Light entertainment

Me

Nothing to do with BBC bias really (well not much), but I read a couple of comments at Biased BBC this afternoon concerning the dastardly anti-Brexit activities of "My Lord Matlock Brown". 

I scratched my brains for a while, having never heard of him, and then Googled around and found it was actually the infamous Lord Malloch Brown, of Gordon Brown Era 'fame'. (Oh, I remember that bounder all too well!). 

My well-scratched brain then set about thinking how that particular Freudian slip on the B-BBC commenter's part might have come about.

So, Kelly Holmes-like, I donned my deerstalker, reached for my magnifying glass, called Nigel Bruce (rather than Martin Freeman any day), and set out (over 1500 m) in hot pursuit of the answer. 

I recalled that Mark Steel's latest (very funny) episode of Mark Steel's in Town came from Matlock/Matlock Spa, and it all then became elementary. 

Yes, that B-BBCer must have heard that very edition of Mark Steel's in Town, and it must still be fresh in his mind. 

I further deduced that that B-BBC commenter must be a closet Mark Steel fan - though I bet he'd never dare admit that at Biased BBC!

I myself have been open about my Mark Steel enthusiasm here before (despite deep differences with the old commie politically), so I'm not afraid (he says with an over-cocky flourish of his violin bow) to confess that my deduction as to the B-BBCer's likely thought processes were based on having listened to that very episode myself. 

(I recommend it, if you've not heard it. Yes, Mark labours the main joke a bit, but it's worth labouring). 

My ulterior motive for mentioning all of this was merely to add to the festive jollity of this pre-Christmas/mid-Hanukkak weekend, by posting (purely in the interest of disinterested blogging, and because it made me laugh a lot) a classic ITBB distillation of a Twitter thread which Mark Steel himself described as "so funny" today. 

It's a list of 'curses' on someone (a politician) who the Tweeter really doesn't like. 

Given that the BBC Radio 4 comedian who is recommending it is a Radio 4 comedian, I bet you can (if you think about it for while) quickly guess just who the particular politician in question is likely to be. 

Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, see if you can guess it right!

(The answer is here: Answer!)

Mark, Man of Steel (Stalin?)

Ignore that if (like me) you rather like that particular politician and just enjoy the 'curses':

• I hope his boiler breaks down.
• I hope he loses his car key, and getting it replaced is a costly bureaucratic nightmare.
• I hope the delivery he was waiting for arrives when he's at the sorting office picking up the delivery he missed two days ago.
• I hope his favourite pub gets turned into a Zizzi.
• I hope his bank makes him change his online banking password to something he'll never remember, and he has to go through a needlessly complicated reset password procedure every time he tries to log on.
• I hope he goes to a toilet in a shopping centre, has a shit, then realises there's no toilet paper.
• I hope he puts a washload on, forgets about it for two days, and when he finally opens the machine all his clothes have attained a permanently damp smell.
• I hope he has to spend a day repeatedly going back to B&Q.
• I hope he gets home hungry, puts a ready meal in the oven while he has a shower, then comes back downstairs 25 minutes later to find he didn't turn the oven on.
• I hope the chip in his passport breaks, so he has to stand in a queue every time rather than going through the e-gates.
• I hope he drops his phone in the urinal, leading to it only working intermittently, but being fine when he takes it into the phone shop to see if he can replace it for free under contract.
• I hope he gets a cotton bud stuck in his ear while trying to dewax it, then has to explain it to a nurse who keeps saying: "You do know it specifically says not to do that on the box, don't you?"
• I hope he spills a glass of red wine on his carpet, then when frantically trying to clean it, knocks the table, sending the rest of the bottle onto another bit of the carpet.
• I hope, while wrapping presents, he slightly misjudges the amount of wrapping paper needed, and has to start over again. Then, when there's one present left, to run out of wrapping paper.
• I hope he's horrifically hungover and gets stuck in traffic with a really chatty taxi driver who just won't take the hint.
• I hope Windows 10 does a massive update on his computer when he's trying to print out tickets at the last minute.
• I hope he's away for bin day after Christmas, and his neighbours don't put his bin out for him.
• I hope his favourite Quality Street is discontinued.
• I hope his hotel room has really inadequate curtains, and there's a streetlamp directly outside.
• I hope there's a little icon at the top of his phone, indicating that he has new messages, but he never has any new messages and doesn't know how to make the icon go away.
• I hope he has to wait in all day for an electrician, and when the electrician finally arrives, he doesn't have the part needed and it's too late to go and buy one.
• I hope he loses the pub quiz by one point, following an answer that is technically correct, but the quizmaster won't allow it because it's not what he's got written down.
• I hope he changes mobile phone service provider to save £5 a month, then realises the reception is really poor in all but the least used room in his house.
• I hope he orders a lot of furniture from John Lewis that he thinks will be delivered ready-assembled, but actually requires a whole weekend of flat pack self-assembly.
• I hope he cuts his lawnmower cable while mowing the lawn, spends £75 on getting an electrician to repair it, then immediately cuts it again in a different place within three minutes of restarting lawnmowing duties.
• I hope he gets a document that's slightly too big for the drawer in the filing cabinet it belongs in, meaning he has to change his entire filing system to accommodate it.
• I hope his credit card company blocks his card as a precautionary measure every time he tries to use it abroad, even though he repeatedly tells them he spends a lot of time abroad for work.
• I hope all the chargers for his electrical devices require slightly different connections.
• I hope the alarm on his phone has failed to go off on at least two occasions, so that he's now eternally paranoid about it not working, and can never get to sleep when he's got an early start the next day.
• I hope all supermarkets remove his favourite sandwich from their Meal Deal.
• I hope every time he fills in a passport application form, he absent-mindedly puts the current year instead of his year of birth, then has to go back to the Post Office the next day to get another form.
• I hope that when he's using the self-service checkouts at the supermarket, he always has just one item that requires age verification, and that it always takes him at least five minutes to catch the attention of a member of staff.
• I hope he orders pizza over the internet, then has to phone 45 minutes later when it hasn't arrived, and the local Domino's branch clearly missed the order coming through.
• I hope he goes to the zoo and all the good animals are asleep inside where he can't see them.
• I hope every hotel he stays in signs him up to their marketing email list, despite insisting they won't when he gives them his email address.