First race at Chester Racecourse‘s prestigious May meeting this afternoon is the Fat Gary Sports Earl Grosvenor Handicap. I’m just glad I’m not the chap who has to break this news to his lordship.
Did it not occur to anyone, at either Chester Racecourse or, for that matter, Fat Gary Sports, that this may just be the biggest car crash of a sponsored race title all season?
Or does the jingling of coins really trump absolutely everything these days?
Much as I’m against bad language becoming routine, I do have some sympathy for Sofa King. The Northampton furniture store has been told to ’revisit’ its marketing catchphrase after complaints about its price range being described in press ads as “Sofa King Low”.
It comes as no surprise that past complaints about this rather ingenious tweak on the English vernacular apparently warranted a police investigation. Ask anyone about the law and order concerns that keep them awake at night and I’m sure racy wordplay will be right up there with stabbings and crack.
Personally, I’d let the whole thing ride, for the same reason that I lose little sleep over the FCUK brand. Whatever the intent might be, neither company is actually inflicting overt crudity upon us. If you want to read it that way, that’s your choice.
If that sounds like I’m splitting hairs, then let me introduce some rather more wanton offenders when it comes to dragging modern culture down the toilet. Alongside our TV companies, I would suggest, the thin veneer of subtlety employed by Sofa King and FCUK makes them look like knights in shining armour.
There seems to be a bit of a game going on in TV land. I have this nagging suspicion that wine bars and designer coffee houses are full of TV executives at the end of the working day, all vying to outdo each other for ‘edginess’ by boasting of the latest holes they just punched in the 9pm watershed.
Quite frankly, that Maginot line of taste and decency is a joke these days. I’ve lost count of the words now deemed acceptable for a pre-9pm audience – “pissed”, “shit”, “bastard”. The first “fuck”, if it hasn’t breached the defence already, is only a matter of time, at which point it will be doubles all round among TV folk everywhere.
I’ve given up writing to OFCOM. As soon as I realised I was dealing with an organisation that seems to think rules can be scrapped as soon as enough people break them, I knew I was wasting my time.
So we’re left with a madhouse in which the mere suggestion of foul language is jumped on, while an explicit rendition of the same goes through on the nod.
And grown-up people think this is progress.
At this rate, it won’t just be policemen we’re tempted to ask about having nothing better to do with their time.
Last week’s leak of the Lib-Dems’ makeover plans would have been hilarious were it not for the fact that these people are supposed to be helping run the country. As a reminder of just how secondary the electorate’s interests are to politicians’ interest in self-preservation, it was quite sobering.
Not to mention an object lesson in how to make yourselves unelectable. A propos of which, here we go:
1. Employ a ‘brand adviser’. Unless you feel up to making this country function half-decently, of course, in which case your ‘brand’ tends to take care of itself.
2. Focus on “short-term political expediency”. Or ‘gimmicks’, as it used to be known. So much more fun than all that tedious ‘vision’ and ‘joined-up thinking’ stuff.
3. Make sure everyone knows the way you’ve successfully handled all those hot potatoes that dominate the political landscape in these turbulent times. Like the abolition of slavery.
But there again, let’s cover all the bases here and assume that, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, Nick Clegg actually likes the idea of not sinking without trace. Now, the tactics become a whole lot simpler: he simply puts as many miles as he can between his party and its ‘brand adviser’.
One hike in the unemployment statistics for which I’m sure we would all be prepared to excuse him.
The essence of Luton
Welcome to Brahma; latest in a long line of serial offenders brought to you by the big-league brewing industry.
It is, the bottle informs me, Brazilian Beer since 1888 and brewed “to the authentic Brazilian recipe”.
Exotic as it sounds, it is also cursed by the most damning phrase any drinker will ever hear – “Brewed in the UK”. I knew its father, you know: “Brewed under licence”.
We’ve been here for 30 years now and as one who has tasted the real thing where the likes of Castlemaine, Molson and Budweiser are concerned and knows only too well how “Brewed in the UK” usually translates as “nothing like the original”, I call hogwash on that “authentic Brazilian recipe” claim.
From the very first sip, I detect no hint of Copacabana or samba. I detect what I always do in a bottle bearing the “Brewed in the UK” curse: bland, unremarkable beer that tastes just like all the other beers that result whenever big brewers decide that they can find the taste of Brazil, America or Canada by going no further than Burton on Trent or Luton.
Whatever the difference may be between this ludicrous fiction and those far eastern hawkers who flog fake Rolex, I’m struggling to spot it.
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Brazil’s Brahma beer goes global - in the company’s defence, it does at least come right out with it in this masterpiece of corporate-speak. I considered satirising the quotes from Devin Kelly, Inbev’s vice-president for global brands, but realised I couldn’t possibly improve on the original.
You’re a Formula One World Champion. Arguably the most handsome member of that select group that these islands have ever produced.
You’re articulate, charming, intelligent and loaded.
You could be spotted in any of the world’s most glamorous fleshpots, extolling the aesthetic joys of Dior, Chanel, Boss or Lauren and we would lap up every word.
So just one question, then.
What the hell, Jensen Button, is with the Head & Shoulders gig?
To put this in perspective, even I have used Head & Shoulders. It’s that common-as-muck. Where’s the magic, the glamour, or indeed, a decent agent when you need one?
I’m reminded of the statistical principle of ‘reverting to the mean’, whereby something that swings outside expected boundaries usually settles back at the mean over time.
With the British, it seems, no matter what chance we give ourselves to be something better, we somehow keep coming back to being just that little bit naff.
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