Avatar A smidge of Smidge

It’s been a few years, but Smidge Manly hasn’t been wasting his time. No, since he finished answering all your questions about railways, he’s been turning his attention to the wider world, and very soon he’ll be ready to explain some of its greatest mysteries to you, his adoring public.

His new series, Smidge on Science, is in post-production right now. In it, he’ll be exploring the four key subjects in the world of science: wind, rain, time and cars.

To whet your appetite, and to remind you again of Smidge’s keen journalistic insight and forensic questioning style, here’s an informative and valuable interview he conducted that didn’t make it into the finished series.

Avatar Episode 8: Do Bears Come in Tins?

In an exciting format twist Ian and Kev are joined this time out by Chris meaning that, for the first time, everyone who actually listens to the podcast was there when it was recorded. They all had a jolly good time discussing:

  • Even keels
  • Inner smiles and secret smiles
  • The merits of tinned fruit
  • Hooting eyes

 

 

Avatar Shoe FM

“… the time is coming up to 12:17 right here on Shoe FM, churning out the best in shoe and shoe-related music all day, every day.

As ever I am your host through the toast, Jazz Bungleton, ready and willing to satisfy your need for tweed. We can take it nice and slow or go hell for leather; whatever the occasion.

Once the mid-mid-morning news is out of the way I will be playing the pink-tastic ‘I Only Have Eyes for Shoe’ by the fantabulous Flamingoes swiftly followed by ‘Shoe to Me are Everything’ by the Real Thing, one of those toe-tappers you cannot help but get off your feet and dance to; I know I will be. Then it’ll be a triple whammy of ‘Only Shoe’ by the Platters, ‘Only Shoe’ by Sting and ending with the lovely ‘Only Shoe’ by Yazoo.

If there is a better playlist out there I would like to see it myself because I do not believe it exists.

Later on today we will also be playing our wonderful game ‘Shoe Do You Think You Are?’ where listeners are invited to call in with a chance to win a year’s supply of shoe polish courtesy of our brilliant sponsors Kiwi, the world’s number one classic shoe polish.

Sandra Qwango is prepped and ready to force a large chunk of news-ical information down your ears in about one minute and fifty six seconds time once I have rubbed you down with a healthy dose of ‘From Me to Shoe’ by our Liverpudlian laughter hounds, The Beatles.

You are most welcome!”

Avatar I’m better at someone else’s job than they are

I don’t say things like that lightly. I don’t walk around, smugly declaring myself better at other people’s jobs. Most of the time I trust that if someone has a job they got it because they can do it.

But I make an exception for the people who write adverts for the tube. Most adverts on the tube are in the form of a jokey tube map. In the winter, every other advert is for cold medicine or cough syrup or something similar, and every single one for years and years has been in the form of a tube map-style line diagram with stops labelled “sniffly nose”, “tickly cough” and “aches and pains”. There’s no imagination. If you’re advertising on the tube apparently the only advert any advertising executive can come up with is a tube map.

All these adverts are crap, but I have now definitively found the worst one. It’s for one of those new companies whose whole existence is to make one kind of mattress that they claim is the best mattress in the world and which they only sell online. I don’t know how this is suddenly such an exciting business model but there’s a lot of them doing it. Anyway, here’s their crap, predictable tube advert.

Oh, look! It’s a fake tube line diagram. This one has tube station names on it, altered to make puns on words to do with sleep. I can live with that – in the same way I live with all the other crap adverts like this one, living with it while silently hating and resenting everything about it. What I can’t live with is how bad the puns are.

“Snoredon” is the worst. That’s the one that got me worked up. I’ve lived in London for 11 years, lived in all parts of it, done the Tube Challenge where you go to every station in a single day, and it still took me several minutes to figure out what that was a reference to.

Eventually I got it when I said it out loud. Morden, the southern terminus of the Northern Line. Morden, which ends “en”, not “on”. Morden, which is at the furthest extremity of the one line that goes a significant distance into South London, used in an advert on a transport network that exists almost entirely in North London and will be seen almost exclusively by people who will not be familiar with Morden at all. If you want a pun on “snore” using a tube station name, go for “Moorgate”. A tube station in Central London on four different lines that far more people will have heard of. A tube station with a distinctive ending that makes it easier to guess what the pun’s about. “Snoregate”. There you go, Casper. I did a better job than your advertising copywriters and I did it in about a minute.

I don’t mind that I can come up with a better crap joke than they can. What irritates me is that someone pitched that advert idea – the one that’s been used a thousand times before and which can be seen in multiple adverts for all sorts of products in every tube carriage already – they pitched it like it was their own brilliant original idea, and they got told it was a good idea, and they got paid for it. And then someone sat down and came up with four of the most half-baked, half-arsed puns on tube station names – so bad that at least one of them is obscure to the point of not working at all when a moment’s thought is all it takes to find a better one – and they put their pen down because they thought they were good enough. And then someone else agreed, and they paid money for it. People got paid for being this bad at their job.

That’s why it bothers me. Because I know I could do bedder. I just need snore of a chance.

Avatar The BEST plate you’ll EVER see

Sometimes things speak for themselves.

Other times, it is best to put words in their mouths for your own amusement.

 

“I feel it’s only fair to say, Jim, that I’m the one who’s sleeping with Marilyn.”

I know, Alistair. I’ve always known.”

 

“Forgive me?”

“Forgive you for what?”

“For everything. For meeting you, in the first place. For taking the piece of grit out of your eye. For loving you. For bringing you so much misery.”

“I’ll forgive you if you forgive me.”

 

“I want to believe you Kenneth, I really do, but none of it would make sense unless you knew the location of the pharaoh’s eye shield. Which is why I slipped the strychnine into that lemonade you’ve been sipping for the last five minutes…”

 

“Linda, would you do me the honour of giving me your hand in marriage?”

“You’re not Barry! What have you done with my boyfriend?!”

 

“Hi, my name is Mandy. I’m new to the neighbourhood and I was looking to borrow a cup of sugar?”

“Sure, come right in.”

Sexy saxophone music plays.

Avatar Dear Beans… Foolproof Food Face Fiasco

Dear Beans,

It has been a whole twenty-one years since I was born. I do not remember being born, however I am told that it was a most awful and harrowing experience for everyone involved. Indeed, there are no photos of my birth because I am reliably informed that to remember such a day one would have to be the largest of sadomasochists possible.

Anyway, the reason for my letter has nothing to do with that; I wanted to proceed with a strong opener. My problem stems from something I have had since birth. It is not something that is easy to talk about so I am hoping that we can keep this between me and you.

I have the most unique hair. It is made out of noodles so I cannot go outside when it is raining. When I try to cry over something emotional, such as the film ‘The Quest’ starring everyone ever, instead of water tears I weep tears made of rice. When I get stabbed by local gang members I bleed tomato sauce, and I get followed home by hungry dogs and cats, licking the floor behind me.

This has stopped me from living a normal life. The last time I went out with someone I woke up one morning to find him nibbling on my forehead, trying to concoct some sort of bizarre tomato sauce noodle breakfast arrangement. In fact I am convinced he was trying to assemble a makeshift Virgin Mary.

My confidence is at an all time low. Can you help?

Yours convincingly

Camerra Von Plusbeets

Avatar The price of Ian’s face

What is Ian’s face worth to you? I wonder if you can even put a figure on it.

I can. Today I learned the exact monetary value of Ian’s face when I went to my local sorting office to collect a mysterious item. It turned out it was a letter sent by Ian’s attorney at law, Nicholas Wolfwood, explaining that he was not going to remove his face and send it to me. He hoped that three signed photocopies of Ian’s face, enclosed with the letter, would do instead.

Unfortunately, Ian’s attorney at law, Nicholas Wolfwood, is a cheapskate who had cut a stamp off another envelope and sellotaped it onto this one so that he didn’t have to actually pay for the postage. The Royal Mail is wise to these tricks, which is why they didn’t push it through my letterbox, and instead they put a yellow sticker on it that said NO POSTAGE PAID and I found a grey card telling me to go get it. When I presented myself at the sorting office, I had to pay £2 – that’s two London pounds – to get hold of it.

Whether or not you think I got value for money out of my two hard earned pounds is a matter of opinion. Whether you think Mr. Wolfwood should have coughed up at least 55p for a second class stamp rather than have me pay nearly four times that for the privilege of receiving his letter is up to you. But one thing is for sure. I now know with some certainty that the value of Ian’s face is about 66p, because I got three of them for two quid.