Stag

Someone asked me a damn good question this weekend whilst I was up in Manchester - why are stag do's called stag do's exactly?

Sadly I failed to answer the question for two very good reasons. One, I don't actually know the answer, which proved a bit of a problem (though as certain friends of mine will know, I can generally bullshit an answer with the best of them - PR career anyone?).

And two, I was a little (for which read exceedingly, utterly and completely) drunk at the time and had more important things to focus on - like where the next round was coming from, which hideous-tasting shot it was going to consist of, and whether it was time to whip out trusty 'Mr Maestro' to pay for it again.

Even after extensive research (well, Google and Wikipedia at least) I still don't know the answer, but rest assured the quest will continue.

On the plus side, the event was brilliant, fantastic and utterly worth the trip. It might be immature (and frankly a bit strange) to say, but there really are few better feelings than waking up the morning after a huge night out with good friends, with a shocking headache, an overbearing thirst for any kind of liquid and the prayer that you avoid natural light of any kind for at least another hour.

I've always been a great believer in the hangover, because it effectively forces you indoors and onto the sofa with fellow sufferers for several hours at a time. And in that time, you tend, though feeling overwhelmingly crap, to have a genuinely brilliant time chatting, laughing, watching crap TV and eating plastic food.

So it's with a fantastic sense of anticipation that I look forward to this Saturday which will feature two birthdays, a housewarming and an engagement party all rolled into one night with my closest friends in my favourite city.

All I can say is, bring on Sunday!

Birthdays

At every stage of my life, and everywhere I've lived, there always seem to be lots of birthdays in September and October. Way more than any other time of the year.

At this point I could point to the rather obvious mathematical calculation of deducting nine(ish) months from September/October and ending up at the festive season. In that golden period between Christmas and New Year, alcohol flows and romance fleetingly returns. It's also the coldest time of year, when warmth and entertainment are at a premium. This may or may or not have something to do with it and I'll leave it at that.

But back to the birthdays thing. I've just had mine, next weekend I'm celebrating two more, and there are a stack of them in and around the office. Everyone celebrates them differently of course - ranging from what one soon to be 26 year old described as a 'classic night' (house, nibbles, wine/beer, pub, beer, bar, spirit, club, shot, shot, shot...) to those who choose to try to prove that the passing of time hasn't affected their physical abilities too much by climbing Britain's highest peak.

But the great thing is, despite the sheer number of birthdays out there, you really never get bored of going to them nor celebrating them. I mean think about it. If you have say thirty friends and attend each of their birthdays every year for thirty years that's ninety birthdays. That's being conservative to be honest, and yet still each and every one is different and entertaining in its own special way.

I suspect they get better the older you get too. Whilst it's true that the magic goes out of the whole 'turning a year older' bit fairly easily, the excuse for a good piss-up or event out of the ordinary more than makes up for that. Birthdays also become milestones in the calendar as you get older - a chance to see people that you don't see half as much as you used to or want to.

And maybe that's the most important aspect of them - the chance to see the people that matter most to you. The older you get, the harder you work, the more stuff simply gets in the way of that seemingly easy objective of spending time with those people.

So happy birthday to all fellow SeptemberOctoberites for this year and all future ones.

The Finger Rule

Brilliant things fingers. Without them there would be no music, precious few sports and almost certainly a total lack of ability to drink from a wine glass without ending up licking most of the pinot grigio from the tabletop. Come to think of it there'd probably be no tabletop either.

God certainly should be congraulated on the design of fingers because of all these joys they provide us, though of course they're also highly useful for a number of less brilliant activities - let's face it, swearing just wouldn't be the same without fingers.

But there is one use that I've always been fascinated by and that is when those fantastic fingers belong to a hairdresser.

On average, I have my hair cut roughly every six weeks. That's about nine times a year, or to put it another way, 180-odd times since my once golden brown locks were first exposed to the bloke with the spray bottle, designer stubble and personalised scissors.

I've had my fair share of hair cut types, though by and large nothing outrageous. But what's always amazed me is the same familiar pattern I go through with the barber.

I'll sit down, he/she will ask me what I want doing, we'll agree (or not in some isolated cases of teenage rebllion) and then they will proceed to run their hand over my hair, grasp a bit of it with two fingers and ask the question to which I'm yet to fathom any answer other than yes - "about this much off?".

About how 'much' off? From what I can see it's always the same two fingers, at roughly the same point on my head and usually broadly the same outcome.

So I ask again. How, with someone's hand in the middle of your head, looking in a mirror (left is right, right is left, yada yada yada) and with absolutely no ability as a pre-cogniscent being who can look into the future are you supposed to say anything other than a somewhat limp and utterly defenceless 'yes'?

Of course it all usually ends up broadly alright - bizarrely I've always thought the worst you look after a haircut is the second day, not the first day after you've had the snip. But by and large, by the end of the first week, everything is back to normal and you get on with things.

But I remain determined to solve this little conondrum and hence I've come to the conclusion that it's time for me to do the only thing possible - penetrate the inner hairdressing circle and decipher the genuis behind the finger rule.

I can see it already; the day in the lecture schedule where the doors to the auditorium are bolted shut, the global hairdressing deity (GHD for short) steps forward from the golden plinth, and a hush falls across the next generation of convertible car owners.

And then he utters the immortal, longed-for words:

"My pupils, today we learn the most important rule of them all, the rule that will guide your careers and ensure cash in your pockets. Today we learn, the finger rule"

OK, maybe not, but I freely admit here and now that I simply haven't got the balls to challenge the finger rule any other way

HIMYM

Acronyms. They're everywhere. I suspect there was a time when they didn't exist but as long as I've been alive (or at least as long as I can remember, so discount those first three years of joyful unaware bliss) they seem to have been around. The world of business is of course particularly susceptible for them. I remember spending nine months in a pensions office being confronted everyday with 'GMP', 'RPI' and 'AVCs', and the world of PR is just as bad (look at it, it's a bloody acronym itself!).

But it's the acronym above which has mostly been occupying my thoughts and indeed my evenings recently. It stands for How I Met Your Mother, a delightful little American sitcom that airs on one of the lesser channels (i.e. not Fox, ABC or NBC) in the US. It briefly ran on BBC Two here in the UK for the first couple of series, but then the Beeb has never been that good at maintaining American sitcoms on its channels (with the glorious exception of Seinfeld of course).

The central premise is simple but effective - Ted, the main character, sets up each episode by explaining to his kids the stories that led to the eventual meeting and marrying of their mother. The episodes then proceed by way of flashbacks to those events.

And of course, like every successful sitcom, HIMYM has a central comedy character at its heart. In this case it's the ultimate alpha male, Barney Stinson. Attractive, rich, a firm believer in the one night stand and yet curiously loveable - think Joey Tribbiani with intelligence and dress sense. Oh, and some wonderful catchphrases.

But the reason it really works, and is now entering its fifth season, isn't because it's devasatingly funny or indeed sharp, like say Frasier (still the greatest ever sitcom) or Mash. Rather, like Friends, Cheers, Will & Grace and all the rest, it works because it offers us some comfort, some security and some reassurance that good things can happen in our lives.

And that's all that people really want, and indeed need - human society wasn't forged from despair, it was forged out of hope and triumph. There's been plenty of the former and not nearly enough of the latter over the past 18 months so every little bit helps.

Go on, watch it. You might just be pleasantly surprised......

Football in August

It's August, the mercury finally cracked 30C for the first time this year on Sunday, and England have won the Ashes against a limited but bloody stubborn Australia. Oh, and the football season started fifteen days ago.

Fifteen days ago - the second weekend in August. Now I love football a hell of a lot, definitely up there with my other top sports both to watch and to play, but surely, surely, the second week of August is far too early? Britain's footballers only had nine weeks off between the FA Cup Final and the start of the season. For professional athletes, exhausted after a fifty game season, that's simply ridiculous.

We're told that the reason the season started too early is because it's a World Cup year, so everything has to be finished nice and early to give our boys the best chance possible. But just think about that for a moment - we're forcing the cream of our crop to take less of a summer break, cram even more matches into a shorter season and then play for up to another five weeks to hopefully lift the Jules Rimme at the end of it all.

Simply put, there is too much football to fit into a season anymore. It's not even as if the August football provides particular value for money either - players look tired, unfit and overweight whilst the Premier League is disrupted by all manner of internationals and European qualifying games. Meanwhile the FA Cup and League Cup have already started in earnest for the lower teams. And all this despite the aforementioned mercury hitting 30C.

I'd love to say at this point that there's a simple solution - which would surely be to reduce the number of teams in each league. But the problem is that football won't do it because no other sport will either.

Cricket is about to embark on a mammoth series of one day internationals following eight intense weeks of test action, the rugby union season continues to stretch as European competitions grow, formula one now has seventeen or eighteen rounds compared to twelve only a few years back and rugby league got so fed up with it all that they switched to a summer league (which seems to extend far beyond the actual summer). And to cap it all, tennis now seems to be played every single month of the year, forcing the world's best to slog it out across twelve continuous rolling months to protect their rankings.

It's got to stop - too much of a good thing very quickly becomes boring and repetitive. As a prime example, witness the continued overhyping of 'Super Sunday' by Sky Sports (the fact that the fixtures seem to keep coming together so fortuitously is another matter entirely) or the fact that a game labelled Liverpool vs Barcelona or Chelsea vs AC Milan just doesn't seem to appeal quite so much anymore. We've seen their players lots of times before, they're no longer shrouded in mystery and intrigue, and we'll probably see them again next year even if we miss it this time.

Competitive sport is a marvellous, wonderful invention, but the continued year round thirst for exposure by individual sports is drastically overcrowding the calendar and reducing the magic of it all.

Satellite television hasn't helped, but if we want the majesty of sporting competition restored then we have to resist the urge and remember the old adage - less (truly) is more.

Freddie, Steady, Go?

In 1998 Brazil were the best football team in the world. Then their star player and talisman suffered some form of seizure just hours before the world cup final, was shunted onto the pitch anyway and Brazil got their arses kicked.

In 2003 England were the best rugby union team in the world. Then their arguably most important player, Richard Hill, got injured and England were pretty mediocre in their first few games of the world cup. But they waited, rested him properly and brought him back when the time was right which paved the way for Wilkinson’s right boot and all that.

In 2009, England aren’t the best cricket team in the world but they do have a damn good chance of beating Australia in The Ashes for the second time in four years. Their star player is injured, but has so far played through the pain and is fighting to make the start line for tomorrow’s fourth test.

A half-fit Freddie is still a pretty good player and more importantly, any kind of Freddie still scares the crap out of the Australians. But a Freddie who breaks down on the first morning of the test could rule himself out of the rest of this one, and the decider at the Oval as well.

So what do England do?

The sensible option would surely be rest him, supercharge his batteries one last time and unleash a demi-god at the Oval in two weeks time. But the sensible option ignores the fact that England could wrap up the series in the next five days and not even have to worry about the fifth test. And the sensible option ignores the most obvious question – how do you drop the man?

Seriously?

He wants to play, the whole of England wants him to play and even his own teammates are struggling to make a rational decision. Despite the fact that he’s not England’s best bowler, or batsman, or arguably even their best player anymore, he still has an incredible aura. And when that’s combined with his sheer colossal willpower and uncanny ability to make something happen when it’s most needed, he simply becomes undroppable. Especially against the Australians.

So goes the argument, and it’s a pretty good one. Unless you remember what happened in 1998 and 2003 that is.

Carp(e) Diem

Britain’s most famous fish is dead. Benson, the apparently ‘iconic’ celebrity fish has been found floating on the surface of Bluebell Lakes. Terrible news for Benson, and indeed for the angling community who are said to be devastated and in mourning.

And yet the timing of Benson’s death is, all things considered, good news for the now deceased. If he’d passed away in November, April or pretty much any other month except August, then it’s likely the champion fish wouldn’t have received more than a quick mention on page 42 of the local paper. As it was, he (I presume, though it could be a she I suppose) got front page coverage in The Times and has had continual airtime on BBC News all day.

The reason for this is the oft-discussed phenomenon of ‘silly season’, the time of the year when hard-hitting news is thin on the ground, most of the FTSE 100’s top brass are floating on the Med, and those left behind are desperately searching for anything even half-worth reading or writing.

As someone who spends his days concocting ways to get clients into the papers and onto the TV screens, silly-season presents something of a double edged sword. On the one hand, political and economic news is much reduced, which means there’s more space to fill and hence more opportunities to fill it. But on the other, as dear old Benson demonstrates, it takes something genuinely different to make the grade.

The lack of political or economic news is also something of a barrier – there’s much less to hook onto than usual. And even if you do succeed, chances are that a large proportion of those people you’re trying to reach and influence are either not paying attention as much as they would usually or are too busy enjoying the delights of a 99p with a flake and some raspberry sauce. All in all then, silly season is just as challenging as any other time of the year, only for very different reasons.

And with that in mind, I’m off to research Britain’s other animal superstars with a view to potentially offering them and their owners life insurance policies in the unfortunate event of another one of them 'doing a Benson’.