I was a teenage Rockstar!

Thinking about it - That title might be a smidge misleading. The story actually takes place in, I think, 1991 - So I was about 23.

But I was (and still am, to a greater or lesser extent) tremendously immature.

Long-time readers will have no problem picturing the scene:  Myself and the illustrious Scots Mick were sat in the garden at my house, drinking beer, watching the grass move around as the dog tried, unsuccessfully, to find her way back to the house and sniggering at the next door neigbour as she mowed her lawn.  Why were we sniggering? That's a good question, which could be answered by any of the young ladies who had the pleasure of becoming intimately aquainted with me during the nineties, up to and including the current Mrs Dandy.

You see, I enjoyed the party lifestyle that came with having more money than I had responsibility.  Occasionally, due to my hedonistic, playboy lifestyle. Minor things often fell by the wayside, things like general house and garden maintenance, removal of non-working/incomplete vehicles from the driveway and hoovering.

Long-Story-Short, I happily lived like a pig.  In fact, Mrs Dandy still tells the story of her first trip to Dandy Towers, where you couldn't see my dining table, because it was, and I quote, "covered in a mountain of random crap, with a crash-helmet balanced on the top."

Here's a picture of me, at about that time, that goes some way to explain why I was still beating Mimsy off with a stick, despite living in my own filth... I was just so gorram pretty!

That's me in the leather jeans - The slightly furrier one is 'Veggie Saff''

Anywho, back to the sniggering... We'd had an 'altercation' with the next door neighbours some days previously.  The 'Husband' had asked us if there was any way we could just tidy up a bit as weeds from my garden we taking root in his, and the front looked a bit untidy, what with all the rust and oil and spray-paint overspray and everything... Which I thought was perfectly reasonable.  I'd just engaged the neck muscles that you normally use for nodding when his wife came out, barged past him, all hairnets and raised rolling pin and added, "It's like living next door to bloody Gypsies!"

"Well," I thought to myself, "That's a bit racist!"

So, after assuring him that I'd do my best, and smiling sweetly at her, I retired to the house, got a large sheet of cardboard and my best finger paints and made a sign that I then stuck in the front window which read:

LUCKY WHITE HEATHER

AND PEGS FOR SALE!

PLEASE APPLY WITHIN

I found it significantly funnier than she did (And her husband thought it was fairly funny too... I think.)

So, back to the story, garden, sun, beer, giggling like idiots.  SMick turns to me and says, "You know what we need?"

Now, I panicked, because I thought he was going to say we were out of beer.  A quick check revealed a still half full crate, so I replied, "No, what do we need?'

He scanned the garden majestically, like Simba, off of the Lion King and said, in that voice that people use for going into dream sequences, "We need... A swimming pool."

Now this struck me as the bestest idea that anyone had ever had, ever.

Luckily, we knew people who had access to diggers, people who could plumb, and people who could tile.  We researched pools and their innermost workings, heating, planning permission and all sorts of things. even got a leaflet from our local builders' warehouse called something like 'So, you're building a pool?'

It explained in detail what a completely ridiculous undertaking it was, there are surveys that need doing, all sorts of rules about how far away it has to be from someone else's land and special insurance and subsidence issues to concider and everything.  But, every time we hit a snag, we just thought about young ladies in bikinis plunging in and out of our rear entertainment area.

One of the things it did suggest that you do before you got too excited about the whole thing was to contact your local services companies (Gas, Water, Electricity, Phone, etc.) and make sure that there weren't any buried cables / pipes where you wanted to dig a big hole.

SMick grabbed the Yellow Pages and I got a notepad and the phone - One by one, he would find the 'Customer Enquiries' number and I would call it.  The calls were all pretty much of a muchness:

• I'd explain that we were thinking of putting in a pool. 
• The person on the end of the phone would say that they wished thay could afford a pool.
• I'd say that they could come and have a go if we ever got it finished.
• There'd be some half-hearted laughter.
• I'd say that I needed to check that there wasn't anything of theirs that we might accidentally dig up.
• Then they'd either put me through to someone who had the records, or say that they were going to send someone out to check.
• Then SMick would call out the next number, he didn't bother saying who it was of course, but the person who picked up the phone usually said "Hello British Gas." or, "Good Morning, Severn-Trent Water."

So, imagine my confusion when a nice lady just answered the phone with "Hello?"

I looked at SMick, who had slammed the phone directory closed and just shrugged at me. I shook my head and launched into my spiel.

"Oh, Hi! Erm... I'm thinking of putting a swimming pool into my back garden and just thought I'd check that there's nothing of yours buried in my garden that I might accidentally dig up.  Would you be able to tell me over the phone, or would you have to send someone out?"

There was a pause from the other end of the phone, then she said, "You're asking me if there's anything of ours buried in your garden?"

"Yeah, wouldn't want to get a shock if I accidentally dug it up."

"No, I suppose not.  Who do you think you've called?'

"Erm..." I looked at SMick again, his face had gone a little red and he was trying not to laugh. He just shook his head and turned his back on me. I picked a name at random, assuming that he'd just given me the same number twice, 'British Telecom?'

"No, not exactly.  This is the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary, is this a wrong number, or should I put you through to the mortuary just in case?'

I apologised and slammed the phone down, then picked it up again and threw it at SMick, which, on the whole would have been a lot more effective if it had been a cordless phone.

We never did dig that pool... And I can imagine that not many of you are in the least bit surprised.

Know him by his trail of breadcrumbs

Quick one today, with it being Friday and everything.

Most of you will (hopefully) have read a few of the stories about my mother, both the ones she features in when she was alive, and those that she still manages to shoe-horn her way into after she'd run down the curtains and joined the choir invisibule.

This one takes place in about 1976 when I was eight and she was still toe-curlingly alive.

Can you imagine the single most embarrassing thing that a Mother can do to her young son?

No, not that, or that, Yes, that probably is more embarrassing, but it's not what I'm talking about... I'll put you out of my misery, she got a job at the school I went to as, what I guess you'd call a Teaching Assistant nowadays.  She had been there there for a while when a position as a cookery (because it was still called cookery then) teacher came up.

She always used to tell us that she got it because she had a certificate from a cookery course that she'd done, but we always knew that she'd put the Head-Teacher in a headlock until he'd agreed - It was common knowledge.

She used to cook all kinds of things, Jam Tarts (When Primary kids were still allowed to heat jam to boiling point), Fudge (With boiling hot sugar), Cakes (The kids put their own stuff in the ovens of the school kitchen), stew (With razor sharp carving knives - Which she always maintained were much safer than those blunt 'Special needs' knives that they were supposed to use... Actually, no-one used the term 'Special Needs' - as it hadn't yet been invented, it was generally held, by teachers and children alike, that the only people who used them were from a large country between China and Russia, and it's capital used to be called Ulan Bator - it was a different time.)

So anyway, there was this one chap,  Let's call him Billy... But only because I can't for the life of me remember his actually name, otherwise I would gladly have used it.  He was sturdily built, certainly no stranger to sweet, fatty foods and possessed of a greasy complexion with straggly hair to match.  His family history, should you have gone back a couple of generations, was of a nomadic nature and the Council-house where he lived was generally believed to be the first bricks and mortar home that anyone in the family had ever had.

And he was a bully.

My Mother was very big on pre-lesson cleanliness, she would check her pupils' hands and nails before they entered class, also going as far as to sniff their hands when they returned from the toilet - Which I understand would be classed as common assault now.

On this particular occasion, the class was making bread and 'Billy' had been returned to the bathroom to 'try washing his hands' about four times before she was satisfied, the girls in the class had started to giggle at him and his face was an angry beetroot colour.

She showed the kids what was expected of them, how you added water to flour and salt and kneaded it until you had a dough etc.  Then she stopped, and showed them her hands.

'She how far the flour goes, it doesn't even pass my wrists.  If I it goes past your wrists, it means that you're being too vigorous, if it goes past your elbows, it means that you are not paying attention... Something for which I will not stand.'

So the kids got on with it, my Mother going from kid to kid, offering encouragement, warning when the flour was making its way towards their armpits... Then she got to Billy... It was safe to say that the flour was past his elbows, quite a lot of it was in his hair, and in fact, some seven years later when his first child was born, it sprang from the womb covered in the same flour, as did his first grandchild, fourteen years later.

So, Mother was upset, the girls started giggling again, which upset Billy, so tensions were high and there may have been shouting and possibly name-calling. Now, for the uninitiated, let me explain that no-one ever shouted at my mother - For years, on the back of all Birth Certificates issued in Derby it said, in large print, 'Oh yes, and another thing, don't shout at Mrs Dandy (Senior) it will be bad.'

With a cry of 'I did warn you that I would be upset!' She picked up Billy, threw him over her shoulder in the manner of an irate fireman, and conveyed him to the school kitchen.  where she opened one of the huge ovens, lit it and made to throw him inside.

She swore, after the fact that she wasn't going to actually put him inside and close the door.

Well, not all the way closed anyway.

Billy didn't know that at the time of course (And no-one was completely convinced after the fact either) - And he became frightened, so frightened in fact that some of his 'fear' may have accidentally leaked out.

She had to throw that particular cheesecloth blouse away.

Terrible waste.

*Allegedly

Did you know, Top Gear is the world's most widely watched factual TV program?

No, really, more people watch it in more countries than any other non-fiction program ever, in the history of the known universe?

It's a good format, much better than the old one. Essentially it's three 'Great Mates' (tm) Who know about cars (to a greater or lesser extent) sat on a sofa, having a bit of a chat and a cuppa.  Occasionally they scoot about a bit, test-driving (And I use the term loosely) the sort of cars we'd all like to be able to afford... It's, like, inspirational, innit?

They also cater to the celebrity lovers by letting us see famous people drive a car around a Mildly Moist track, proving that they're not brilliant at everything (apart from the tremendously annoying ones that are at least) - It's great, real family entertainment of the old school.

The three main characters play off each other perfectly,

Richard Hammond plays the diminutive, eyelid creasingly stylish one, who specialises in letting his inner child out.  He revels in the wonderment of the very act of driving and whips up tumultuous enthusiasm for every, single, solitary thing that he does.

James May is at totally the opposite end of the scale, he embodies everyone's inner 'normal bloke in the street'.  He eats pies, drives sensibly, owns a trainset, and has a healthy contempt for the flashy and corporate.

Both of these fine gentlemen do a great job of representing the audience at home of the show, and they both ride motorcycles, which obviously defines them as members of the next level of evolution.

The third member of the team, whose idea (along with producer Andy Wilman) the whole shebang was, is Jeremy Clarkson. Who does he play?  I've thought long and hard about this, on the toilet, this morning, and the best description I can come up with is The lottery-winning juvenile uncle, who after years being stuck in a dead end marriage has started his midlife crisis with pockets full of crumpled tenners, and wants to take us along for the ride and show off a bit.

So, Great show, great presenters, great cars, great premise... What's it famous for?

Well, controversy for one...

I know that most of the planet nowadays seems to be populated by swively-eyed jobsworths who claim racism, sexism, heightism, weightism, spoonerism and speciesism, homophobia, zoophobia, triskadecaphobia, coulrophobia, xanthophobia or ipovlopsychophobia about every sentence that has ever been spoken by anyone ever - But they do seem to target Top Gear more often than anything else.

OK, so occasionally they've said things about those lovely, hardworking, people, who through no fault of their own, have the misfortune to have been born in places that aren't England.  They've re-enforced the odd cultural stereotype, citing Mexicans as being lazy for instance or Romanians as all being gypsies (Which, of course, we'll all find out isn't true in 2014 when Romanian nationals are allowed to apply for permanent jobs in the UK with impunity). They also may have claimed that Albanians lean towards organised crime and added an extra part into their Albanian roadtest by trying to fit a recently deceased Albanian gentleman (Killed especially for the show) into the boots of various cars to see which the best one for a local person to own would be.

They've been accused of destroying areas of outstanding natural beauty, running into the odd tree, setting fire to campsites and promoting drinking and driving whilst becoming the first people to drive to the (magnetic) North Pole.

They're also constantly berated for not droning on and on about electric cars - Which are, most definitely, the future... So 'they' say, whoever 'they' are.

But I think that the common denominator in all of the things that Top Gear has gotten itself into trouble about is that they're all things that we'd say to each other in the pub after a few pints, then there'd be a minuscule pause followed by raucous laughter.  Even one of Mr Clarkson's more complained about diatribes, the one where he noticed that that there was a propensity for long-distance lorry drivers to murder prostitutes.  I myself may have made this connection to a couple of my lorry driving friends, who took it as the good natured ribbing it was intended to be - I would forever greet them after they had been driving a lorry, for long distances, by saying 'Alright [Insert name], where've you been? Murdered any prostitutes?' and we'd all laugh and he'd disappear into the toilet to wash his carving knife and change his clothes, which he would then burn and bury.

And a lot of the other notoriety comes from people's irrational hatred of Jeremy Clarkson.  He's just a Yorkshire lad, who came from a family that made cuddly toys and jam-jars who went to the same school as one of my mates (not at the same time though).

His character thinks the Government interferes too much in our day-to-day affairs, thinks people who vote for the Green Party are a little bit odd, Champions the cause of political incorrectness, Dislikes Rover and GM (That's the car firm, not those wonderful mutated crops that people keep committing suicide over), thinks that too many trains get delayed because loonies keep throwing themselves in front of them and has a healthy disregard for farcical speed limits.

In short, the same things that most of us think.

The only difference that I can see between us and him is that he, arguably, has the best job in the world, and we don't - So I'm just going to go with jealousy.

And bearing in mind that he's also punched Piers Morgan repeatedly in the face, you should all be jealous too.