The Men Commandments
Christian O’Connell
The Bible For Blokes From The Daddy Of Breakfast RadioForeword by James Nesbitt.Christian O’Connell has been a man nearly all his life. Well, once he was a boy, then he was a teenager, then a man, but you get what we mean. So who better to save manhood from devolving into one of those spineless newt things from the Guinness ad?For years women have had everyone from Germaine Greer to Bridget Jones to tell them how to be a woman, and who have men had? No one. That is, until now . . .For ten years Christian has dispensed wisdom and advice to millions of lucky radio listeners on every topic conceivable; but it was when he saw his wife reading, and laughing at, a book called “How to Kill your Husband”, that he realised he had to write this book.Men are confused about what it is to be a man in a world where men use moisturiser and eat sandwiches with rocket. They need help. The Men Commandments is a roadmap, a compass for men (not a sat nav - they’re evil!)With his outspoken humour and ironic take on life, Christian explores male-dom; celebrating all that is great about being a man and unravelling those mysteries of masculinity that have stumped women for literally minutes.Packed full of wisdom, advice, trivia and cheeky banter, this is the must have book for men everywhere.Includes:• The Man Quiz (a helpful quiz to establish real manliness)• The 78 genetic differences between men and women (work for which Christian is expecting a Nobel prize)• Manly Toilet Etiquette (real men do not speak at the urinals)• The History of Men (it says a lot about the psyche of Man that early Neanderthal paintings depict willies)• Men and their Mates (a relationship full of weird rituals, abuse and unspoken rules)• The Real First XI• The Men Commandments (the ten commandments that every true man needs to know)
THE MEN COMMANDMENTS
THE BIBLE FOR BLOKES FROM THE DADDY OF BREAKFAST RADIO
CHRISTIAN O’CONNELL
To all the men. Past, present and future. This one’s for us.
CONTENTS
FOREWORD (#u4d8a0f79-dfa3-5279-a2ec-1f898863cb35)
BY
JAMES NESBITT
‘What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals – and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?’
Shakespeare knew his onions. Four hundred and one years after Hamlet so deftly defined man’s complexities and insecurities, his pride and self-loathing, his capabilities for good and evil, we’re none the wiser. In fact, in 2008, this is much worse. Hamlet was jammy enough to die a hero. His dad was dead, though appeared once nightly as a ghost during the summer season. His mum married his uncle, so clearly they both had to die, he had sex with his girlfriend then mistakenly stabbed and killed her father, who was hiding behind the curtain, or ‘arras’ as Shakespeare called it – he obviously didn’t know his ‘arras’ from his elbow. She went mental before doing the decent thing of drowning herself before he had the ‘we need to talk’ nightmare, and then in his death throes after he had been pierced with a poison sword, his best mate Horatio held him in his arms and snogged him. Thus ensuring Hamlet died happy in the knowledge that he had tried everything.
But modern man. We have to live. Every day we have to live with ourselves, our partners, our children, our friends. And we don’t know how to. We’re scared. We’re lost. How did it come to this?
How did we arrive at a situation where we spend more on grooming products than we do on beer?
Why do our mates openly discuss their feelings while our wives debate the offside trap? Why, despite our embracing of liberal modernity, do we still have no control over the groin area?
If we publicly cry more than Charles Ingalls in an average episode of Little House on the Prairie, does it demonstrate how in touch we are with our feminine side or do we appear weak, pathetic nonces?
Why do our children change from adoring little angels to sulky ten-year-olds, embarrassed to even breathe? And why in God’s name at the age of 43 do I still suck my thumb? We need answers. Desperately.
For years women have had everyone from Mrs Beeton to Germaine Greer to Bridget Jones. Men have had no one. Until now.
Christian O’Connell looks like Jerry Seinfeld’s younger brother but with bigger teeth. And has a fondness for wearing muscle tops. Not an obvious candidate for our knight in shining armour, but don’t be fooled.
Our friendship is based on abuse. I listen while he abuses me. But I like to think it’s borne out of love. He is as at home in the company of women as he is in the company of men. He is funny, irreverent, scathing, at times coruscating but never cruel. Very much the modern man.
He has not, however, fallen prey to the dumbing-down culture which so pervades our society. Intelligent, kind and erudite, he is a devoted husband and father. But at heart he is a man’s man and is the answer to our prayers. With Christian, men can regain their identity and walk proud and tall. His wife’s man, his daughter’s man, his friend’s man, he’s my man. He’s Christian O’Connell.
INTRODUCTION (#u4d8a0f79-dfa3-5279-a2ec-1f898863cb35)
Three things happened in a week that made me think I needed to write this book. First, my newspaper had a headline screaming ‘The Redundant Male’. Next was my wife’s sinister cackling while reading her new book, How to Kill Your Husband. The final insult was turning on the TV and seeing that advert for Sheilas’ Wheels offering cheaper car insurance for those oh so careful women drivers. Discrimination. And during Heartbeat.
ENOUGH.
At no other time in history have men been so openly ridiculed – and we have only ourselves to blame. We have never been so confused about how to be a man.
Sure, there are countless books offering insights into the female condition but precious few for men. Until now.
This book is about how we are as men. When we are alone. With our mates. With women. With the TV and movie heroes that have taught us everything we know.
I would like to make it crystal clear that this is not any kind of instruction manual: none of us would read it and I wouldn’t be sitting here writing it.
I (#u4d8a0f79-dfa3-5279-a2ec-1f898863cb35)
THE MAN QUIZ (#u4d8a0f79-dfa3-5279-a2ec-1f898863cb35)
This is a book for men. These days it’s hard to tell who is a man and who isn’t. This handy quiz may help.
1 Instructions are for:ReadingLosers
2 Did you cry in Rocky III when Apollo died?Who is Rocky and what is Apollo?For days
3 You are invited to attend the motion picture Sex and the City by your other half. Do you:Happily say you’d love to go. Two and a half hours with the fab four sounds like heaven!Say, ‘I’d rather rub a cheese grater across my scrotum’
1 It is one in the morning and you return home after a night out with your mates. Do you:Retire to bed with a warm glass of milk and an oat biscuitFire up the frying pan and start to cook despite the fact you cannot see or stand unaided
2 A phone conversation with a mate will:Go on forever sometimes!Finish within a minute and in that time words will often be replaced by a complex system of grunts, mumbles and silences that only men understand
3 How much time do you spend in front of the mirror getting ready?Several minutes following an intense cleansing, toning, exfoliating and moisturising programmeLess than a minute
4 The best time to call an ex is:Never. Best to let bygones be bygones and move onWhen you’ve had a skinful and are feeling horny
5 What are you better at recalling?Birthdays, anniversariesEntire lines and scenes from movies like The Godfather, Police Academy 5 and anything starring Steven Seagal
1 What is the real purpose of the remote control?To change the channels remotely from a distanceTo flick around the moment the ads come on and try and see everything else that is on, but to never settle for more than 1.7 seconds on anything
2 TV detectives Starsky and Hutch and Bodie and Doyle from The Professionals are having a fight. Who will win?Starsky and HutchBodie and Doyle
3 You are stuck on a desert island and suddenly discover a DVD player. You have been alone for 76 days. There is only one DVD to watch: The Godfather: Part III. Do you:Watch itGrab the nearest coconut and smash the copy of Godfather: Part III to pieces, screaming, ‘How could they do this? They ruined it!’
4 Which is better, Star Wars or Harry Potter?Harry PotterStar Wars because 1) Princess Leia appears in chains in a gold bikini and 2) Han Solo is a space pirate
5 When was the last time you cried?Just last week when your supermarket ran out of shaved parmesan During an episode of Rolf’s Animal Hospital when a brave but sick dog died
6 You are asked ‘What are you thinking?’ by your partner. Do you:Tell her exactly what you are thinking – you were imagining what the girl who just walked past would look like naked with you on herReply shiftily, ‘Nothing’
7 The best place to relax and unwind at home is:In the front room with some lovely throws and scented candlesIn the loo under the stairs which smells but has a lock
8 A 42-inch TV is:Way too bigNot big enough but will have to do
9 A man’s position on a dance floor is: On it with his partner using some steps they learnt together at a salsa classDrinking at the bar, laughing at all the other men trying to dance
10 Saturday night TV is:Great fun! So many exciting programmes to choose from like Strictly Come Dancing and Dancing On Ice Utter shit
11 You are at a pet shop and have to choose between buying a cat or a dog. Do you:Pick a cat as they are just so cutePick a dog cos they kill cats
12 You are arguing with your wife or girlfriend. Do you:Work out a positive outcome, having fully understood the various issues raisedApologise despite having no idea what you are sorry about
13 You notice that the loo roll is empty. Do you:Replace itIgnore it, not really understanding what needs to happen to replace it
14 You are lost in a car. Do you:Ask for directions from a cheery localCarry on driving around, insisting you are not lost and that it’s somewhere round here
15 Have you ever watched more than one hour of a period drama/America’s Next Top Model?YesSorry, I don’t recognise the shows you talk of
1 You meet up with your mates in the pub. Do you talk about:Your feelingsWho would win in a fight between James Bond and Jack Bauer
2 Do you have a pair of lucky underpants that smell and have holes?Good God, noYes
3 It’s your best friend’s birthday. Do you:Send him a birthday card and buy him a giftIgnore it
4 Do you know what duck-egg blue is?Sure, it’s a light blue great for rooms with plenty of natural daylightColour of Man City’s home kit?
5 What do you fear more?Knife attack from a group of deadly ninjasMan flu
6 At a barbecue, how do you know when the chicken is done?When it’s white throughout When you say it is (despite guests throwing up and ambulances arriving)
7 What do you think of musicals?Great entertainment – have seen Les Mis and Cats several times, always a blastPure evil
8 Are you over the age of 30 and wear low-slung denim around your knees? If so, please put this book down and fuck off.
If you answered ‘a’ to any of the above, you’re not a man. Thank you for your time and interest and please place this book back on the shelf for a real man.
If you answered ‘b’ to any of the above, this book is for you.
I bet some of the questions made you think, even hesitate, before answering. We are confused, aren’t we? We don’t know what we are supposed to be any more. I don’t know how to change the wheel on my car. My dad does, though. I’d just get the AA out. We use moisturisers and eat sandwiches with rocket in. What’s happening to us?
I guess it would make sense to start this book at the beginning. Our rites of passage.
II (#u4d8a0f79-dfa3-5279-a2ec-1f898863cb35)
RITES OF PASSAGE (#u4d8a0f79-dfa3-5279-a2ec-1f898863cb35)
On the journey through life we pass through various experiences that shape who we are. The boy becomes the man. Or more likely the boy stays the boy but buys a house, gets married and has kids, all the time wondering when is he going to grow up and stop laughing when people fall over.
But what are the key moments in a young man’s life and development?
PARENTS
Whether it’s informing you that eating apple core will make trees grow out of your ears or that playing with yourself will turn you blind, these people shape us into what we become. Be it a serial killer or an MP – it’s all their fault.
Actually, it’s our dad who gives us the first impression of what a man is and does. My dad was very loving and he instilled a great sense of ‘you can do anything in life if you work hard enough’ in me. He was and still is nuts.
The best story to illustrate this is how we dealt with the death of my younger sister’s cat. Well, actually, it was the second cat death in our family. The first died after my dad accidentally left it out one night. In the snow. Sadly this was before Ray Mears and Bear Grylls so poor Henry didn’t know how to construct a rudimentary bivouac for shelter.
The second one, a beloved tabby cat called Pepper, passed away in less extreme circumstances. My sister was understandably upset but my dad assured her that he would be on his way to Cat Heaven and he would take care of his burial. What I’m about to tell you is beyond belief – but please don’t judge my dad as he is made from the same man genes as us all. Having been promised a decent cat send-off for poor beloved Pepper, my sister came running into the house in floods of tears. Hysterical. She claimed in her emotional state to have seen ‘my Pepper on a skip’.
Now it’s not unknown for the grief-stricken to see visions of the recently departed. That’s what must have happened here. Or so I thought. My dad calmed her down and asked me to help him with something. He quietly told me we needed to move the body.
Sorry, Dad? The body?
You see, my dad had deposited poor old Pepper, the family cat, on the neighbour’s skip. Hey, who hasn’t dumped some carpet underlay or old paint tins in a neighbour’s skip late at night? But a dead pet? He hadn’t even made an attempt to cover it with anything! So now he was getting his son in on his deception, and I was loving it. Both father and son bonded and giggled as poor old Pepper was lifted off the skip and taken elsewhere. Then my dad calmly told my sister we had just checked the skip and there was no cat body. Go see for yourself, he urged her. She checked it and agreed. I had learnt a valuable lesson: men lie.
Then there was the time he tried to landscape the garden on the cheap by doing it himself. He hired this beast of a thing called a rotavator. He tried to steer it one way and it flung him over the neighbour’s fence. All I saw was this runaway rotavator, Dad-less, and then I heard a word I hadn’t heard before – ‘FUCKER!’ – as my dad popped up the other side of our neighbour’s fence, leapt back over and began to chase after it. Shirtless, wearing only, of course, his magical Dad Pants.
I learnt another valuable lesson. Men are funny. Funny peculiar. Oh, and another lesson: always hire a rotavator with an automatic cut-off switch.
SCHOOL DAYS
When I think of my school days, I physically wince. It’s the flashbacks of brand new shoes in September, which had no give in them until March the next year, at which point it was time for a new pair of Clarks Commandos. In your early school days your mum dresses you… but then something called puberty happens.
In men puberty lasts until they die. So many changes happen to the young man. First come the little acts of rebellion in your school uniform. You don’t want your mum’s big fat Windsor knot in your tie – I was at school in the eighties so it was now a slim jim. Or you tucked it away into your shirt. Then you wanted to wear Stay Press trousers. You couldn’t hope to get a girl’s attention without Stay Press.
Then it was the looking at girls differently. Very differently. Getting these funny feelings you didn’t really understand. You used to be happy to stare out of the window during lessons, praying for excitement like a stray dog running into the playground. Now you stared at bras and tried to work out who had one and who didn’t. Oh, and the teachers’ breasts.
Puberty is hard on a young man. How do you cope with getting unwanted and embarrassing erections in the middle of a history lesson about the Great Fire of London? They were either unwanted or I was getting the horn from all that fire talk. It was even worse during PE. The girls in PE skirts, getting cheap thrills coming down the ropes. Me and my grubby mates suddenly taking a very keen interest in netball lessons. Happy days. I remember this girl at school who was very attractive, totally aware of it and a terrible tease. During a squash lesson, she was playing our teacher and we were all told to watch as he demonstrated his court technique. She had conveniently forgotten her outfit so was playing in little more than her bra and knickers. With her pert breasts bouncing up and down. It was too much not only for the boys leering down at the court action but also the teacher. He started to show a boner. I helpfully and loudly pointed this out, thinking it was part of his ‘court’ technique, and everyone started shouting, ‘MR ______’S (name deleted here as he was a good teacher and I feel bad about humiliating him, but not that bad as it was funny) GOT A BONER.’ We were ordered to go and get changed immediately and wait in the school minibus. When he got into the minibus to take us back to school he told me to get out and walk. I had learnt another lesson. Never ever laugh at another man’s erection.
PE
It was during the hell of PE and games that I got my first real sense of rejection. At school you just want to be part of the gang, to have some sense of belonging. You don’t want to be an outsider. You want to be in the school football team. My problem was that I was very bad at football. My toe punt had killed several kids and therefore I never got picked. At break time I was always last – chosen after the asthmatic kid, the fat kid with tits and the kid with a sticking plaster over one of the lenses of his glasses. I don’t think I’ve ever got over the feeling of rejection of not making the school football team and maybe it’s that that made me want to sit in a little room each morning talking crap between songs. I am still looking for the approval the PE teacher never gave me. All the awards, they don’t help the pain.
While we are on the subject, what’s the deal with PE teachers? Psychos. Why did they hang around the showers checking we were going in naked? And, of course, like every other school, there was this kid who hit puberty at eleven and had an enormous cock that quite obviously scared/fascinated the PE teachers. I never understood why the PE teacher had his own office. All that was in there were tennis rackets and porn mags, or so my young fertile mind would imagine. Watching too many Porky’s films polluted my mind.
SCHOOL MUSICALS
After the sporting rejection I decided maybe the world of school entertainment would prove to be my calling. So I auditioned for the school production of Bugsy Malone. With the promise of after-school rehearsals (mainly with girls), I was on to a winner. It would also keep me away from my penis and my masturbation habit, which was threatening to overtake my life.
The only small obstacle in my way was the audition. Simple. Sing to the Head of Music any song you wanted. As a huge Elvis Presley fan, I went for ‘Blue Suede Shoes’. I now regret this. What justice could a spotty 13-year-old with a breaking voice do to The King?
I was to stand behind the music teacher – ‘Just call me Dave’ – while he accompanied my powerhouse of a performance on the piano. I set off at a blistering pace full of vim and vigour that The King himself would have been proud of. This was soon derailed by the shaking shoulders and head of ‘Just call me Dave’. At first I thought he was getting lost in the powerful vocal performance from yours truly, giving it some Jerry Lee Lewis at the piano. But no, he was shaking with barely concealed laughter. At me. And in a way at Elvis. I kept going until the end like a pro and quickly made my excuses and left. (Hey, ‘Dave’, I hope you’re living alone in rented accommodation now while I talk to – no, enthral – an audience of 17 each morning. FUCK you!)
The next day the cast list went up on the school noticeboard by the staff room where we all thought the teachers had orgies. I was cast. As Knuckles. Who was a heavy. Cool, I thought, they cast me as a hard man due to my rugged presence. Like the future man I would become, I was developing a keen sense of denial and the ability to kid myself. I slowly realised Knuckles was also a mute. I learnt another valuable lesson. Only gay boys do school musicals.
DINNER LADIES
It’s at school we get our first taste of authority figures. At primary school (or whatever it’s called now) there was that most terrifying form of humanity: the dinner lady. No word of a lie, I once saw one slap an unruly kid who was having a really bad Brussel sprout tantrum and had made the mistake of kicking a dinner lady in the shins. The resulting smack lifted him off his feet and sent him through the air. I heard that those Chinese nutjobs who guarded the Olympic flame when it came to London were trained by dinner ladies.
OF BED SHEETS AND SNAIL TRAILS
It’s also at school that our young man minds first get filled with the low background chatter of sex. A lot. As little boys our willies are things of fascination, and they remain that for the rest of our lives. With puberty, the fascination becomes an obsession. Most men grow out of this – unless you’re an MP or a professional footballer.
Its size, measuring it, playing with it. Our lives revolve around our own special friend. I remember an assembly which was all about sexual reproduction. The girls were told all about the changes they would be going through, and us boys got cheap thrills at the slides of breasts in bras. Then the woodwork teacher walked out and started telling us, and I’m not making this up, how to correctly measure your penis. The woodwork teacher. He said, as only a man could, that looking down at your penis was an inaccurate way to determine its length due to depth perception. A tape measure was best. I was now trying to work out how I was going to smuggle my mum’s tape measure out of her sewing kit.
‘What do you need that for, darling?’
‘Just going to measure my cock.’
‘OK, don’t forget your tea’s almost ready.’
My journey into self-pleasure coincided with something that I now look back on as some kind of cruel trick played by my parents. They had done my bedroom out and pretty damn cool it looked too. The problem was my bed sheets. They were black.
Well, black with what resembled snail trails everywhere. I remember my mum’s look of surprise as I started to do my own washing – but just the bed sheet. I almost had to get help to break it in half to get it in the washing machine. The evidence, trail of evidence, was there for all to see, and it prompted my mum to say ominously, ‘Your dad’s going to have a chat with you about all that.’ Yes, it was time to have the birds and bees chat. Oh God.
It was a very brief chat, short on detail and anything of any use. Just a ‘You know about it all, do you?’ and that I was to use a condom. Which I was already. For making water bombs. Did they have any other use?
Thankfully, one of the kids at my school had the business acumen of a young Sir Alan Sugar and had started selling pornographic magazines. Where he got them from we never knew. If you were really lucky, though, you would find a free one in a hedge. You don’t seem to see this so much any more. I often wondered how this started. Was it someone’s remote storage place? Were they hidden there by the publishers, trying to get us hooked? No one knows. These days hedges have been replaced by the internet.
I did eventually have to buy one (the hedge supply had dried up) and I have to be honest and say it actually scared me. The nudity and images were too much too soon for me and I disposed of it in the neighbour’s hedge. A lovely old man lived there with his wife, and he did have a heart attack shortly after my hedge gift. Was my copy of Razzle (with its ‘3 Bum Special’ feature) to blame in any way?
Things went into hormonal overdrive every Friday night with a new TV series called Dempsey and Makepeace. Move aside The A Team and The Rockford Files, Glynis Barber has arrived! By now I had a TV in my room and I would say good night to my parents a full ten minutes before it started – much to their surprise. What kid when finally allowed to stay up late goes to bed early?
Saying I was tired and needed to go to bed, I would leg it upstairs to get ready. I needn’t go any further other than to say that the TV needed a good wipe down on a Saturday morning. Those snails had been on the move again…
SCHOOL DISCOS
I think our fear of the dance floor stems directly from the experiences at the school disco. I’m sure the French spend their youth grinding up against each other to soulful ballads but in my experience all you used to do was skid on to your knees across the polished gym floor, push the nerds into the girls and pogo around like an idiot to Adam and the Ants.
When Phyllis Nelson’s ‘Move Closer’ came on, it was simply a signal for me to take a break from the action and shovel more crisps, E numbers and Panda Pops down my throat. If you did get lucky and find a girl actually willing to dance with you, her mere physical presence in your postcode brought instant arousal. I think that’s another reason why men are so rubbish at dancing.
Trying to dance while hiding a massive diamond cutter in your trousers can be a very traumatic process. I also remember a very dodgy teacher ‘insisting’ he had a slow dance with all the school hotties. I think it was this that first got me thinking that teaching might be the career for me.
SATURDAY JOBS
Saturday jobs are the first taste we get of the dullness of paid work. And wearing an ill-fitting polyester uniform. But you learn valuable lessons. Firstly, that people who work in management are often from the shallow end of the gene pool. A gene pool someone may have pissed in. Secondly, you learn the importance of skiving and that if you’re given a good job to do, you make it last as long as is humanly possible.
I was lucky in that after a few jobs waiting tables and washing up, I was headhunted from the groceries aisle of Sainsbury’s by Marks and Spencer. That’s not strictly true, although I did work on the groceries aisle at Sainsbury’s. There was a stunning girl who worked on the till who I was besotted with. My affections were sadly never returned. I guess it’s hard to be won over by a streak of piss in a three-quarter-length brown overall and matching Stay Press brown pants. That were three inches too short. In movies, a mental person is usually the one wearing pants that are too short for him.
One of my best mates, Kevin, and I both managed to get jobs at Marks and Spencer. This was the place to work as they paid well and had a great canteen. That and the fact they had a lingerie section you could gawp at.
What happened next was the stuff of novels and movies. Two friends enter the same institution but are given vastly different jobs and their lives and fortunes change for ever. I was put straight on the tills. The best gig. Ten items or less. I became something of a hotshot, famed for my rapid scanning technique. The ‘Maverick’ of Winchester Marks and Spencer. My friend Kevin, my ‘Goose’, however, was put on trolley collection. This is a role usually reserved for people who enjoy licking windows. He was not happy about it. I was.
Sadly my time there came to an end as my Saturday hangovers got worse. Most mornings I would excuse myself to the store sick bay to sleep off the effects of a night on the cheap cider. Or the ‘24-hour flu bug’, as I told them. Things really came to a head one Saturday morning when I didn’t turn up and went to a big party for the weekend instead. The personnel department feared the worst – that I’d suffered an accident – and called my home. (I should point out here that I used to ride my motorbike into work. When I say ‘motorbike’ I mean one of those 50cc hairdryers on wheels.) My younger sister happily told them where I really was.
Upon returning to work the following Saturday, I was quizzed by the personnel lady and I’m afraid to say a very bad lie came out. I told her I had been at a beloved aunt’s funeral. Dabbing my eyes in a performance De Niro would have been proud of, I was thrown off when she then said, ‘That’s odd because when we called you your sister told us you were headed to a party.’
I reflected momentarily on this before replying. To this day I’m ashamed of this even more shocking lie: ‘My sister, yes, she has something wrong with her… Her brain… Retarded… Very sad.’ The poor woman in personnel looked at me with a mixture of utter disgust and pity. Pity, I guess, about what would become of a young man who could lie in such a fashion. A DJ, obviously.
UNDERAGE DRINKING
Just as my experience of the working world was forming, so was my enjoyment of getting drunk with my mates and then trying to get laid. In my peer group I looked the oldest because I had bum fluff. Who can forget bum fluff? Wispy growths of hair around your chin that you thought made you look like Clint Eastwood in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The plain truth was you just looked silly
Whether you had bum fluff or not, there was one thing all teenagers needed: fake ID. You could usually get your fake ID from someone’s older brother who was like Donald Pleasance in The Great Escape – ‘The Forger’. He’d make them on his BBC Micro or Commodore 64. The standard was pretty poor.
Getting the booze was by two routes, both with their own hazards: the off licence or the pub.
Let’s look at the off licence first. This needed planning. Any hormonal wobble in the not consistently broken voice could jeopardise the whole mission and it would be no White Lightning or Merrydown cider for you. I remember once going in and successfully buying six litres of cider and two cans of tramp juice (Special Brew as a kind of a chaser in the unlikely event any ladies joined us) then going four feet round the corner to where everyone else was lying in wait for the goods. As I was dishing out the stash, the owner walked out and rumbled us. Showing the morals of any true businessman, he asked if all this booze – six litres of industrial-strength cider and two cans of Special Brew – was for me. Yes, I replied, very high-pitched. He then walked away, happy with his rigorous spot check. Within the hour I was vomiting by a canal having also wet myself.
I’m now going to tell you a story that my dad brings up at all family get-togethers. It involves the two pillars of teenage rites of passage: underage boozing and trying to impress girls. The story goes like this: I had been invited with my mates to a party at someone’s house whose parents were away. I knew it was in a posh area so I thought I would upgrade my poison to show my class: I took a bottle of red wine. Which I drank from the bottle. I also thought the girls would be impressed if I drank it really quick. This I did and I was pretty sure I was the very life and soul of the party. Then it all started to get a bit fuzzy. The sweating started first, and then the room started to spin. I ran, knocking over things on sideboards, to the toilet. The night was not going as I had hoped but worse was yet to come. My friends saw my rapidly deteriorating state and called my dad to come and get me.
They carried me to the comfort of the kerb outside, which is where my dad found me when he pulled up in his brand new car. A Ford Escort he was so proud of. The first brand new family car we’d ever had. He never even uttered an angry word as I was gingerly put in the front seat and my two giggling mates got in the back. We set off. This is where the really bad thing happened.
The motion was not good for me. I began retching. ‘Wind the window down if you’re going to be sick,’ my dad urged. My motor skills weren’t up to that and I threw up all over the dashboard, gear stick, even my dad. My mates in the back couldn’t hide their laughter. My dad was now beginning to retch but still managed to drive the incredible exploding son home. He had his jacket pulled over his mouth in an attempt to escape the dreadful smell next to him. In his brand new car. My memory is hazy as to the events that followed. What I do clearly remember is waking up the next day.
First thing I felt was my throat. It was on fire. My nose was blocked. But that was nothing to what came next. Into my consciousness in a drip-drip manner came the memory of what had happened last night. In my dad’s brand new car. Holy shit. I then realised there was a very strong smell of disinfectant in the house. Some late-night cleaning had happened. I didn’t want to leave my bedroom.
I hobbled downstairs to see my mum. She said nothing – just nodded in the direction of my old man reading his Sunday paper. Could this be any worse? I told my dad how very sorry I was and made the promise I am still making 20 years later – that I would never get in a state like that ever again. He summoned up his dad wisdom and said quietly, ‘Bollocks.’
I was stunned. ‘Sorry?’ I said.
He then explained that of course I would do something like that again, and asked what had happened. I told him about the red wine and the rapid drinking method of seduction. He said, and I remember it to this day, ‘Son, you will do many more stupid things to get your dick wet.’ I had never heard that expression before and still haven’t to this day. But his words were so true.
My mum and my sister were not so understanding. For the next few weeks no one could sit in the front passenger seat because of the stench of chunder. The seat was permanently stained in a V-shape where my legs had been. Weeks later little bits of dried pasta could still be found.
I said earlier there were two ways of getting booze. The other way was pubs. For some reason, we always went into pubs in groups of about 30. It was strength in numbers, I think; the theory being that it would take too long to check our entire group’s fake ID. In my local pubs, checking our age extended to ‘You old enough to be drinking in here?’ A chorus of various pitched ‘Yeahs’ would mean lagers all round. We were now men. Drinking with other men. But with poor facial hair.
VIRGINITY
To men, young men, virginity is something you want to get rid of ASAP. To young ladies it’s something to cherish. The frigid ones, anyway.
I’m not going to say too much about the losing of my cherry as gentlemen never tell. That and the fact I was very bad. All I can say was that it was on an overseas holiday with my family. I took off my espadrilles a boy and put them on again a man. The whole encounter lasted no more than a few minutes. And that included the taxi back to hers.
At school there were so many rumours and myths surrounding sex. For a while I was seriously led to believe that if you had sex with someone and you were wearing a Swatch watch (remember those?) then they wouldn’t get pregnant. This may be why I have two small children.
THE END OF FIRST LOVE
Underage drinking, losing your cherry, getting and spending your first pay cheque. You think these mark you as a man. They don’t. Having your heart broken for the first time does.
I remember when I was first properly dumped. 1986. Man, it hurt. Mainly the pain from trying to break the vinyl single of ‘our song’. You cannot simply snap vinyl. You have to bend it several ways. It takes ages. Which lessens the thing, really.
My mind was tormented. When would I ever be able to see and touch a pair of breasts again? So many happy memories of me staring at the very things Steven Williams had shown me in that magazine that time. Makepeace had a pair of these too. Now I was girlfriend-less but more importantly boobless. Time to play really depressing music over and over again until my mum told me to get outside in the sun and open my curtains.
I needed to heal my aching heart. My parents needed me to stop moping. It was decided I should join a club or society. My mum had heard from a friend with a very serious and polite son that he was enjoying the St John’s Ambulance Brigade. So I was made to go along. Stop laughing. We are the people who are first on the scene of major disasters at fêtes with some weak lemon barley squash. I once saved a man’s life – he had severed an arm at a banger racing meet – with weak lemon barley squash.
Every Friday evening in a damp and smelly church hall, I and some other teenage boys would meet up and practise first aid. The best bit was French-kissing Annie. That’s Anatomic Annie, the rubber doll we were supposed to be honing our resuscitation skills on. The next girl I kissed benefited from the time I spent perfecting my snogging. I pinched her nose and blew into her mouth.
There were also girls in St John’s Ambulance Brigade and we would get to see them at the various public events we attended. I was something of a rebel among my fellow Johners by wearing Stay Press jeans as part of my uniform. This was not standard issue, I need you to know. This Fonze-like coolness was countered by being forced to wear a beret. I looked like Frank Spencer. However, at one memorable school fête, during a lull in field casualties being brought in from the coconut shy, I somehow managed to start getting off with a girl. In the back of the ambulance.
With her grey uniform, black tights and all that triangle bandage play, it was too much for me. I casually removed my beret, took off my white handbag that contained my first aid kit (bandage, safety pin, lemon barley squash and some Chewits – the Chewits were for me, gotta chew something while saving lives) and the ambulance was soon rocking. We were discovered and I was asked to leave the brigade. I was made up. It was the first time I’d had my hand up a girl’s skirt. The Stay Presses had worked a treat.
Over the next few decades, various rites of passage would happen to us. Moving in with someone. Them moving virtually all your stuff into the nearest bin to allow more space for all their stuff. Owning your first home. Having your first mental breakdown trying to buy that first home. Attempting your first flat-pack. Surprising yourself with the number of swear words you know while building that flat-pack.
Whatever the rites of passage, men are tested – and when that testing comes you can bet we will rise to the occasion. And do something odd. The boy in the Stay Presses is now the man who still carries a small quantity of weak lemon barley squash just in case.
III (#u4d8a0f79-dfa3-5279-a2ec-1f898863cb35)
THE HISTORY OF MEN (#u4d8a0f79-dfa3-5279-a2ec-1f898863cb35)
THE IMPORTANCE OF HISTORY
Men love history. You’ve only got to look at the hordes of strange men who hang around the Military History section at Waterstones to realise this. Not too many around the Homes and Interiors section or Wellbeing, but history? We love history. In most Sopranos episodes, big Tony Soprano was enjoying whatever was on the History Channel. By now most areas and subjects of history have been covered. You could say some have been over covered. I mean, how many more books about Nazi Germany can be written? I liked Stalingrad as much as the next man but when they start bringing out books like What Hitler Had for His Tea: Volume III: Wednesday or An MTV Cribs Special at Adolf ’s Bunker we know the market is saturated.
This chapter is a fresh look at the great moments in man history. All told from the point of view of a man whose brain is slightly addled from overdosing on butterscotch Angel Delight as a kid. My filter will focus on man history’s greatest hits. Sure, everybody knows who Albert Einstein is. He invented the theory of relativity. He also had great inventor hair. What the hell does it mean, though? It teaches us nothing about ourselves as men. There is a statue of Albert Einstein standing outside the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC. It should be the man who invented the remote control. Or a statue of Percy Spencer. You don’t know who Percy Spencer is, do you? This is exactly what I’m talking about.
Well, he is in my opinion a greater scientist than Einstein. This is because Percy Spencer was the inventor of the microwave oven. His story is the epitome of what men’s history should be about. Yes, other scientists may have worked out ways to provide clean water for millions of people and that’s great, but every man should have a special place in their heart for Professor Spencer. He has provided millions of men with an amazing gift. The ability to be able to make an inedible meal within 30 seconds. Plus he accidentally discovered the technology while he was trying to blow stuff up.
As a former employee of the US Navy, Spencer was trying to refine and produce very powerful microwaves for use by American fighter planes – I presume so the pilots could heat food in their cockpits and enjoy a nice ham and cheese toastie while warmongering.
One day he accidentally strayed into the path of these rays and noticed that the peanut chocolate bar in his pocket had melted. He realised that these rays could cook things. But the brilliance of Spencer was that he didn’t decide to go down the route of trying to turn his discovery into a horrible death ray. Oh no. He decided to use it for male emancipation.
With the advent of the microwave we no longer had to make a hash of trying to cook a meal with proper ingredients and four hours’ cooking time. We no longer had to suffer in silence eating beans on soggy toast, because now we had a machine that could nuke a meal in 30 seconds and we wouldn’t have to miss any of the football on the television.
OUT OF THE SEA
If we’re going to do this thing properly we should take our starting point as the moment we crawled out of the sea. This one’s a no-brainer. We all know men hate the sea. Sure, we’ll swim in it, we’ll hang around on the beach and look at it, but live in it? No way.
You’ve only got to look at any man on holiday whining about all the dried saltwater on his back and the fact that his soggy shorts are making his arse itchy to realise, men + sea isn’t going to be a long-term deal. Our genitals don’t like it either. Shrinkage happens, as Jerry Seinfeld told us.
So at some point around 315 million years ago we decided we’d had enough. That and one of us spotted a prehistoric babe in swimwear and someone selling cheap counterfeit watches and to the beach it was, baby!
For the next 314 million years or so we ambled about on the earth splitting into hundreds and thousands of species. This makes sense. Men aren’t the best at staying together; we like to drift off as something catches our eye. You often see women frantically looking for their boyfriends and husbands in shopping centres only to find them safe and well staring at the widescreen TVs or fondling gadgets. I’m always losing my wife at the supermarket. Maybe they need a desk for Lost Men to go to.
This is a store announcement. Has anyone lost the following men: Steve, Bob and Gary? If these men are yours please come and collect them from the Lost Man Desk…
Without wishing to sound dismissive of this period, not much really happened. What man couldn’t enjoy wasting 314 million years doing fuck all? Man heaven.
Obviously I’m not counting the dinosaurs – they were very exciting – but this book isn’t called The Dinosaur Commandments (that’s the next one). In fact, the most exciting thing that happened to mankind during this long era was that around 100 million years ago, we reached a crossroads in our evolution.
MOUSE OR MONKEY?
We had the choice to become monkeys or mice. That’s right, it was a simple case of would we rather be mice or monkeys? And who doesn’t love a monkey? Think of how much as kids we loved the PG Tips adverts with the piano-moving chimps. Arguably the greatest advertising campaign ever. Chimp removal men. Genius.
We rightly chose the path of monkey and modern man avoided the prospect of a tail and buck teeth (apart from the inhabitants of certain parts of Norfolk).
Then after a couple of 100,000 years (men don’t like to rush anything, it’s all in the preparation) we worked out it would be easier to walk on our hind legs and use sticks to smash things up. This was made possible by another huge evolutional leap: the opposable thumb. Evolutionary scientists will tell you that this development was important because it enabled us to pick up wood, make tools and hold things. This is all true, but thumbs were a much more important development in man history. Now for the first time since the universe began, we could give each other the thumbs-up.
No talking, no elaborate rituals, just a simple thumbs-up. The thumbs-up sign of course reached its zenith in the mid-twentieth century with the advent of Happy Days and the invention of the Fonzie double thumbs-up. The thumbs aloft was then ruined for ever by Radio One DJs and Sir Paul McCartney.
CIVILISATION
The primitive cave paintings of Trois-Frères in southern France contain some of the finest preserved examples of prehistoric art. Roughly 311 million years after crawling out of the primordial ooze, man decided to chronicle his achievements by taking some animal blood and tree sap and painting on the walls of his cave. If they hadn’t there would have been no Tony Hart, Rolf’s Cartoon Club or Neil Buchanan’s Art Attack. It’s not even worth thinking about. Though Morph was ruined when they brought in that plasticine wanker Chas.
What did these brave Neanderthals depict in the early paintings? Their battle against rival tribes? The taming of fire? A list of all the woolly mammoths they had hunted and killed? Nope. They simply drew a massive penis. Really. It says a lot about the psyche of man that you can travel back to the cradle of humanity and the first tentative steps towards civilisation and literally find a willy scrawled across it. You can imagine one caveman spending hours painting a hunting scene, then going for a wee and coming back to find a big cock and balls scrawled across his hard work and his mates in the corner sniggering. It’s reassuring to know that almost 15,000 years later we’ve come full circle from drawing penises in French caves to drawing the very same penises on bakers’ heads in French language textbooks at school.
MAN’S FIRST LOVE
It was around about this time that man started the most significant relationship of the millennia. Fire.
We can never truly know how man was introduced to fire but we know that it was definitely love at first sight. However, it’s strange that almost 10,000 years later we still can’t cook a piece of chicken on a barbecue without giving everybody food poisoning.
SOMETHING WAY MORE IMPORTANT THAN JUST A WHEEL
Imagine the scene for a moment. A prehistoric man is strolling through the forest and he sees a load of ripened apples that have fallen off a tree. It’s summer and they’ve begun to rot. Most of the men walking by are thinking, Urgh, look at that manky rotten fruit, better steer well clear of that, but one guy stops and makes a scientific link that happens perhaps once in any generation.
What if we can use that rotten fruit to get off our faces and shout really loudly and repeat the same story and joke over and over again and then fall over and vomit? Wouldn’t that be great?
Soon he’s invented rudimentary alcohol and he’s churning out the precursor to Stella Artois.
STAGGER LIKE AN EGYPTIAN
Egyptians may have been the first real beer monsters. In Egyptian society they invented beer before they invented bread. That’s right, beer came before bread.
Egyptians believed beer was invented by one of their most powerful gods: Osiris. Of course they did. Who knows how strong that stuff must have been. Imagine a deity who says, ‘Forget continents, seas and mountains, the first thing on my list to create is beer. Let’s get the party started!’ This explains why the Egyptians built so much weird stuff for no good reason. They were pissed most of the time.
‘Oh wise Tutankhamun, we have finished your grand Pyramids, what would you like us to do next?’
‘Build me a massive statue with a… dog’s head… Yeah, a dog’s head. And then build me a sphinx.’
‘What is a sphinx, oh lord?’
‘It’s a lion with a woman’s head… Urggh, I think I’m going to be sick.’
The Egyptians, in their drunken haze, were soon overtaken by the new boys on the civilisation block, the Greeks. Mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and a nice salad. They also invented one of the most important things in man history. Organised sport. The Olympics.
Legend has it that the games were instituted after Hercules won a foot race at the Greek city of Olympia and then decreed that the race should be re-run every four years. But in reality, you put enough men together in one place and sooner or later they’ll decide to challenge each other to some contest or other. The Olympic Games of yesteryear bore no resemblance to the games of today, though. Mainly because the ancient Greeks hadn’t invented anabolic steroids.
MAN’S GREATEST FEAR
By the first century BC it was the Romans’ turn to take centre stage. Julius Caesar was the first dictator of the Roman Empire and the conqueror of Britain. One thing not everybody knows is that he was also one of the first men to tackle one of the largest problems known to men. Hair loss.
Back then, there wasn’t much you could do about it. Even though wigs did exist, they were no way as near to the quality of those atop Sir Elton John’s head. Even the scourge of the Roman Empire Hannibal was reputed to have worn a wig into battle against the Romans. History records that he lost the confidence of his men.
It must have been hard to inspire men to following you into a dangerous battle if they were constantly shouting ‘OY WIGGY’ at you behind your back. Caesar, however, came up with a novel solution. He invented the comb-over. One of the greatest historians of the era, Plutarch, recorded this at the time, but he never said whether or not it flapped about in the wind. As the most powerful man in the world, his courtiers and lackeys would have been unable to mention it. Which maybe explains why today a lot of men truly believe comb-overs are completely invisible to the naked eye.
IT’S ROUND HERE SOMEWHERE
They say all roads lead to Rome and it’s true because they were the first civilisation to realise that men get lost very easily. They built miles of nice long, straight, even roads. It would seriously affect their reputation as the most fearsome army in the world if on their way to fight the Celts they had to stop and ask for directions from the Gauls.
THE TUDOR SMACKDOWN
Let’s race forward to 1509 when one of the most memorable kings of England came to the throne. Henry VIII. During his reign he achieved almost next to nothing, yet he is the king that everybody remembers the most. Countless books and films have been made about him. For what reason? It’s because men love Henry VIII. He had it all. The power, the money, the women (six of them to be exact). Who in their right mind can cope with six wives? That’s six birthdays to remember. Six Valentines. Six sets of in-laws. Six doghouses. The man’s a hero.
One story that clearly illustrates why he should be the hero king of man history is the time he travelled to France to meet his keenest rival of the day, King Francis I. The great meeting was designed to strengthen the friendship of the two kings and cement an earlier peace treaty. However, it soon became clear that the French king was gaining the upper hand in negotiations. Now, most normal kings would try and manoeuvre themselves into pole position with diplomacy or other tactical means. Henry said, ‘Fuck this. Let’s wrestle.’ Wrestlemania was born. He lost but the point was made. If only our modern leaders would settle things with a wrestling match, maybe we wouldn’t have so many wars.
Just think, the whole Iraq debacle could have been avoided if George W. Bush had challenged Saddam to a smackdown on the front lawn of the White House. The message Henry VIII taught us is clear. Men love to wrestle with each other. With mates or rival kings.
SMOKES AND SPUDS
Now you’d think Henry’s daughter Elizabeth I wouldn’t have a place in a chapter about man history but you’d be wrong. She was England’s ruler for 45 years and again subject of many period dramas, all of them dull. However, her reign is a minefield for man history. England was in a unique position. It now had a hot 25-year-old as queen. We all know men are prepared to do almost anything to impress a woman, but the Elizabethan age was punctuated with constant attempts from the leading men of the realm to outdo each other.
The two most famous men vying for her attention were a pair of sirs. Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh. These days men try and impress girls by popping down to H. Samuel’s and buying them a diamanté necklace. Sir Walter really set the bar high when he travelled to the Americas. He named a whole colony after Elizabeth and then brought her back not one but two brand new items. Tobacco and potatoes. The old smoothie. What woman wouldn’t fall for a man who brings her smokes and spuds?
HOW DO YOU LIKE IT DONE?
Elizabeth’s successor was the first Stuart monarch of England, James I, who doesn’t really have much to add to the history of men apart from the curious story that he might have invented one of our favourite pieces of meat ever. He was a strange man who spoke with a lisp and dribbled quite a bit. These days he would have worked in IT.
James I was such a fan of good meat that when he was once presented with a really high-quality loin of beef for his dinner, he pulled out his sword and uttered the words, ‘I dub thee Sir-loin.’ It’s interesting to think that without James I, Aberdeen Angus steakhouses may never have existed.
He also reigned during the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 where ex-soldier and Catholic Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up Parliament while the Protestant king was inside it. Although the barrels had been placed many months before in a cellar under the House of Lords, and were ready for igniting, Fawkes was caught when he made the cardinal sin of going back to the unlit fuses. Ironically, this fact is of course celebrated each year by men across the country on Bonfire Night. It’s every man’s divine right to ignore the shouts of ‘NO, DAD, YOU’LL BE BLINDED’ and stride over to the firework that’s failed to go off, as if we can make it work by igniting it with sheer testosterone. Guy Fawkes was tortured and hung, drawn and quartered but I’d like to think he died for our right to perform this very act.
MEN AND MOTORS
I’ll now fast-forward again and channel-hop to the bit of man history that gave us something we love to this very day. Who actually invented the car? There is much speculation about who can lay claim to being the one that gave us the four-wheeled love of our lives.
We do know that in 1769, the very first self-propelled road vehicle was a military tractor invented by French engineer and mechanic Nicolas Joseph Cugnot. He used a steam engine to power his contraption. It was used by the French army to haul artillery at a whopping speed of 2.5 mph. I’m guessing, it being the French army, this was in reverse.
The following year Cugnot built a steam-powered tricycle that carried four passengers. There are few details about whether this was the first ever road trip with the Cugmeister and his entourage going cruising for ladies. Arguing like all men do about who has to sit in the back and who gets the all-important role as wingman up front.
A year later Cugnot drove one of his road vehicles into a stone wall, making him the first person to get into a motor vehicle accident. Were there the high-visibility jacket-wearing wombles putting lane closures all around him? I haven’t read his insurance claim but what’s the guessing he was distracted by something, say a woman. According to a recent survey, men are more likely than women to get distracted while driving. No shit Sherlock. It even said killing insects was a hazardous distraction for men. It’s true. We do get very upset about midges on the windscreen. The windscreen is one of the few surfaces a man will try to keep meticulously clean. Work surfaces in the kitchen not so much.
So Frenchie invented the automobile. Or did he? Petrolheads will get very worked up and tell you it was the Germans who were there first. As always in life, the perennial towel on the sun loungers of history. Saying that, Karl Benz did create the first gas-powered vehicles, which are closer to the cars we know today. I’m going to leave it there as I’m beginning to get bored by all the men bickering about cars.
ANOTHER FIRST IN MAN HISTORY
On to some more interesting happenings in our history. Napoleon Bonaparte, the scourge of Europe, invading Italy, Spain, Holland and even Russia. As I said earlier, just being a great figure in history isn’t enough to be included in this book – you have to have contributed to man history. Sure, Napoleon ended feudalism in Europe, laid the basis for modern French law and was probably the greatest battlefield commander that ever lived, but what did he do for men?
Napoleon, by simply uttering three little words, challenged one of the great injustices that is suffered by men every single day. He was the first person brave enough to say ‘Not tonight Josephine’ to his wife. It’s fine for a woman to decline sex with her husband, and rightly so, but if a man decides he’s not in the mood, a big can of worms is opened.
The woman automatically assumes that they no longer find them attractive and that they’re probably having an affair. They also think: I’m better looking than this jerk, he’s lucky I’m even giving him a chance. It blows a woman’s mind when a man says he just wants a cuddle and does just want a cuddle. Without the usual stab in the belly. They don’t understand it.
You’re a red-blooded man with a penis and you’re saying you don’t want sex? The man maths just doesn’t add up. ‘Have penis must use it’ is how they think we are. They deduce all that even though it’s probably because we’ve just had a big meal and feel a bit bloated. Suffering from a PMT for men. Post Meal Tiredness. Napoleon was the first man to draw a line in the sand and for that we should get down on our knees and kiss his feet, even though he was French and apparently wore over a litre of cologne a day. Probably to try and hide his smell of Frenchness.
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
By the turn of the twentieth century, we had become the Chelsea of the day. No one liked us and everybody wanted to beat us at home.
The terrible wars defined these times, but I need to draw attention to something without which we wouldn’t be who we are today. Something came along that is possibly the greatest gift man history ever got. No, not fishnet tights.
The television was invented. As the sage Homer Simpson says: ‘TV, teacher, mother, secret lover.’
Thanks to John Logie Baird, we now had an excuse not to talk in the house. On 2 October 1925, Baird successfully transmitted the first television picture. It was the head of a ventriloquist’s dummy nicknamed ‘Stooky Bill’. Shame he had to ruin the moment with a ventriloquist act but he was Scottish and we should be grateful he didn’t put the thing in a deep-fat fryer and batter it. He needed another man to help him achieve this remarkable feat and Baird went downstairs and fetched an office worker, 20-year-old William Edward Taynton, to see what a human face would look like.
Taynton became the first person to be televised. I would imagine that when Baird showed this moving image and face, another first was born: ‘Is this all that’s on?’ was said for the first time.
So here’s to John Logie Baird, giving men another long-lasting relationship in their lives. Maybe the biggest since being introduced to fire or to the wheel. Neither of those two could give us Going for Gold or Wacky Races though.
You could sum up the Second World War as a pub car park fight. Just when you thought it was finished, everyone had taken a beating and the bouncers had broken it up, someone makes a snide remark and it all kicks off again.
Luckily for men all over the world, Hitler and the Third Reich were resoundingly kicked into submission. Obviously if he had won it would have been bad for the simple reason that he was a horrible dictator hell bent on world domination and also wanted to wipe out quite a few races on the way. Hitler was also a teetotal vegetarian.
With war off the menu for a bit, men had time to breathe a sigh of relief and push new boundaries and do something other than kill each other. Like get back to the important man business of trying to have sex. One of the big changes after the war was the wide-scale availability of the contraceptive pill. The very idea of consequence-free sex is the holy grail for men. The rhythm method was never perfect for a man: as its name suggests, it’s reliant on the very thing men don’t have. Rhythm. Men cannot dance.
During the fifties one of the most essential things for life was developed: rock and roll. Sure, rock copied from the blues and so began a lifetime of thievery in rock and roll. One thing’s for sure, if Elvis Presley hadn’t been invented the world would have been a poorer place. We would never have known about the joys of fried peanut butter sandwiches. Somewhere along the way Kenny Loggins sat down and penned ‘Footloose’. History thanks all of rock’s Kennys: Loggins and Rogers.
Men now had another way to try and get laid. By forming bands. Singers may bang on about alienation and being disaffected but, come on, no one starts a band so spotty kids can like them. If you couldn’t impress the girls at school by getting in the football team the alternative was being in a band. And maybe it’s best those two never mix. Music and football are never a pretty combination. Apart from John Barnes’s rap on ‘World In Motion’.
On 10 April 1951 Steven Seagal was born. Born so that men channel-hopping at one in the morning could find something classy to watch. In most of his great works a simple formula is observed. Steven is a retired US Navy Seal/secret agent/assassin now working as a chef/handyman/IT tech support. Then some bad stuff happens and Steven goes and gets an old bag under his bed that has all of his old killing stuff in and goes back to what he knows best. This book recognises Steven Seagal and will have more on this incredible man later.
By the time Neil Armstrong had stepped down from the lunar landing module on 20 July 1969, America had spent $28 billion and employed just under half a million people in the Apollo programme. Yet they still didn’t know if space pirates existed up there, which is what I was looking for through my binoculars every night as a kid. That and really believing about mice drilling for cheese on the moon. The only useful thing to come out of the Apollo space programme was the invention of Teflon, which means men don’t stick their eggs to frying pans any more (well, that much anyway). But it proves that given the chance, men will waste money in the most spectacular way possible.
THE GODFATHER OF PORN
It wasn’t all bad, though: the last 50 years have seen men invent some amazing things. As previously mentioned, the microwave oven thanks to Professor Spencer – one of the greatest man inventions. Also consider the internet. Never mind the fact that you can scour the world’s greatest works of literature online or get all your weekly shopping without ever leaving the house, the main pull of the internet for men is porn. No more do they have to skulk in the shadows of a newsagent’s waiting for a lack of customers at a till. No longer do they have to pull up a creaky floorboard to get out the stash. Now it’s all at our fingertips. Tim Berners-Lee is referred to as the ‘father of the internet’. He is in fact the godfather of porn.
Technology has moved at an incredible pace. Televisions have got better and bigger and bigger again. Soon your entire living room wall will just be a TV, and you will still be mumbling, ‘Should have got a bigger one.’
But not all technological advances have been to the benefit of men. Witness our enslavement by the mobile phone. Fifteen years ago, we could go where we wanted and no one would bother us. We could head off down the pub for a few misspent hours and no one would ever know. Now we can be tracked down and worse, contacted, EVERYWHERE. Phones are evil. Just look at poor Jack Bauer. If he threw the damn phone away, he could chill out for a day.
We have made some incredible advancements but in the last few years our evolution has reversed at times. I’m not just talking about Big Brother contestants. I blame much of this on two things. One: man bags. It was pleasing to see in The Bourne Ultimatum that the Guardian journalist sporting a man bag was assassinated very early in the movie. Two: low-slung denim. You know what I’m talking about – the fools that wear jeans hanging around their knees, with no belt. If you’re 14, fine. Not if you’re a man. Martin Freeman, best known as Tim from The Office and now a movie star, was on my radio show and made a very fair point on this man wrong. ‘Is that the Dunkirk spirit? I don’t think so. We couldn’t have won the war in baggy denim.’
So we come to the year 2008 in my totally unreliable history of men and the news that men all over the world are talking about… a man is pregnant. That’s right. One of us is up the duff. A woman has had something called ‘gender realignment’ surgery, which I think is what Andrew Lloyd Webber has had on his face. Maybe it’s my TV but I’m sure that’s a bollock where his head should normally be.
KEY MOMENTS IN MAN HISTORY
Monkeys or mice?
Choose monkey
Find fire. Love it
Egyptians invent booze. Cheers
Greeks give men sport
Caesar gets a comb-over
Two men outdo each other for a woman. With spuds and fags
1769: Car invented. Let’s ignore the fact it came from France
A short-arse Frenchie called Napoleon turns down a shag
1925: TV. Pass the remote, please
1945: Germany defeated by port-swigging cigar-chomping Brit
1950s: Rock and roll
1951: Steven Seagal born
1953: A man called Norm invents WD-40
1968: Columbo aired for first time
1972: The Godfather is released
1975: Charlize Theron is born
1977: Pot Noodles
2001: Sky Plus arrives
IV (#u4d8a0f79-dfa3-5279-a2ec-1f898863cb35)
MEN AND THEIR MATES (#u4d8a0f79-dfa3-5279-a2ec-1f898863cb35)
THE LOVE THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME
Much has been devoted to our relationships with women, which we will come to in good time. But men’s relationships with other men, their buddies, mates and old muckers, are rarely discussed. They are full of unspoken weird rituals, rules and codes. And there are serious repercussions for breaching them.
It’s a constant mystery to women what we actually talk about when we get together with our mates. ‘Not much’ is usually the reply. I sometimes think they feel we are planning a secret man uprising, an escape committee like Steve McQueen and Dickie in The Great Escape. The very idea of a man uprising is stupid. There’s far too much organising and effort involved for a start. Plus it can’t be this Tuesday as the missus has her yoga class and I’m looking after the kids. How’s next Monday?
Women think we bond with each other over endless boring sports chats, booze and bottom coughs. What they don’t know is that, like them, we also chat about our other halves. Just not with the same level of intimacy or detail. What they also don’t realise is that men operate under a series of complex rules and codes. We all know they exist, the unwritten rules, and I have recorded them here for the first time in history.
As we get into relationships and start families, actually getting to see your mates gets harder and harder. Most women immediately fear, distrust and even hate your mates.
They edge them out and restrict your visiting times, or even worse, come with you when you go out with them. She might as well hold your hand or put your balls in her handbag. Your man card* (#litres_trial_promo) has been revoked.
THE DIARY
Women often utter the phrase, ‘That’s not in the diary,’ when you remind her tomorrow is the night you’re hooking up with some old chums. A date you got proper clearance on and did all the relevant paperwork for a while ago. This date probably required days of groundwork (interesting how men often use building phrases to describe relationships – ‘groundwork’, ‘shaky foundations’, ‘preparation’). Perhaps you tidied some of your mess up, said her hair looks nice or removed some of the old takeaway cartons from the fridge.
The simple truth is you will never see the ‘diary’ in question as it doesn’t exist. If it did it would just read: YOU WILL NEVER SEE YOUR FRIENDS AGAIN AS THEY ARE ARSEHOLES AND I HATE THEM.
Maybe women are scared of the bond we have with other men, or scared that whenever we see them we drink too much and are sick over ourselves and on occasion over them. ‘You behave differently,’ they often say – and they’re right. Our mental age is somewhat lowered in the company of other men.
THE PERILS OF WHISPERING
I have also noticed women really don’t like that way we whisper among ourselves and then laugh really loudly. If you’re ever asked what you were laughing at, always lie. Don’t tell them the truth. No matter what they threaten you with.
Last Christmas my refusal to rat out myself and my brother-in-law about what we found so funny got me the stink eye (see Men and Women) for a few hours but it’s a rap you have to take. No one likes a snitch. It’s like Steve McQueen as ‘The Cooler King’ in The Great Escape – you do your time. However, I wasn’t allowed any ball games to pass the time.
Between you and me, my brother-in-law and I had discovered that you can instant message each other on a Nintendo DS. (Well, the kids had shown us – we didn’t discover it. The boy is the father of the man.) Hey presto, within seconds of finding this out we were sending vulgar messages to each other on them while sitting among relatives.
I’d imagine this happens at those UN meetings. Gordon Brown sending Sarkozy a note saying ‘Check out the baba jangers on the babe from Slovenia!’ or ‘Don’t fancy yours much’ and nodding at the delegate from Albania.
It transformed the dreaded post-turkey slump into playground fun. My brother-in-law laughed too loudly though. Schoolboy error.
It drew attention to us and the game was up. To this day it’s recalled frequently by my wife. I’ll take the content of those vulgar messages to my grave. Giggling.
COOKING
I have a friend who is a former Royal Marine Commando, now working as a bodyguard in Afghanistan. A tough guy. Last year, after coming home from a three-month spell away, we went out for drinks. Much later, he was dropped off at home, takeaway Chinese in hand, which he duly ate while his wife was sleeping peacefully upstairs.
Sadly my friend was in a rather confused state (maybe post-traumatic stress disorder, or possibly that extra Stella) and, seeking something to wipe his dirty Chinese sweet and sour hands on, mistook his wife’s newly purchased white jacket for a tea towel. In the morning he was awoken by a blood-curdling cry to rival anything he had faced in Afghanistan or Iraq from the mullahs. He had a fear like he had never known before. The immediate discussion of course centred on why whenever he saw his mates he ‘needed to get in such a terrible state’.
I remember meeting up with my best mate Phil and returning home slightly the worse for wear. Putting on all the lights in every single room, I then started to cook. Men often like to cook when drunk. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that a drunken guy with the munchies started the Great Fire of London in 1666.
As I was throwing random ingredients into a pan, which I then planned to put between two slices of bread, my lovely wife was upstairs asking in strong Anglo-Saxon terms what was going on and could I just ‘get the fuck to bed’. Why don’t women just say what they mean?
Feeling a bit sorry for myself, I went and chatted to my dog Digby, who has never used language like that and doesn’t judge me. (Dogs don’t – that’s why they are man’s best friend. Cats are judgemental little shits.) And as I was chatting to him, I was struck by how warm and cosy his dog bed was.
The next thing I remember is seeing daylight and my wife towering over me in her dressing gown. Digby was on the other side of the room looking at me as disapprovingly as a little dog (not too little, though – no man should own a small yappy dog) can. Digby wasn’t happy.
And it’s not just because a few weeks earlier I let my wife get his balls cut off. I picked him up from the vet’s and the look in his eyes will stay with me for ever. It wasn’t just the pain and disappointment that any man could do this to another man, all be it a man-dog. It was as if he was saying, ‘It could be you next.’ My wife said getting him done would calm him down, and stop him having sex with any passing dog and urinating on the furniture. My God, I suddenly realised, she wants MY balls removed, she wants my sacred man purse lopped off. To control me; to stop me urinating on the couch (which was an accident).
Think about it. What woman wouldn’t want their man neutered? I bet there are back-street man-neutering clinics springing up all over the place right now. An illicit underground network. Run by man-hating women using very rusty implements. With little or no anaesthetic. This explains those too-good-to-be-true men you hear all about from your wife.
‘Well, Gill’s husband loves going clothes shopping with her and picking out new curtains.’
He’s been neutered. You see the neutered men every Saturday limping a few feet behind their women in shopping centres. Thousand-yard stares. I’ve stumbled on a big global conspiracy here. I bet Bill Clinton has been neutered by now. Just look at the poor fella. That Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced New York governor caught using prostitutes (at least, unlike our feckless MPs, he didn’t claim it on his expenses), was probably neutered the moment that public apology was done.
No, the real reason Digby is on my wife’s side is that I had slept in his bed that night. A dog bed. That really stinks. The sight that greeted my wife was of a pissed-off-looking dog and my head and shoulders in the dog basket, with the rest of me a tangled heap looking as if I had fallen from a great height. All the lights were still on and for some reason there were spaghetti hoops in my hands.
‘Nice seeing your mates again?’
THE SEXY BLACK WIDOW SYNDROME
Women think they have smarter, more emotionally mature relationships than we do with our mates. Bollocks. It runs deeper than a headlock. A bit.
Sure, when guys get together alcohol is often involved and as a consequence so is stupidity. This doesn’t help the case for more Mate Time. When women get together, a nice civilised coffee and a Danish is enough. I sometimes envy the simplicity of this. No need for vomiting and hangovers. None of those conversations around midnight about jacking it all in and starting a business together selling monkey butlers door to door.
Don’t be fooled, though. Ladies’ conversation is rarely civilised. Gossip and bitching. And you know what they discuss when they go to the toilets together? Us. And our winkies. I wonder if other animals do this?
Sexy Black Widow 1: You should have seen the tackle on the one I had last night! Hung like a gnat.
Sexy Black Widow 2: Ha ha ha! Last night’s date ended with him crying, saying, ‘This doesn’t normally happen,’ as his web shot off real quick. How I laughed as I ate him…
All Sexy Black Widows together: Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
THE VICIOUSNESS OF WOMEN
I would take my relationship with my mates over women’s any day.
I’m serious. A man can break a woman’s heart but that is nothing compared to the vicious damage women regularly inflict on each other. Smiling assassins. All nice to their faces but hidden away with another friend/witch and the gloves are off. If Goodfellas had been Goodgirls the violence would have been far worse. With hair straighteners and nail files.
‘You’re saying I’ve put on weight? Put on weight how? How exactly do you find me weighty?’
Men can be cruel to each other but they do it to each other’s face. Dignified. Your clothes, hair, beer gut, bald spot, wife, girlfriend, football team, birth place, penis size, girth, salary, sexual orientation, everything. It’s all fair game. It’s a sign of proper, deep friendship that a mate can safely say ‘What the fuck are you wearing?’ when you turn up in a brand new shirt you thought you might be mistaken for Brad Pitt in. With a beer gut and bald spot.
Women’s friendships are generally more emotionally mature, but they are also more emotionally tedious. Discussions about problems and disputes with friends, feelings about things, can happily carry on for several days without any intake of breath. Is it possible that women can use their handbags as gills?
MEN AND PROBLEMS
This annoys us men as we are hardwired, when confronted with a problem, to solve it. To a man a problem shared is like being handed a bomb that needs to be defused as quickly as possible. To us it all comes down to which wire to cut. The red one or the blue one?
This is opposed to just talking about it A LOT. It’s man DNA: men are problem solvers. Not always very good solvers, but solvers all the same. Last year my wife told me to get Ruby our eldest daughter’s hair cut but not to spend too much money on it. Quick as a flash I had processed this order and come up with a smart solution: I’d cut it myself.
With no formal training I cut my daughter’s hair. Can you guess what happened next? Even Ruby looked confused as I set about her fringe. With paper scissors. The fringe that my wife had proudly been cultivating for the last six months. Problem solvers. My wife came back home and let’s just say hilarity did not ensue.
MALE PROBLEM SOLVERS EXTRAORDINAIRE
Back to men and their mates. Men in the company of other men are capable of great feats of ingenuity – like Stonehenge, say. Actually, that might not be the best example. Relocating some big rocks. Beer must have been involved.
Men do like to carry interesting objects home from the pub. It’s one of the rare times we enjoy shopping. Or man’s other great motivator:
‘You heard why we’re humping these great big things?’
‘For gullible hippies and dumb American tourists?’
‘Nope, some idiot wants to get in some girl’s knickers.’
Men with other men are also capable of great feats of stupidity.
The Darwin Awards celebrate those who ‘improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it’. They record for us and future generations some darkly funny accidental deaths, mostly featuring men, with other men, and alcohol.
Tony Roberts, 25, lost his right eye having been shot through the skull by a hunting arrow during an initiation into a men’s rafting club, Mountain Men Anonymous (probably known now as Stupid Mountain Men Anonymous) in Grants Pass, Oregon.
What a deadly combination, men with hunting gear and alcohol. (Might make a good episode of Holby City, though). What happened here, I understand, is a good friend of Tony’s tried to shoot a beer can off his head. It would have had to have been a close friend, of course – couldn’t let a complete stranger do something as intimate as shooting at you with large arrows.
Many clubs and societies have some kind of entrance exam, and Mountain Men Anonymous’s test was having someone shoot an arrow at your head while pissed. It’s natural selection: they only want the very finest minds entering. With or without bits of metal protruding from them.
I bet his first words after being released from hospital were, ‘Did I pass? Am I in Mountain Men Anonymous?’
That is nothing compared to what I think is the definitive story of the danger present when two lethal substances come into contact:
Man + Man x Beer = Idea
Let us examine the tale of Sal Hawkins and John Pernicky, two huge Metallica fans. They showed up to where the band was playing in Washington but they had no tickets so sat in the car park drinking beer, thinking the situation over. Suddenly a genius idea occurred. Inspiration. The mother of invention is necessity, they say, but swap necessity for beer and they had something.
A plan was hatched after they noticed that the perimeter fence was only nine foot high and no possible deterrent to two sharp men like themselves. Problem solvers like all men. They then decided to pull their pick-up truck (we could have guessed they drove one of them) over to the fence.
The plan was that John, the heavier of the two, was to hop over and then help his buddy over. Simple. What could possibly go wrong?
Sadly, the fence had a 30-foot drop on the other side. So when John launched himself over like some nubile gymnast from the former Eastern Bloc, he found himself crashing through a big tree, a large branch stopping his descent by snagging his shorts. Dangling from the tree with one arm broken, John saw some bushes beneath him and, being one of nature’s problem solvers, thought he would simply cut away his shorts with his penknife and then drop to the bushes below him. (Must have seen MacGyver or The A Team do something pretty similar.)
Once free of his shorts, John fell down into what he now realised were holly bushes. They scratched him everywhere and, without the protection of his shorts, one branch entered his rectal cavity. It gets worse. The penknife dropped too and when he landed it went three inches into his thigh. Sal saw his buddy in all this pain and sprung into man action. A problem-solving man in action is a sight to see. He threw his fallen comrade a rope, but as John was a big fella, Sal couldn’t pull him too well. Not to worry, try something else, as you never let a mate down. Especially if the mate is partially naked with a branch up his arse. So he attached the rope to the pick-up truck.
This is where it goes really bad.
Sal, in his drunken state, puts the thing in reverse and crashes through the fence, landing flat on top of his mate. Killing him. Sal is thrown from the vehicle and also dies.
The police arrive. Picture the scene that awaits them. Even CSI’s Gil Grissom would have been confused by this one. A pick-up truck with its driver thrown 100 feet away, and then under the truck a semi-naked man, covered in scratches with a holly branch up his rectum, a knife in his leg, and his shorts in a tree.
Here’s to you, John and Sal, two fine minds and men taken from us. Some sort of commemorative statue would be a fitting tribute to these real men of genius. Bronze, I’m thinking, depicting the final sad scene. Branch up bum, truck on top, the whole deal. Men from all over the world could come and pay tribute. Should be placed on the Washington town hall steps. A Man Lourdes. Kids could be taken there to warn them about the dangers of alcohol and, more importantly, being a man.
I feel you also need to know and respect a Polish farmer called Krystof Azninski who in 1995… er… there’s no easy way to put this, cut his own head off.
Guess what? He had been drinking with male friends. Apparently one of the gathered geniuses (or is the plural genii?) casually suggested they strip naked and play some ‘men’s games’.
What was I saying about men together? It’s all fun and games until someone loses a head.
And we wonder why women think we behave like dicks when we are together. Never seen the Sex and the City girls behaving like that? Might watch it if they did.
Back to the naked men and the ‘men’s games’. They start off with a good old round of hitting each other over the head with frozen turnips. No, really. Frozen turnips. Then, as is usually the case, one of the men ups the stakes by getting a chainsaw and CUTTING HIS OWN FOOT OFF.
Now, we weren’t there but you don’t have to wonder at what happened next. Put men together and some form of one-upmanship will occur. It can be the swapping of increasingly tall stories with the final ones being 100 per cent bona fide bullshit; sometimes it’s shots being ordered to ‘get the party started’; sometimes it’s the removal of limbs. Did any of the men say, ‘OK, that’s enough now – we’ve all had a few drinks and smashed frozen turnips over our heads, pretty soon someone’s gonna get hurt’?
No, they didn’t.
Azninski shouted ‘WATCH THIS!’ as he swung the chainsaw at his head, taking it off. His head. Off.
‘It’s funny, when he was young he put on his sister’s underwear. But he died like a man,’ one of those fine men friends said. I think I speak for all of us when I say who would want a more fitting way to be remembered by friends and family?
THE WORLD’S DUMBEST MAN SHOW
I wonder whether there should be a TV show called The World’s Dumbest Man. Think about the enjoyment we still have watching The World’s Strongest Man: ‘Sven the big guy from Iceland is really coping well with the 2CV he’s carrying this year – awesome stuff.’ The World’s Dumbest Man is the next generation. Teams of men from around the world would enter with their mates, as we all know that men are spurred on to even greater feats of stupidity when with their mates. Britain could do well at this. Alcohol would feature in most events.
THE WORLD’S DUMBEST MAN SHOWEVENTS
Chair Sitting. Last man still just sitting in an armchair wins. This could take some time; months even.
Man Tears Challenge. Can any man sit through an episode of Extreme Makeover or Rolf’s Animal Hospital (featuring dogs passing away) or The Champ without crying?
Synchronised Toenail Clipping. (I once saw a man doing this on a train. I was both horrified and impressed.)
Mattress Endurance Challenge. Teams have one mattress to transport as far as they can using a small family car. It can only go on the roof and no ropes are allowed. It’s the classic man driving with one arm on the mattress.
These man games would include Freestyle Bullshitting, where male entrants must talk about anything that has or has not happened to them and then lie about it. As we do. Men are born bullshitters; it is in our DNA. That’s why most car salesmen are men. Pat Butcher included.
Even smart, educated, brave men let their man DNA get the better of them. It would appear that our entire sense of logic and reasoning is drastically altered when in proximity to other men. Man molecules affect and change other man molecules, causing a Man Big Bang.
Imagine you work at the international space station doing important astronaut space work. You wake up in your astronaut bed one day and think:
1 I should go and collect some rock samples so mankind can learn about the life forms up here
2 I should see how far I can hit a golf ball into space with a gold-plated six iron and film it
b) is what Expedition 14 commanders Michael Lopez-Alegria and Mikhail Tyurin went for. Boys together. In space. Hitting golf balls. Doing important work.
In case you’re wondering about the gravity during the shot, Lopez-Alegria held Tyurin’s feet, which were affixed to a ladder. Tyurin carried three golf balls, but only had time to hit one of them before ground flight controllers instructed the spacewalkers to proceed to their other tasks.
I love that. He held his feet. Don’t tell me we fear intimacy. Here we have two grown men, astronauts who have trained for years, for crying out loud, who agree that one will hold the other’s space boots. Playing Intergalactic Golf. It’s a real shame that the boring ground controllers made them ‘proceed to their other tasks’ rather than hit some more balls. What could possibly be more important than this task? There is, however, a sad end note to this.
The golf ball did not travel in the full retrograde direction, away from the space station, as intended. Instead, Tyurin shanked the ball.
So we go from ‘One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’ to ‘Told you you should’ve used the five iron, dickhead.’ Even in space men together will do something stupid. It’s the collision of man molecules. You ask Professor Hawking. I bet the Hawkman, when he gets together with his mates, arses about like any man.
SO HOW DO OUR RELATIONSHIPS COMPARE TO WOMEN’S?
Time after time, research findings conclude that women have deeper and longer-lasting relationships than men. And have more friends. We apparently have superficial friendships that consist of mumbling into cold beers and never saying anything of any emotional worth.
Scared stiff of saying what we really feel, we keep it all in. Then have heart attacks and explode, leaving all our mates going, ‘He never said anything was up.’
So women say we don’t communicate enough. However, it is my serious contention after years of intensive research that men use a far higher dimension to communicate with each other. It’s a previously undiscovered man bandwidth we operate on. The Manwidth. I will be taking my incredible findings of its existence around the world.
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