Where did it all go wrong?

What did you want to be when you grew up when you were at school? Astronaut? Fireman? Tomato? I wanted to be a rock'n'roll star. Or more specifically Noel Gallagher. I probably wasn't alone either. In fact I'm positive i wasn't because the other three members of the band i was in wanted the same thing. Maybe not Noel. The singer wanted to be Liam. He may deny that now, but he did. We all wanted to be famous. We all wanted, or maybe just hoped, we would be as big as Oasis.
Although, most 16-20 year olds in 1996 wanted to be a rock star.

Its now 2009. I'm 28 in two days. Its fair to say I'm not a rock'n'roll star. Not even close. We made a demo in 1999, played a couple of gigs, and two of us fucked off to Uni. That was that.
I work in customer services, for a major high street bank. What happened? How did this happen?

I could blame the education system. How, at 14 years old, are you supposed to make a decision that will effect the rest of your life. Choose your "options", which means picking subjects that you would to do at GCSE. Why in Gods name did i choose Art. Played the guitar, sang in a church choir, and despite not choosing Music or Drama, was the male lead in the school play. I couldn't draw.......anything. Useless i was. Do you know why i chose Art? Because i had a vague interest in Archaeology. According to the computer system we used to identify possible careers that linked with our subject options, Art would be useful, along with History, Maths, English and Science. I say again, how at the age of 14, am i supposed to know that i will definitely want to be an archaeologist. FOURTEEN. A boy of that age has only one interest. Wanking! Sorry, but its true. That and music and football, generally speaking.
So, there i was, stuck with my decision. To try and draw and paint, with the slight possibility that i may or may not grow up to be Tony Robinson's Digger-up-of-old-Roman-pots on Time Team.
You won't be surprised to learn, I'm not. I'm also not in my 50's with a massive, bushy grey beard, pretending to be Indiana Jones, minus the Nazis chasing after me.

The fact that I'm not an archaeologist is my own fault. Mainly because i never really wanted to be one. That was pretty obvious to me early on. I also never wanted to become a lawyer and yet i found myself doing a Law degree.
They say that you don't truly know what you want to do, career wise, until your 40. That's as maybe, but its a bit late then. You can't use that as an excuse, when you're under paid and miserable, in a job you never wanted to do in the first place. In your 20's.

Some people are lucky. They know exactly what they want to be from the beginning. Some people fall, accidentally into a job they love and live happily ever after. Some people never find their true calling and just accept their lot in life and get on with it.
I think I've found what i want to do. I'm lucky in some respects, that i can do it as a hobby, or i can be serious without ever earning any money from it. Or i can catch a break and it can be my career. I'm doing it right now. I probably don't do it enough, or try hard enough and create an opportunity for myself to do this for a living. Have to start somewhere.

Where did it all go wrong? I think maybe i just don't know. Do i need to know? Would it help to know?

All i do know is that when I'm sat at work, I'm wishing i was always doing this.

Nobodies laughing at the BBC

Has anybody been watching the re-make of Reggie Perrin on BBC1. Martin Clunes takes the lead role that Leonard Rossiter made his own in the seventies. Now i don't, as a rule, watch BBC sitcoms anymore. I try and avoid them like a nasty strain of flu that found its origins within a pig from Central America. If i hadn't seen the first two episodes and had purely read the reviews by so called "TV critics", I wouldn't be making a date with my sofa and remote on Friday night, 9.30. However, i did watch them, and i have to admit i found it funny. Shock, horror. A BBC sitcom that isn't written by Gervais and Merchant, funny? Yes. This is mainly because this isn't an attempt to cast an exact copy of Rossiter, or try and make a 21st Century version that is firmly routed in the 1970's. This is a different beast. This is a different script, written by the man who wrote the best BBC sitcom of the nineties, Men Behaving Badly, oddly enough with Martin Clunes playing a leading part. Having said that MBB was independently written, and first commissioned by ITV and only picked up by the BBC once ITV dumped it after one series.

That is not to say Simon Nye has always struck gold, Beast being one less than hilarious attempt. He wouldn't be alone though. It is sometimes a mystery as to who commissions BBC comedies. The art of creating a funny sitcom that can be screened before the watershed is a lost one. Even with the characters and actors from the most successful and long running sitcom ever, the script writers are churning out cliched, formulaic, obvious comedy that contain jokes you could see from a mile off.

It makes you wonder why they bother. ITV did. They used to screen tosh that had viewers turning over in droves. They obviously had the good sense to watch a Channel 4 sitcom and realise the game was up. The list is as long as your arm of great, genre-shattering, genuinely hilarious shows, The Inbetweeners, Peep Show and The IT Crowd the pinnacle of the iceberg.

It does have to be said however that these shows are very much aimed at the 18-35 demographic. Always after watershed, often not earlier than 10pm, very very rude, with sex and bad language aplenty, although brilliantly written, brilliantly shot, and superbly cast.

There is a world of difference between these two channels. There are fresh ideas, young people taking centre stage in acting, writing and producing. You get the feeling Auntie is taking direct control of all aspects of BBC comedy. More recently, as already stated, using actors that originally graced our screens in the early 80's, or more importantly were at the peak of their powers back then, or even earlier. I'm thinking Green, Green Grass of Home, My Family, After You've Gone and that awful thing Caroline Quentin fronted. (Would just like to add My Family was funny to start with)

You have to wonder if the Beeb will ever come up with a classic again. Any of those "Greatest Sitcoms/Sitcom characters/Comedy Characters" programmes that showcase the best of British Comedy include a BBC sitcom. Citizen Smith, Only Fools and Horses, Porridge, BlackAdder, Butterflies, Men Behaving Badly, Faulty Towers, Open all Hours, Steptoe and Son and of course Reggie Perrin. There are of course more. It would take too long. One thing you can guarantee is that not one will be from the last ten years.

Is it time for the BBC to give up? Or just time for a revolution.

Is it too late?

The Man in Black: Losing the plot - an appendix

For evidence to back up my theory above, see Chelsea v Barcelona 06/05/09, and keep a close eye on referee Tom Henning Ovrebo. Although this does not excuse the reactions of Didier Drogba and Michael Ballack. Incompetence personified. Prosecution rests.

The Man in Black: Losing the plot!?!?!

It doesn't take much for you average football fan to get enraged. Especially if a hideous grievance has been done to your team. Just at the weekend my home town team lost a Play-Off Final, at home. We had already thrown the league title away, and now we put in an insipid performance and lost. And yet the thing that angered me the most that day was when the opposing team scored the only goal of the game, they chose to run up and start celebrating in front of the stand of home fans i was in. They knew what they were doing too. This wasn't a coincidence or an unfortunate proximity for their low key hand shakes and slaps on the back. This was standing arms out stretched, team mates jumping on their backs, fists pumping. Un-necessary and could have incited a riot. Idiots.

There are lots of irrational feelings that a football match can uncover. Anger, sorrow, self-pity, pride, morose, happiness, ecstasy, jubilation and more. There aren't many feelings that can't be brought to the surface by a football match. As long as you have the bug. Otherwise this will sound like insanity.

At every match there is one man that will always court controversy, at least as far as you, or your friends or fellow fans are concerned. That man wears black (most of the time), blows a whistle and runs around with the power to make or ruin your weekend.

Unfair criticism is levelled at referees, reactions by fans to decisions are off the cuff, made in an instant and full of bias and through blinkered eyes.
To counter the accusations and insults from players, managers and fans alike, the F.A produce a new campaign for officials. The "RESPECT" initiative. A good idea, right? Referees have a difficult job. not made any easier by intimidation by players and management.

Wrong.

The referee now has his own bullet proof vest. A sanctuary for their ego. An excuse for their mistakes.

Because, they make mistakes. We all do. We forgive mistakes.

However, there are mistakes, and then there is incompetence, and certain referees have been making mistake after mistake with breathtaking incompetence.

These aren't difficult decisions in some cases. They are very easy. They are situations where a player has quite obviously played the ball, or not touched an opponent, or it has not been hand to ball. Or on the other hand, the player hasn't touched the ball, the player has touched an opponent, or it was ball to hand. There are instances of all those examples last weekend and the weekend before, ad infinite.

The issue isn't the decision per se. It isn't the repeated mistakes necessarily. It is the arrogance. The refusal to admit these mistakes. The inability to learn from these mistakes. The false apology when they admit a mistake but still add an excuse, "I thought the player was taken out by the goalkeeper".

Right there is the crux of the problem. He "thought". He can't have thought an incident occurred, it either did or it didn't. He was fouled or he wasn't. The ball was played or it wasn't. Maybe that is the problem. The referee is thinking. Thinking about the consequence of what decision he makes. Thinking that he may be shouted at by a high profile manager and/or player. Thinking he may be lambasted in the red tops the next day. Thinking, because he is being assessed.

I'm not suggesting i would be any better. My grandmother on the other hand. Joke. I really wouldn't be. Although the issue is that not everyone can be a professional referee, just like not everyone can be a professional footballer. The difference being that if a player is poor, he is dropped. He is no longer picked for the match day squad, he is banished to the reserves, isn't offered a new contract and is released, possibly never to be picked up by another professional team. A referee's indiscretion is either ignored, or pathetically punished by a temporary relegation only for them to be eased back in when no-one is looking. Nonsense.

There is no argument to suggest to be a referee isn't a thankless, difficult profession. There is probably no other job where you will get nothing but criticism and abuse. However, they are paid well, obviously not as well as a player, with a minimal chance of recourse. No performance plan, no first, second or final warning. Just support, backing and rejection of every poor performance and decision, with the added bonus of filling the F.A's coffers with recompense for a trumped up disrepute charge levelled at the manager or player of the club the referee just relegated by refusing a penalty. Not to mention the fine and loss of three points that a colleague ripped away from the same team earlier in the season. Don't worry though, these things balance out in a season. Try telling that to the teams that go down by a point or on goal difference.