tesco would be closed on Christmas Day'.

And didn't the shoppers just know it.

From the way people were throwing stuff in their trolley with such delirious abandonment, you'd have thought they were stocking up to survive some kind of Nuclear War. It was absolutely mental. And what with the snow, people could have been snowed in (you can't tell but I'm writing this in a slightly sarcastic tone, just a small heads up) and wouldn't have been able to go to the shops for TWO DAYS. As my slightly mentally retarded friend from Uni would say: 'Ludicrous'

Oh and a quick mention about the Mark Hughes sacking, I thought it was probably the right move. When you spend £200m and can't win, your head's on the line. And did anyone else think the phrase '"Sheikh Mansour and the board felt that there..."' sounds a bit 'Bond-villain' like. Maybe it's just me, but I can just imagine Mark Hughes falling through a trap door into a shark tank rather than leaving the City of Manchester Stadium.

I love my imagination sometimes...

When You Were Young.

I found a remarkable news story on the BBC's website today that has a significant importance to me. Despite coming to the end of my teens, I still look like I should be half way through them. Which is fine now that I have my ID, and at the end of day, millions of people spend billions of Pounds on looking young, so who am I to complain when I get Garnier's best face cream for absolutely sod all.

The story goes that some Danish scientist has come up with the theory that people who look young for their age live longer.

Now I'm not being ignorant here, but doesn't that kind of go without saying?

Professor Kaare Christensen's (not exactly the most stereotypical Scandinavian surname) research consisted of taking twins and seeing which one died first (nice...). The results showed that it was generally the older-looking twin that died first. Obviously the subjects were all in their twilight years (70's/80's, and no they weren't vampires/werewolves with allergic reactions to shirts).

Crude as it may sound, apparently there's some science behind this. Each human is blessed with DNA strands called telomeres, and generally, people who have younger looking faces have longer telomeres. Shorter telomeres are linked to rapid ageing and lots of diseases. Interesting stuff, indeed I for one was simply jumping around at this news. To have been born with Indiana Jones' Holy Grail (not Dan Brown's one which is just some triangles) and potentially have a longer life is nothing short of b-e-a-utiful.

Then you remember the Americans are killing the ice-caps and I probably won't reach my 50th birthday because my house will be underwater as part of some kind of 'New Atlantis'. And having a face as fresh as Joe McElderry's ain't gonna save you from Mother Nature.

An Advent-ful month

I love advent calendars. I love the audacity of them. They sit there on your kitchen table, staring at you and saying 'Yes, you may have run 10k every day and pumped iron for the last year, but let's face it, you're not getting through this month without stuffing your face full of my lovely chocolate.'

Yes, most of us buy them because of the pretty pictures on the front instead of the quality of the chocolate. I've got some Kinnerton branded rubbish simply because I get a 'Stig' keyring on Christmas morning. If Cadbury could be bothered to give us a chocolate on Christmas morning they would corner the entire advent calendar market. But no, Cadbury customers (despite enjoying a month of superior chocolate to every other advent calendar) wake up on Christmas morning very disappointed. And the people who's advent calendar is so basic it doesn't even have foil in it, well, the only thing I can suggest is a noose and a letter to your family.I suppose in a way they're some sort of preparation for the slog ahead. I mean, lets face it, apart from Christmas when else do you buy industrial amounts of Celebrations and Miniature Heroes?

Yes Christmas is a time to get the hole punch to put a new hole in your belt, the time where Nan and Grandad slave over a Christmas Dinner on Boxing Day only to have half a carrot and a bit of stuffing between them, and all the other wonderful cliches that go with this most festive season. I, personally can't wait, and expect many other Christmas-themed blogs in the coming weeks.

I just wish the Coca-Cola trucks looked like the advert in real life...

3D-lightful?

A pack of Pringles is how it all started. That's all I wanted from Sainsburys one rainy day back in November. I came out however with about 7 pairs of 3D glasses for Channel 4's 3D week hoping to watch Simon throw up on Carly's brother in 3D or maybe John Snow reporting the news with literally every wrinkle visible in the 3rd dimension. What I got however was some half-baked nonsense that was probably put together in about 14 seconds.

Not a great way to begin the 3D revolution.

What did Channel 4's 3D lineup include on its first night? Some footage from the 1950's of the Queen's Coronation and a Derren Brown programme that was so tacky it reminded me of the shit magicians on an unmade road in the Canary Islands. The fact the 1950's footage was a better 3D image than the Derren Brown show pretty much sums it up to be honest. And so after my very first experience with 3D telly, I threw all my 3D glasses in the bin.

I thought this was it. Colour. LCD. HD. 3D? It was surely a natural progression for tellies. Apparently not. You see, at the moment it's just not a feasible way of watching the box. For starters, you need the technology. And paper glasses with red and blue lenses do not count as technology, seeing as how I used to get a pair free in my Coco Pops about 10 years ago. If you've been to see a 3D movie at the cinema recently, you'll notice the 3D glasses are pretty much normal classes with clear lenses, which provides a much clearer 3D image than the red/blue cardboard ones.

Then there's the TV. I imagine many people were watching the footage from 3D week on Channel 4 on their 14' CRT (the big fat tellies for you techno simpletons) portable box wondering why the 3D image was a bit naff. Even I was struggling to find a 3D image on my 26' Sony LCD. The thing is, proper 3D TV is going to come at a massive cost. Prepare to be inundated with 3D tellies next year from the big players such as Sony, Panasonic and LG, and don't expect to see the prices much below £3k.

Of course, the World Cup is to be broadcast in 3D, so I can imagine many punters will rush out like mad 3D-craving loonies just to see Cristiano Ronaldo's leg snapped quite literally in front of your face. The thing is, the first 3D TVs will have to be good, because technologies improve over their lifespan. The first HDTV's were fine because all of them were better than standard definition. The first colour TV's were fine because they had more colour than black and white TV's. But for three grand, I would want a damn sight better 3D-ness than what I witnessed from Channel 4. And then how do you improve over the next few years? I mean, there's only so far I'd want Adrian Chiles popping out of the T.V...

Cooking With Dan

Well, I've realised after a rather dull evening that I could replace Ainsley Harriott on Ready Steady Cook if this whole journalism thing goes a bit tits up. Don't believe me? Watch this: