Then, hours later, Kim Jong-il died, a man for whom any obituary seems like comedy.

The myths pedaled by sycophantic hangers on, and written into official history in the Poeple’s Republic of North Korea include …

Divine Birth

A double rainbow and a glowing new star appeared in the heavens to herald Kim’s birth in 1942, on North Korea’s “sacred” Baekdu Mountain. (Note: Soviet records indicate Kim was born in Vyatskoye, Siberia in 1941). Incidentally, North Koreans are told Kim’s birthday is celebrated throughout the world.

High Achiever

Official records show Kim learned to walk just three weeks old, and was talking at eight weeks. While at Kim Il-Sung University, Kim apparently wrote 1,500 books over a period of three years, along with six full operas. His official biography relates how all of his operas are “better than any in the history of music”. Take that Mozart, Verdi and Wagner!

In sports, the first time Kim picked up a golf club, in 1994, he shot a 38-under par round on North Korea’s only golf course, including 11 holes-in-one. Reports say each of his 17 bodyguards verified the record-breaking feat. He then decided to retire from the sport forever.

No Shit!

Kim’s official biography on the North Korean state web site — since taken down — revealed that Kim did not defecate.

But Kim’s more verifiable traits are equally as weird. Perhaps one of the reasons the North Korean leader was so reclusive was his fear of flying (as was his father, Kim Il Sung). If Kim did travel it was by train. His preference for rail travel is poignant because his death reportedly occurred during a train journey to a region outside of the capital, Pyongyang.

German media reported in 2007 that Kim hoped to solve the famine in his country by breeding giant rabbits. An east German farmer who bred rabbits the size of dogs was asked by North Korea to help set up a big bunny farm to alleviate food shortages but found the batch of 12 giant rabbits he sent to Pyong Yang on a trial basis were all eaten at Kim’s birthday banquet that year.

That’s not all he liked to eat. While on a famous 2001 train trip to Moscow, a Russian envoy reported that roast donkey and fresh lobsters were flown to the train every day. Kim also reportedly ate the food with silver chopsticks, and washed it down with French wine and Champagne. Kim was also said to be one of the world’s biggest buyers of Hennessey cognac.

In the 1950s — purely for propaganda reasons — Kim built an entire city called Kijong-Dong, also known as the Peace Village, in the North’s half of the Korean Demilitarized Zone. To this day it has no residents.

Kim was said to be an avid film collector, amassing more than 20,000 video tapes and DVDs including Friday the 13th, Rambo, Godzilla, Hong Kong action fims, and anything starring Elizabeth Taylor.

In 1978, he ordered the kidnapping of South Korean film director Shin Sang-ok and his actress wife Choi Eun-hee so they could build a North Korean film industry. A decade later, they reportedly escaped while on a trip to Austria, and have since been granted refuge in the United States.

You couldn’t make it up!

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Anyway, I thought that it was time I entered into the fray to highlight some of the people you probably don’t even know — or what they are famous for (or aren’t). You probably didn’t even realise they existed but that’s fine because they didn’t.

Mervyn Hurley (1921-2011)

Mervyn’s great claim to fame was that he thought up the idea of taking perfectly good cheese and sticking weird stuff in it.

Building on the work of predecessors like Auther Dietzsch and Leonardo Conti, his first experiments were with prunes and kiwi fruit but somehow the combinations did not go down well with focus groups. Years of trials followed until he fell upon the humble dried apricot, which is otherwise universally shunned by all right thinking people. Even so, the prototype using processed Cheddar had teething problems: the Cheddar didn’t taste of well, anything and the sharp, cloying flavour of the apricots was just … damn!

Looking for a stronger cheese taste, Mervyn tried Stilton, but its blue veins coupled with the knobbly orange apricots made the whole thing resemble a tramp’s feet. In blindfold taste tests, reaction was favourable but when the blindfolds came off most of the test participants felt nauseous at the sight of what they were eating. The meticulous Hurley of course kept notes of the resulting “heave-ho” to see if he could use them for future compounds (see: ready meals). Then, when a consignment of Stilton arrived at the test plant in which the characteristic mould had been left out for health reasons, leaving a sickly-looking, creamy white waxy substance, a test batch was fortuitously put together by the plant’s only colour-blind technician.The resulting fruit-impregnated concoction proved a hit.

The success of White Stilton with Apricot led Mervyn to try many other amalgams (with mixed success) including, Wensleydale with Cranberries, Caerphilly with Leek, Norwegian Jarlsberg with Dingleberries and Dairylea with Plywood. Mervyn died in July, after a wine and cheese party, from the effects of cholesterol poisoning and cirrhosis, but his legacy lives on. Look out for such thrilling taste combinations as Emmental and Banana, Brie and Snickers Bar, Monterey Jack with Wasabi and and Stinking Bishop, Tuna and Linseed, coming to a retail outlet near you in 2012.

Julie Bowman (1953-2011)

Anyone who has ever enjoyed the opening short film on every DVD which begins with the immortal words: “You wouldn’t steal a car …” has Julie Bowman to thank. It was back in 2004 when Julie, after a night out with the girls, forgot to tick the box on the programming set-up which enables users to skip across unwanted content, meaning that forever after anyone attempting to save four precious minutes of their life from having to watch the same paranoid, overexcited exhortations to people who had already eschewed the temptation of illegally copying a DVD, would be greeted with the legend “action not permitted”.

Julie never corrected her mistake on subsequent recordings fearing that someone would connect her “oversight” with the pile of vomit in the new photocopier, and it then became an industry standard because everyone thought it must have been done for a good reason in the first place. Julie passed away in February after being hunted down by a frenzied gang of film lovers and beaten to death with a VHS video cassette.

Ali Rhuperand 1949-2011

Rhuperand, the son of a humble chapati flour seller from Lahore, came to the UK in the 60s to work as a tube driver and quickly worked his way up to street sweeper, but it was his invention of the tiny pot of salad that you get in every Indian meal (but that nobody eats) which is his claim to fame. Rhuperand, longing to get back to agrarian roots in Pakistan, got himself a council allotment in Dalston Garden Suburb and quickly became expert in the techniques of growing lettuce, onion and tomatoes in the fertile soil made bounteous by the rotting victims of a series of revenge killings by East End gangster twins George and Gerald Skank.

However, the resulting glut of production led him to offer his surplus to his brother-in-law, Vash Govinda, a local restaurant owner and Freemason. Torn by family loyalty and owing Rhuperand money, Govinda finally agreed to aportion out the salad in small partially-used spittoon cups which Rhuperand found in the back of a London Transport bus garage where they had been overbought in bulk for the 1949 London Olympics. Govinda quickly found the spittoon salads were popular, mainly because people threw out the salad and used the container for its original purpose.

Like many other  traditional giveaways, including prawn crackers at Chinese restaurants, no-one can now remember why it’s a good idea but, hey, it’s free. Rhuperand died in October, in his sleep, shooting through a gap in the central reservation arnco on the M6 just out side Cannock.

His Excellency Lionel George Ndobe, President for Life of the Republic of Kharsi (1935-1997 and 1953-2011)

Ndobe, dubbed the “Butcher of Kharsi”, rose from obscurity as a seller of pork and beef in downtown Kharsi City, to become the leader of the most oppressive regime west of Tunbridge Wells and parts of Gillingham. Although it now seems he gained most of his power over his supporters who misread his “Butcher of Kharsi” title to be more metaphorical than it actually was, Ndobe did have a reputation as a cruel dictator who would think nothing of passing the port to the right or taking seven items through the six items or less queue.

When he was toppled in August in a wave of popular unrest taking its cue from the Arab revolts to the north, raids on his prisons by jubilant supporters found there to be no prisoners at all. Ironically, Ndobe’s defiant crowd-pleasing taunts to Western powers from the late 90s, and his effective propaganda shield which gave the impression of a tyrant of the likes of Muamar Ghaddafi or Idi Amin, hid the fact that he was born Norman Smith in Sunningdale, south of London, who had been employed to teach the real Ndobe’s son ballroom dancing, and who found himself put up as a business-as-usual stand-in by power-hungry ministers after the real Ndobe died in a freak bidet accident.

Psychologists now believe an early life living in Sunningdale and reading the Daily Express made it easy to slip into the role of an intolerant, bigotted, martinet. Smith’s poor disguise, mainly in using stage makeup left from the Royal Shakespeare Company’s touring production of Othello in 1959 to mark the small sub-Saharan nation’s independence from Britain, was never rumbled by media watchers, possibly because no-one ever paid the non-oil producing nation any attention. Ndobe/Smith died when he was ripped to shreds by a crowd of irate port drinkers who had nothing decent to go with their Stinking Bishop and coffee bean cheese.

Gertrude Sphincowicz (???-2011)

When Gertrude died in February she was the world’s oldest woman. But after she died she wasn’t. Her real age at time of death is still under debate, but it is known that she was younger than Sir Bruce Forsyth’s wig. Tree ring data has provisionally indicated she was 173 and three quarters.

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But it’s not quite the same place as last year. The weather is better, sure. And the plants look greener: I guess Bulgaria’s been getting at least some of the rain that Old Blighty’s had all year. But it’s a lot busier than at the same time last year. That’s probably the Global Economic Meltdown: part people wanting to find a bit of a bargain in a country that’s as likely to descend into unrest and terrorism as the Isles of Scilly and part in seeking a refuge from the constant barrage of over-hyped bad news stories that you find everywhere. That could explain why there are so many Germans here: it must be the only place in Greater Europe they haven’t had to bail out yet.

Or could it be a folk memory? Wanting to visit all the places that Urgrossvater Heinrich spent his summers (and winters) back in 41-44? Heaven knows the Bulgarians seem ambivalent to their European patrons; after all, between 41 and 44 they were allies of Germany until the Red Army marched in to “liberate” them in September 1944. Judging by the respect that the average Bulgarian gives to the monstrous war memorials erected to that liberation in almost every big city here I wouldn’t take up offers of a bunting franchise in time for the 70th anniversary in 2014.

We’re again in Sunny Beach, the sprawling resort created by the Soviets after the war for the “trusted” few to take a “foreign” holiday in a place where they could be “trusted” not to flee to the West. For a long time now, however, the Black Sea coast resorts have been as western as any Mediterranean town and the hotels are as good as any you’ll find on the Costas (at a lot less costa, geddit!?)

The Russians are still here but the apparatchiks have been replaced by the St Petersburg chicks roaming the beach topless (I see boobies … everywhere!) on a girls-only holiday out to top up such a tan as to make those left in the office feel green. There aren’t many lobster-people here — as I said, the Brits are in a minority — but there are enough mahogany-coloured folks to make David Dickinson feel a bit anaemic. At least when they die, riddled with secondary cancers brought on by malignant melanomas (SCCs – this detail is on the insistence of my better third @berberis), they can feel appropriately smug as they donate their bodies to DFS to appear as a rather nice Chesterfield in the latest sale event.

Bikini weather

My wife is also trying to top up her tan but as she works as a medical secretary dealing with dermatology cases she is perhaps over-cautious about sun exposure, however, that didn’t stop her overdoing it a bit yesterday leaving a little pink patch on the small of her back (in the bit she couldn’t reach). She is now happily wearing bikinis she wouldn’t have dared to a year ago — and sometimes only the bottom half. This is partly because in the intervening 12 months she has joined a gym and partly because last year we saw so many examples of women wearing bikinis who just shouldn’t, that she now has greater confidence that she won’t be pointed out as some sort of freak. After all what size 12/14 woman doesn’t feel like that?

As I said, I’m hiding under sunscreen and parasols watching the boobies, and not all of them on women which makes me feel less of a freak. And I’m back writing this blog, partly because it’s the first free time I’ve had in months what with all this business travel: Washington one week, Singapore the next. It’s almost like I don’t know my Witchita from my Wolverhampton.

The other reason is that there is much here to record and comment about which doesn’t include bounce rates (apart from the obvious pun), drop-off (that one too) and entry and exit points (this is getting silly).

If you’re interested, watch this space.

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Let’s talk about me. Why not? It’s been about a year since the company I worked for — dgm UK Ltd — went t*ts up. I’m not entirely sure why it collapsed. I know it has something to do with unpaid VAT and dithering at the highest management levels, but I don’t know who to blame, if “blame” is indeed the right thing to say.

What I do know is that I started at dgm in October 2009 as “SEO Manager”, a title which even my then boss said didn’t really encompass what I did so it was amended to “Head of Search”. Life was good. I had a posh title and a life which included surfing the internet for a living and getting paid to visit people in far off lands, mainly Nottingham.

And do you know? I was rather good at it. Life was sweet. I worked with some of the nicest people I’d ever known, we all went to the pub on regular occasions, we had pizza every other Friday. After the initial shock of not being in Central London, I even grew to like Kentish Town, and getting to work every morning was a doddle: the direct train there ran past the end of my garden

Autumn became Winter. Winter became Spring. Spring became Summer. Life was great.

Then dgm went bust. Oh, it wasn’t a sudden affair. We lingered on for weeks playing online Asteroids and fending off calls from worried afilliates while people with personal agendas played financial tennis with the company’s accounts and order books, and brokered deals about tatty furniture and withering client lists and who exactly owned the overdraft. But by July 2010 dgm was no more.

Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve faced joblessness — four times in the past three years, I think you’ll find — but it must have been the most optimistic I’ve ever felt about it. I had real prospects of going it alone with a budding list of potential clients, some (but not all) companies I’d worked with at dgm.

Special Relationship

And then there was the biggest potential client of them all: Hilton Hotels. Gosh, was I Mr Popular? Everyone wanted to know me because I knew the people they wanted to know. Of course I don’t blame them. The sort of business I’m in is all about networking, and working closely with Hilton’s Demand Generation team meant I was a source of good links to people with influence (and contracts).

Then dgm went bust.

For a while there it looked like I was to become a proper freelance SEO consultant. I had a series of clients lined up, some ex-dgm, some not. And there were new opportunities too, following up all the leads we were making before the end came. It even seemed as if a new search agency might rise from the ashes.

Then there was Hilton.

Although Hilton was dgm’s biggest search client, it was a relationship that could never speak its name. For all the time I was with dgm, I was working on the Hilton account at least half the day, analysing pages, tweaking sites, building links, you know, all the usual geeky stuff.

Yet post-collapse I think it’s true to say that most people cosying up to me were more interested in what I could Hilton to do for them, than what we could be doing together with Hilton.

Thankfully there were honorable exceptions. Not least Hilton themselves, who seemed to bend over backwards to offer me work: they appreciated me, it seemed. Of course, this was enlightened self interest to be sure: they were getting me at a knock-down price, certainly less than the money they were paying dgm for my part-time support (and they weren’t paying dgm that much), but I felt a genuine warmth from the team and indeed everyone I encountered at Big H.

Friends for Ever

For a while I still tried to do private work for ex-dgm clients while acting as Hilton’s only in-house dedicated natural search resource. I had no idea how things would pan out after all.

But over the weeks and months the outside client list gradually diminished to the point now where the only people I do stuff for (outside Hilton) are friends. That goes down well at home when days off become “tweaking” days. Not!

Last week I took the final step when I was appointed Hilton’s Global Director for SEO. A proper job indeed.

Yes, life is sweet. I’m still Hilton’s only in-house dedicated natural search resource but that will most likely change in the coming months as demand rises.

And of course now I’m everyone’s best buddy again because they reckon that I’m the person they want to know. I can’t blame them. This business is all about relationships and networking: your friend is my friend, and such.

Difference is, I’m poacher turned gamekeeper. I’ve seen the price list. I’ve read the script.

The reason I’m making this post is to tell this story, as much to myself as anyone else. In some ways I wish I could send this back to the me that I walked out of that job at a nasty little telecoms company on principle four years ago: life just seemed to be going from bad to worse. I was applying for job after job, with little apparent success; the weather was miserable and cold, and the money was running out. I was also feeling my age, big time.

Then there was the downsizing at the online casino which saw me one week being told that I would be getting a suite of offices and a huge search team and the next hearing that I had less than a day to clear my desk.

How far away all that seems now.

But if you knew now what you didn’t then, would you know now what you know today? Isn’t uncertainty a spur to do better next time?

I guess, dear reader, what I’m really trying to say to whoever wants to listen is: never give up. No matter how bad you think things are, they CAN get better.

Now I have a marvellous, onerous task ahead. It may make writing this blog even harder; not just because my diary is filling up with appointments to visit people in far off lands, — Washington and Singapore for starters — but because with power comes responsibility: a responsibility not to put my foot in it.

That may be difficult. Not because I’m a loud mouth or because I’m stupid, but because I still think the truth is almost always the best thing. It’s just that sometimes people can’t handle the truth, no matter how nicely packaged.

So, here’s to the next 12 months and an earnest desire to be able to quote at that point the late, great Tony Banks, who said of his coveted role as Sports Minister in Tony Blair’s government …

I am still in the job — and that is as much of a surprise to me as to anyone else

Let’s hope it’s not that much of a surprise one year hence …

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So it was so nice to spend four days on business last week at the Glasgow Hilton hotel and come back every evening to find the place spotless. I wondered how the housekeeping staff could keep a smile on their faces as I passed them in the corridor each morning.

But then I guess that’s my kids’ experience. Their mum — sadly, still always their mum — always makes sure the dead bodies are removed (that is dirty plates left to fester for weeks on end and washing that could walk to the machine).

Perhaps the cleanest bedrooms are the ones that no-one uses, like David Cameron’s or those in Buckingham Palace, clean because the occupants are busy travelling and never sleep in them.

Tidy

When you’re busy travelling the last thing you need is an untidy bedroom so I’ve always found the hotels in London I’ve used to be smart and attractive and always tidy, at least until I get into them and kick off my shoes. My ability to destroy order puts me to shame, so I always leave a nice tip for my housekeeper when I leave.

Frankly, who wants to tidy up when you’re away from home? That sort of behaviour is obsessive-compulsive, like having a tidy desk at work — surely the sign of a sick mind.

But clean is nice, though achieving it is almost a full-time job. I’ve suggested at home on more than one occasion that we get a girl in to tidy up. My Best Beloved’s answer is: “Do I look like a boy?”

Cleaning is relaxing, she says. It appeals to her sense of order. In fact, she relaxed so much this weekend that yesterday she was fast asleep in bed by 9:30.

Then of course that old cliche springs to mind, of people with cleaners who tidy up before Mrs Mop arrives.

Perhaps they shouldn’t bother. A friend of mine runs cleaning businesses right around the capital. He’s told me some horror stories about things they find when they turn up to do end of tenancy cleaning (and worse). Most are too gruesome to repeat here.

And then there’s my brother in law, who used to work as a hotel manager: he has some interesting tales of guests’ parting “gifts”. Using the bath as a toilet is the least worst example.

My parting gift? As I say, I just leave a tip. But how big?

I was in Glasgow to “chaperone” a colleague over from the US. He’d brought along his good lady wife was having problems with tipping, and the fact that it isn’t compulsory in Britain. She wanted to tip everyone because that’s what you do in the States.

Like every Brit I thought tipping was just a nicety, but according to my colleague — who used to wait tables to help pay his way through college — waiting staff in America get taxed on the basis that they get a 10% tip. That means that if the tip is not forthcoming the STILL get taxed. And that means if patrons don’t tip, in effect, their waiter pays to wait on them.

No wonder they’re so insistent on a gratuity. I’ve even heard first hand tales of people being chased down the road for a $5 tip.

Revenge

See, I thought the high speed service and animated delivery from waiting staff in US restaurants was all about positive attitude. It seems it’s more to do with getting you out and the next tip-paying customer in.

But recently from the very same US comes the best advice for acknowledging poor service, advice which I was forced to put into action recently.

It certainly beats a Victor Meldrew style rant, even if that gets more attractive a prospect every day.

After an indifferent yet expensive meal drawn out by sloppy service by inattentive staff — including one who talked to a friend over our heads while she dished out our meal — I asked for the discretionary 12% service charge to be removed from the bill, saying I would pay the tip in cash.

“Was everything alright?” was the immediate question, the first time it had been asked. Frankly, I had no time for the inevitable scene if I actually told them.

Instead, as a parting gesture, after I was sure that the rest of the family was out in the clear, I dropped a single, dirty penny into the tip cup.

I’ve now started to collect dirty pennies to leave as tips if I get messed around. You certainly get crotchetier with age.

So it’s a lucky thing Mrs B is still just 35. If she were as old and crotchety as me, I figured I’d have a pocketful of dirty pennies by now, or is it that she just wants more untidiness at home so that she can relax a little more?

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I walked into the office today to find an email from my US bosses citing an article in Saturday’s New York Times. The NYT highlights the case of JCPenney, the major US catalogue retailer, who got caught with their pants round their ankles as a result of running a backlinking campaign. I’ve been told I’m the only SEO profesional in the whole company: mini-panics like this prove the point that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Perhaps I’m reading it wrong, but I think the thrust of the NYT’s piece is that backlinks are “Underhand, unfair and damned un-English”, as the Royal Navy described the idea of the submarine. One might say: “It’s just not cricket”, but recent events have proved that not even that is immune to unscrupulous practices, and anyway this is the other side of the Pond. I digress, constantly.

Anyway, I don’t know anyone in the search world who thinks that link-building is necessarily “Black Hat” per se (some of them even work for Google).

Having said that there ARE some link-building techniques which might be described as “Black Hat” and I would never advocate these. Besides, the industry I’m in does not lean towards the NEED for “Black Hat” SEO unlike, for example, gambling. When I worked for an online casino, rival companies were using all sorts of “Black Hat” linking techniques to get around Google’s more stringent rules then in force in the UK on SEO and PPC for online betting sites — they are still tough in the US. These included crafty JavaScript redirects which sent the Google Bot to an “allowed” site and humans to the (money-making) “illegal” gambling page.

Even so, I never felt the need to resort to such measures, and I successfully got my employer’s site to the top half of Google page 1 for ALL targeted terms.

I’m not surprised that JCPenney deny all knowledge of the spammy campaign that proved their downfall; working for search agencies I was surprised how often clients were completely (and sometimes aggressively) disinterested in exactly what SEO entails. Yet these same companies were often being charged obscene amounts of money for links that  were practically worthless — and in the case of JC Penney positively harmful.

Often, such links are charged at say $500 plus a time for a cost outlay of less than $2 — a profit in excess of 25,000%. Perhaps it serves them right.

Actually, more often than not, the links are not even bought, they are RENTED — stop paying the rent and they simply disappear. In my short time here, I’ve already been offered this “service” twice.

The fact that linkbuilding is so widespread can be inferred from studies — including the one just we’ve just carried out with our tame agency — which show that the leading domains (including all our rivals) are linked-to by hundreds of thousands of websites using EXACTLY the same keyword-rich anchor text — you might almost think it had been orchestrated.

On the other hand, I’m always very happy to see links being built as a result of SEO policies that include expanding, interesting, relevant and enticing content which makes people WANT to link to our sites. There is even a term for it: link bait.

Hopefully, the coming site relaunch planned for later this year will deliver such.

At the moment, given the current difficulties of changing backend code and adding new content to sites without incurring duplication “penalties” — or riding roughshod over longstanding corporate website guidelines — it seems that careful, intelligent backlink building is the only feasible option.

I’m trying to get this across to my bosses. To be fair, that is my job: the role of the in-house SEO is as much communicating the risks, realities and opportunities of natural search to the company as actually doing it.

But I could do without the NYT’s “assistance”, God bless ‘em.

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I enjoy eating. And it’s not like smoking or drinking (the latter of which I do but of late have been doing less of). One must eat to live, unless of course you’re one of those silly fakirs who apparently eat nothing and survive on “energy” or something.

I don’t even have an appetite for crap.To be honest, I’m a bit of a foodie. I’m even prepared to pay a little bit extra for quality and humane farming. I cook from scratch most times and I’m creative in the kitchen. I’m not much of a fan of fast food (though I do like the increasingly odd Chinese takeaway) and I’ve never understood how my son can eat pizza for lunch, dinner and tomorrow’s breakfast.

But I’ve had an abusive relationship with food since before I were a teenager. Yes, I eat the right stuff; I just eat too much of it.

In some ways I’m lucky. I’m 6ft 4in tall and the extra weight hangs “well” on me but there’s no disguising the fact that I could stand to lose a few pounds.

And it’s only now that I’ve worked out exactly where I’ve been going wrong.

Hands up if you heard this when you were a kid: “Eat it all up. There are children starving in Africa!”

A simple enough thing to say to an impressionable child. Especially if you survived an era where to waste food was literally a crime. To a large extent I was Granny-reared, and my Granny had had to fend for a family of four despite the rigors of rationing.

“Eat it all up. There are children starving in Africa!”

There were indeed. There still are — perhaps because I did what I was told and ate up all of my dinner so they didn’t have to, like a good little soldier.

And so it began: I’ve never left a meal unfinished since.

I even unwittingly attempted to pass the same philosophy on to my own kids. Luckily for them their mum came from a home where the message at mealtimes was more likely to be: “Eat what you can” or “Don’t eat it now. It’s gone cold.”

Did you know I love cold food?

This memorably came to ahead when my daughter, then aged six, refused to chew and swallow a chunk of roast lamb even though her dad insisted she was never going to leave the table until she did.

Attitude Problem

That lamb was never swallowed. My daughter left the table with the spongey morsel of overchewed flesh deposited at the side of the plate, largely due to the intercession of her mum. Good for her. Good for both of them. Dads aren’t always right.

Yet until just a few weeks ago I’d never connected my wife and kids’ attitude to food with my own weight issues. I’d been the only one in step, I thought. Perhaps that’s why my kids eat anything they like and still don’t have to shop at the outsize shop.

Still, it had started to dawn on me over the last few months that my real weight problem had more to do with my mind than my metabolic rate.

I realised I have an abusive relationship with food. I am the sort of person who takes the exhortation “all you can eat” as an instruction rather than a handy money-saving tip. I also eat like I have a train to catch, and I multitask at dinner time: I stuff my face while watching TV, reading my email or playing on the X-Box.

So, actually, it seems I don’t attach much importance to food. I don’t give it the respect due. There are children starving in Africa, you know. So why don’t I appreciate how good it is to be someone who these days never has to wonder where my next meal’s coming from?

Anyway, so I began to consider the possibility that it was my brain which needed diet advice. My first thought was that I could somehow get myself “reprogrammed” — I even downloaded a talking book that promised to “hypnotise myself slim!” I’ve still not read (heard) it.

Then I was walking through the books section of my local hypermarket when I spotted Paul McKenna’s “I Can Make You Slim” and slipped it into my trolley. I’ve not read that either, but I know someone who has.

My gorgeous better third — who was sceptical about buying McKenna’s tome in the first place — has nevertheless read it and saved me the trouble by faithfully relaying pertinent excerpts. One of these is all about the phrase: “Eat it all up. There are children starving in Africa!”

McKenna is direct about the feeling that one is somehow letting the side down by not clearing one’s plate.

It’s bollocks!

I paraphrase, of course, but McKenna points out that no cook ever felt insulted by such an act of petty rebellion; no child in Africa ever felt their personal hunger satisfied by such a selfless act.

McKenna urges people like me to always leave something on their plate, however small, as a sign that they have stopped eating, with one small proviso: don’t be a cock.

Well, that’s shorthand for several commonsense provisos, including …

• stop when you’re full (whenever that is),
• eat slowly and savour your food, and
• if you forget not to stop don’t beat yourself up; simply try again next time.

Easier said than done perhaps. After all, I’ve been clearing my plate for several millennia now. Buffets have been the worst: think of it this way, your plate never empties!

Well, as the old adage has it: “six weeks to make a habit, six weeks to break one”.

Surprising then that it’s taken a little less than half of that time to effect a huge change in my eating habits. So much so that when I go to lunch with workmates now I’m often surprised that I’m the only one not to clear my plate. And I’m eating slower too.

Now this not going to make me svelte and lissom overnight but, logically, if I’m dishing up the same size portions as I used to (which I am), I’m simply not consuming the amount of food I was. In that my weight has been stable for years now, simply eating less each day has to have some effect.

It might already be. Are those clothes actually looser these days? Is it just wishful thinking?

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When I worked on TIME magazine’s website we used to get the whole week off as a “Dark Week” because the magazine itself wasn’t being published — distribution of the printed product would have been a nightmare during that time so the TIME magazine Christmas Issue, the Person of the Year, was a double covering the whole of the holiday period. Since I left TIME in 2007, I’ve worked most “tweeny” days alongside my colleagues; one year I even worked Boxing Day. This year I have the luxury of “working from home”.

Actually, what that means is that I will probably work harder than all other previous years simply because I won’t have other “tweeny” day “wage slaves” around me who are, shall we say, more in the festive spirit. That’s a big reason that this post is such a short one. And what I will also miss is the easy travel you get this time of the year because so many people have taken leave to cover the “tweeny” days.

Don’t take this the wrong way but it’s almost enough to make you nostalgic for the office.

So, if I don’t get chance to talk to you before New Year: have a happy one and let’s hope there is some good in 2011!

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Before this starts rambling off into one of those stupid Round Robins, I’ll just say that if you’re really interested in what I’ve done this past year you’re either …

• Blessed with way too much time on your hands
• You haven’t signed up to my Twitter account
• Obviously the agent of some nefarious government department looking to pin something on me

Yes, I’m paranoid. I might claim to have a right to be; after all, it’s been a bit of a hectic few years, but if you want to know the full story, keep clicking on the previous story links.

I did that just the other day and discovered some parallels, some differences.

I also discovered many missing images. That’s what you get for relying on other people’s pictures.

So now it’s Xmas Eve. You’ll notice I’m using the word Xmas. Before any of you hark on about taking the Christ out of Christmas, the X stands for Xristos – the Greek word for Christ – and was used by early Christians as shorthand for their fledgling religion.

And Xmas isn’t about Christ anyway. The Christian church hijacked the entire winter solstice festival when it tried to convert the pagan hordes. Early Church chiefs realised there was no way they could get the marauding heathern hordes to abandon the big bean feast designed to offset the gloom of a northern winter and make use of the wealth of food from harvests and autumn culling, so they simply dropped in another reason to celebrate – the birth of the Saviour.

The late Frank Muir described Xmas as a commercial festival with religious overtones. I like that.

Some people say it’s all for children, so why aren’t the kids invited to the office parties and Xmas drinks?

And why is the fastest turnover in the supermarkets on the drinks shelves? Yes, kids have a lot of fun at Xmas, but so do grown-ups too; that’s why new parents buy presents for newborns and pet owners get grand gifts for their non-plussed pooches and pussies.

The joy is truly in the giving.

Having said that, we haven’t done the “big give” for years now. It started when the Crunch really bit a few years ago. We figured that it didn’t make sense to spend precious time and money on presents that people didn’t really want. So we agreed to buy the one thing that each of us really wanted.

It’s worked well although it has slipped of late and a few “stocking fillers” have been bought.

But it’s Xmas isn’t it?

Well, we’re ready for it. All except the Christmas Radio Times that we waited just a little too long to buy. Festivities start later today with a now family traditional Fish Chowder (first concocted by Rabbi Lionel Blue) and a bit of the falling down water, to be sure.

I wish you all a Merry Xmas, or whatever you call it.

Stay safe, stay focused, stay happy.

And take a look at my Xmas Message to you all

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I don’t know for sure where I first heard it — it may have been Frank Muir Goes Into … — or who actually first said it, but the mere suggestion of this aphorism won me a commendation.

It goes like this …

Democracy is a system where you say what you like and do what you’re told.

This perhaps proves that I was born a cynic and didn’t become one as a result of my journalistic career.

You might think that they would have found a better alternative to democracy by now.

There have been many attempts: theocracy, monarchy, even dictatorship. The original dictatorships seem like quite a good idea: the dictator was a citizen elected to the post, who ruled — totally — for a fixed period, usually the course of a battle or natural crisis. Management by committee can be downright dangerous at such times. When the emergency was over, power reverted back to the people — some of the time.

Of course, other dictators have been less than happy to relinquish power: genocide usually ensues before the dictator is deposed by popular uprising, external intervention or The Grim Reaper. It never ends well.

With this in mind it’s no wonder these days that people are nervous about going the dictator route.

You might think that they’d be backing democracy then: the will of the majority. Compromise. Accommodation.

Not a bit of it.

At the last British General Election, no single party won an overall majority (of seats, that is. Truth is, the UK Parliamentary Elections System means that few elected governments have held a popular mandate. In other words, more people voted agin ‘em, than for ‘em).

We now have a coalition government — the largest party joined the third largest party to gather enough seats to allow unpopular legislation to be passed. What this means depends on where your political allegiances lie.

• If you’re on the British Political Right, the Coalition means that necessary changes to remodel the UK along good business lines as a low-tax, entrepreneurial society are being blocked by soft liberal influences such as those portrayed by Margaret Thatcher and Donald Rumsfeld.
• If you’re on the Political Left, the Liberal Democrat leader has abandoned the principles espoused by his party and previous Lib-Dem leaders including Michael Foot, Tony Benn and Arthur Scargill to allow the Tories to wage an ideological war on the peasant classes.
• Even if you’re a member of the Liberal Democrats, you are torn between doing what’s needed to turn the country around and taking to heart the claims of treachery, betrayal and U-turnage.

On mainland Europe, the wheeling and dealing of coalition government is a much more familiar political necessity. Compromises are made, “cherished” (yet embarrassing) polices are quietly shelved, and minority parties get the chance to punch above their weight.

In Dear Old Blighty, the erroneously named “First Past the Post” system means that we get it the other way round: majority parties get to chance to punch above their actual mandate. The current Coalition therefore is a beyond the average Brit’s understanding. S/He can’t get her/his head round the idea of politicians actually having to negotiate.

The Coalition is a mass of compromises: Tories and Lib-Dems have had to abandon cherished parts of their programs simply to find some common ground upon which to govern. For the Lib-Dems, the most obvious example is the pledge to vote against any rise in student fees. Clegg and his cohorts have been accused of all types of iniquity because they changed policy over student fees.

These accusations are wrong on so many levels. For example,

• All parties reverse, abandon or simply sweep under the carpet all sorts of manifesto promises as soon as they get into power.
• The Left has pounced on Student Fee increases as an example of Tory policy designed to keep poor people out of university when in fact it is middle class kids who will have to pay the fees and then only at a rate of £30 a month once their salary tops £21,000 per year (linked to inflation). American graduates would welcome that deal, I’m sure.
• The crazy drive to get 50% of all teenagers into “universities” has meant an exponential increase in soft courses which offer little final value in the form of a degree and the fact that more students now live at their parents’ home while studying than ever before means that they don’t even gain the experience of living away from home

Never mind the anecdotal observations that many of those complaining most about tuition fees are those least affected by them.

And there is evidence that the Liberal Democrats were planning to abandon the Fees pledge ahead of the election.

But the real reason the chiding of the Lib Dems is very wrong is that the pledge was part of a manifesto of policies which they would introduce as a Lib Dem Government. In this the Lib Dems were perhaps doubly unfortunate: no-one ever expected them to be in government in any form.

Certainly not the Tories. How could anyone lose against the most unpopular Prime Minister in living memory after the first meltdown of the globalisation era? Well, David Cameron almost did.

Cameron, an old-Etonian, is a dangerous Leftie in the eyes of much of his party and I’m sure that the Lib-Dems have proved the perfect cover to quietly drop some of the Tories’ more “rabid” ideas.

The Liberal Democrats aren’t the government, they are the junior partners. We know this because Lib-Dems have been given all the jobs that might make the Coalition unpopular with voters. But that means that their manifesto promises aren’t worth the paper they’re written on (just like all manifesto promises).

Indeed, simply joining a coalition seems to have caused some root-and-branch Lib-Dems to quit the party.

This can’t be because it’s a coalition, Liberals have been praying for a crack at shared power since Lloyd George. No it must be because it’s the wrong sort of coalition, i.e. not one with the Labour Party, despite the fact that Clegg said before polling day that he owed it to the British electorate to try to form a government based on popular mandate, in other words, joining the party with the most votes.

I beieve this shows that the exodus of “Lib-Dems” which followed the formation of the coalition was not made up of true Liberal Democrats. I think they were Labour Party sympathisers who couldn’t bring themselves to join a party of people who were happy to call themselves “Socialist”. The same thing happened with the SDP and the Liberals back in the 80s: there were some who just couldn’t bring themselves to join David Steel’s party (David Owen foremost).

No, it seems there is precious little democracy around today. People only seem to be in favour of it as long as they get all they want.

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