Who's funny?

Over there ---> you'll see my selection of links to funny people. Sadly, though, while I'm sure they're still funny, some of them are keeping it to themselves. Ariane Sherine is, I believe, locked in a convent writing a novel, while Marina Hyde left us in November, with the promise that she'll return to the Guardian "next year".

So, my appeal is this: who else is funny? Please let me know of anyone writing a regular column that makes you laugh, and if I agree, I'll put a link in the list. Thanks.

Wiggy!

Flicked over from the Cheltenham Festival to BBC Parliament, where there was an adjournment debate on access to financial services in southeast London - ie Nationwide's closure programme. I was quite impressed by my MP, Heidi Alexander, but my attention was continually distracted by the Boris Johnson tribute act on the coalition front bench. I tried to capture it but the picture didn't come out too well, but fortunately the internet provides a valuable collection of photographs of the man in question.

This is how he looks now:

, compared to a few years ago:

How on earth do people manage to keep a straight face when he's in the room? 

In praise of 'cover versions'

I think it's probably an evolutionary trait that as people get older they find more in the world that they disagree with, so that eventually death comes as a welcome release from a world gone unrecognisably mad.

I think I'm a long way off that yet because what's exercising me today is the modern orthodoxy that pop singers aren't really authentic unless they write their own songs. I suppose the thinking is that they can't give the same commitment to someone else's words, someone else's experience. But music - or any art - is all about communicating the experience of one person to another. If singers can't inhabit someone else's words and music, why should we, as listeners, be able to be moved by their experience?

Why, above all, should we expect the best singers to be - by happy coincidence - the best songwriters? And I'm not pining after a golden age of my youth in thinking this, but rather of a golden age before I was born, the days of tin pan alley when professional songwriters wrote a song on spec, or occasionally with a particular singer in mind, and the singers brought it to life.

It's too late to go back now, I know. We're stuck with an imperfect mixture of great singers and rubbish songs (I mean you, Amy - some of your songs are real stinkers) or average singers with superb songs (and my example here is from Brazil: Zeca Baleiro - a great compositor whose songs deserve a much better rendition than he can give).

I'd love to be able to clinch the argument by saying that Frank Sinatra never wrote his own songs, but I bloody hate Frank Sinatra.

Anyway, that's my current annoyance with these times we live in. Fortunately it's trivial (though not too trivial for a blog post - is anything?) and it's not enough to make me want to die, you'll be pleased, I hope, to hear.

Charlton 1 Carlisle 3

Ditto, if not more so. Horrible defending and disjointed attacking. I think the problem going forward is that Chris Powell is trying to change the way the team is playing and they're not familiar with it yet. He seems to have banned the long hoick, which is a good thing, but the players aren't yet on top of the short-pass game, so are losing possession as often as they used to. Only now they're doing it at ground level, not head-height or higher. I'm such a mug I believe this will eventually come good.

But at the back, oh lord, what problems. Christian Dailly is finally showing signs of his age (37) despite his impressive fitness. Beside him we had Gary Doherty in the first half, 31 but never quick, and Jon Fortune in the second half (surprisingly, still only 30 but looking well off the pace). Rob Elliot had a poor game too, and with that sort of defence behind it the rest of the team can't be relaxed. Basically, there's never been an adequate replacement for Richard Rufus, and although it would be simplistic to blame Charlton's decline entirely on that, that's what I blame it on. Entirely.

The Baron's Speech

A repeat of an old Round the Horne reminded me of Patrick Campbell, an Irish raconteur who used to appear quite often on television in the 1970s. Here's an example of his work.


So many things to cherish: Robert Robinson's famous scrapeover, the astonishing beauty of the young Joan Bakewell, and the embryo of evil that was Noel Edmonds.

But, of course, what's most striking is that BBC tv used to regularly feature a man with a pronounced stammer, with an attitude that said "You just be patient. This man is funny and charming and worth waiting for."  It treated his "impediment" as just a way of speaking, no more an impediment than Frank Muir's rhotacism.

Campbell himself put it best:

From my earliest days I have enjoyed an attractive impediment in my speech. I have never permitted the use of the word 'stammer'. I can't say it myself.

When did you last see someone talking with a stammer on television who wasn't the subject of a documentary? Probably never, unless you're as old as me. Stammering has become defined as a disability. If that helps people get treatment (and if they want treatment) I suppose that's good, but it brings all the familiar downsides: the stammerer is pitied, not fully respected. If Campbell were to appear on television now - as a judge on Strictly Come Dancing, say - there'd be a feeling that he had no right to be there, that the BBC was being politically correct in forcing us to listen to him.

Perhaps - and I'm no pessimist - we really are in a crueler world these days.

Forgetting the things we like

A few years ago I was sitting on a slow bus to London, and heard a young woman telling her boyfriend about how much she used to enjoy ceilidhs. She got very enthusiastic about it, but then said "But I don't go any more. It's not very cool, is it?" Her useless lump of a boyfriend completely ignored this open goal, and it was left to me to say "Don't worry about whether it's cool or not. If you like ceilidhs, and you obviously do, you ought to go to them. If your useless lump of a boyfriend won't go with you, you should dump him because he's obviously dangerously scared of new experiences, and, if I may say so, shows a distressingly small desire to do things that might make you happy. I'll go with you."

Of course I didn't say that, but I should have. Some of it at least. Why do people stop doing things that make them happy? I'm the last person to answer the question because I spent years not cycling, and now I've rediscovered something else I more or less stopped doing.

For a few years I was a pretty solid vegetarian, but then I started eating fish now and again, and then, fatally, I started going to Spain. There is a vegetarian restaurant in Barcelona, but it's a long way to go when you're in Extremadura, for example, where bits of pig are part of every thing you might be served. So I'm carnivorous again, and the arguments in favour of vegetarianism aren't strong enough for me to change back.

But recently I've discovered the joy of home-cooked vegetable curry again. The recipe is simple. Fry some onions and garlic in oil. Grind up a selection of spices, and fry them off in the oil. Take whatever vegetables you have - carrots, parsnip, potato, peas, cauliflower - and dice them. Fry them lightly in the oil then add a tin of tomatoes, and maybe some yogurt, and simmer till cooked. Sprinkle with garam masala and coriander leaves and serve with simple basmati rice. Quick, easy, and very tasty, so why did I stop cooking and eating it?

People are stupid would be my conclusion, but that's not fair. All the evidence so far points to a less flattering conclusion: I am stupid (and so is the woman on the bus, but at least she and I are not useless lumps like her boyfriend).

So the thought for the day is that we should all from time to time think about the things we used to love doing. Why don't we do them any more? What the hell is stopping us?

Charlton 1 Exeter 3

What a disappointing day! This was the game for which seat prices had been reduced to £5. Consequently the ground was packed, but there wasn't much to entice the new or returning fans back. I suppose saying "the team has played worse than that and won several times this season" doesn't help, but it's true. The level of play was - on the whole - well above some of the games won during Parkinson's time, but there were familiar failings. Above all, a slow central defence. Gary Doherty, in particular, looked too easy to beat: every time he was challenged for a ball you feared the outcome. As there are only older and slower players available to replace him, this is worrying.

And the attack, despite making several opportunities, lacked the moments of inspiration needed to convert them to goals. I'm less worried about this: I would hope Chris Powell has the nous to bring out the spirit of adventure the forwards need. I also hope he noted how much better the team looked with Therry Racon on the field.