Stevie B

You can shine a torch down their ears, but you won’t find much

It was a few months back now but did you see the Blackberry Torch adverts? Heading down the escalators at Euston I couldn’t help but notice a 20ft slew of banality dribbling down the wall. What irked me wasn’t so much the product - I’m an iPhone incidentally - but Blackberry Man’s schema of what their demographic sounds like in first person. I’m referring to the “status updates” of their fictional characters. Stuff like “do I go for sushi or Italian” or “I wish I could tell my boss what I really think of him” squirting out from an array of attractive 20-something-smiles. Incidentally, number 1 you should go to Chicken Cottage and chow down on a Pterodactyl burger with extra cheese (wet wipe gratis) and a perpetually refilling schooner of your own piss which forces you to throw up twice as hard as I want to every time I see your shitty little face, and number 2 I think what you’re really trying to say is that your anger is a pathetic transference of your deep-seated love for your boss, who, with his teenage moustache and high-pitched voice actually reminds you of the gerbil you lost your viginity to ten long years ago.

For some time I actually listened with interest to Chris Evans’ morning show on Radio 2 but gave up on it and vowed never to return after growing disillusioned by the amount of time devoted to soundbites from his listeners, crystallised best in one joyless (for me) feature, The Mega-Phone-Call. Callers would create an ersatz megaphone out of any old bollocks lying around - a rolled up newspaper or a hollowed-out elderly relative - and then make an announcement, via the megaphone, live on air. Of course, Joe Public’s consistent lack of timing didn’t help - “are you still there Julie?” - but for me, the worst thing was the announcement itself. After arsing around with the megaphone - “that’s right Chris, I’ve trained the dog to swallow the phone while I bellow as hard as I can up his alimentary canal” - the announcements always landed somewhere between “I want that minute back” and “I’ve had more interesting shits” on the long-jump sandpit of entertainment.

“Today, Chris, I will be selling some old furniture” … Christ.

“Today, Chris, I will be cooking for some friends who have come from Australia” … yes, we have planes now, but sadly we still don’t have a cure for pricks like you.

“Today, Chris, I will be taking the kids to school and they’re going to be in a play” … I bet you live a mile from the gates but insist on wheeling your fortified 4x4 up there, taking out all the other children en route.

The very worst ones, the ones that truly endangered my hi-fi each morning, were those where the announcer thought it would be a good idea to put in a little witty addendum, albeit an addendum that lasted twice as long as the announcement, with exponentially diminishing returns.

“Today, Chris, I will be practicing my salsa!!!!! I’m not as good as [insert current soapstar Strictly tossbag] but me and my husband have been going now for two months and love every minute, and we’re hoping, with a little bit of practice …”

… that you might shimmy into a pylon.