Step away from the oven

It’s a given that the person who says, “the one thing I don’t understand is…” is the sort of person for whom empty space is in no great shortage when it comes to the brain department.  Like some dusty old attic with not much in it save rolls of mice-chewed lagging and the occasional shaft of sunlight shining through a crack in the roof tiles there’s a great deal of nothingness that could be filled up with knowledge; the one thing this person thinks they don’t understand is usually some quite dull point they want to make and is actually at the top of very much longer list of things they’d genuinely not have the foggiest about. 

Either that, or it’s just an irritating turn of phrase used by the sort of person who thinks prefacing an insult with “with the greatest respect” is a subtle and clever way to deflect from the very rude thing they’re about to say.  The only time this linguistic formula is acceptable is as follows: “With the greatest respect, you’re a cunt.”  Thus the line has been nabbed from the pub bore and handed over to a graceful fellow who speaks his mind but likes to instil in his sentences an appropriate dose of acid.

Anyway, the one thing I don’t understand is why anyone likes cupcakes.  They’re bloody horrible.  At this point, may I say to anyone I know who has made such things that yours were the exception but as a rule they’re really awful.  Some research was done this week which told us what the rest of us already knew: the cupcake is king.  Sales are soaring and those of larger cakes to be shared are dropping off.  It seems, the average sweet-toothed Briton appreciates the simplest of recipes: one cake to one mouth, and the thought of having to go to the back-breaking effort of taking a slice, let alone offering somebody else a piece, and then putting it on a plate is proving too much. 

But why?   Sponge with the density of a cannonball is topped with enough icing to cover the small tier of an old-fashioned wedding cake and the quantity of sugar is at a pitch to make your fillings wish they were rhumba-ing with a scrap of tinfoil instead.  My Mum was never much of a cake maker but at least the fairy cakes she turned out didn’t require twenty minutes to wade through, and although her rock cakes were so dry you’d have to apply Vaseline to the inside of your mouth afterwards to stop it cracking we could all be grateful that they didn’t come with enough icing to bring on a migraine. 

Maybe not quite in the same league as having the world’s spooks drooling over how long your phone call to your local Al-Qaeda representative lasted or that living standards in this country will be back to those of the Edwardian age before too long, nevertheless, I’d argue that the cupcake is one of the worst things about life in Britain today.  Easily up there with Hipsters in bow ties and skinny jeans and Radio 4 afternoon plays which are either about teenage pregnancy or northerners finding love late in life.  If Philip Larkin was still about no doubt he’d employ the image of a solitary cupcake sitting on a chipped plate as a metaphor for the rise of single-occupancy homes; and had David Cameron really ever actually meant anything by the Big Society the most useful thing he could have done would have been to outlaw them and make us a share a nice Victoria sponge with someone instead.

Eddie Braben

The column what I wrote for Sunday Express, May 26th (no online edition to link to)

In the beginning was the word.  In light of Eddie Braben’s death this week it’s worth remembering that, especially as his words were a great deal funnier than any you’re likely to find in the Bible.  Going to work in BBC Radio Light Entertainment in the 1990s my then boss Jonathan James-Moore would drum into us tyro producers that it was all about the writer.  Forget the celebrities, forget the stars, basically put out of your mind what would be happening in front of the microphone; that would all come later. It was the people who sat down with pen and paper and had the ideas we needed to cherish.  There are actors aplenty but never enough good writers to go around. 

Watching old episodes of Morecambe and Wise you can be lulled into thinking the shows came about through a combination of the stars’ own brilliance and a dash of amazing luck on the night but like all great comedy the process was, it transpires, an extremely arduous, if joyous, one; and the astonishing thing is that the bits etched into our cultural memory are more often than not the result of Eddie Braben sitting in a room, staring terrified at a blank sheet of paper and gradually, painstakingly covering it with ink.  Transforming this most beloved of double acts from a slick and fast-talking duo into an adored partnership of unrivalled funniness was his greatest achievement.  Earlier this year, he explained to Miranda Hart how it was his idea for Eric and Ernie never to venture beyond the four studio walls thereby creating a particularly distinctive universe that was instantly recognisable as theirs.  Brought in by Bill Cotton to work with them at the BBC in 1969 the tone, the brilliant lines and the spellbinding invention of so many Morecambe And Wise shows, and in particular the legendary Christmas outings which would see the nation almost as one sitting down, paper hats askew, for the television highlight of the year, were his. 

This perfect juxtaposition of performer and writer is a rare thing.  Having worked with many excellent gag smiths, I am in awe of those people who can be given a list of topics by a producer to weave together for use on air.  On a somewhat ropey show I produced a few years back the host’s opening monologue was arguably the most important part, the purpose of which being to encourage the audience into believing that what was to follow was worth sticking with even though it usually wasn’t.  Princess Anne, Good Friday and a South American volcano erupting were three topics I once asked the show’s chief writer, Rob Colley, to meld into a joke.  He did so brilliantly by creating one of the funniest, filthiest and unbroadcastable lines I have ever regretted not being able to use. 

But that is a different skill from the writer really knowing and empathising with the performer who will mouth his or her words.  Sometimes it takes a writer to spot the funniest aspects of a comedian’s personality, and in truly symbiotic pairings to write material for them that fits so perfectly it seems almost impossible that it could have been born of anyone other than the person saying the lines.  When Humphrey Lyttelton died in 2008 many of the tributes paid quoted some of the hysterical and outrageous jokes he had delivered with that wondrous deadpan voice of his on I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue.  Rarely did anyone acknowledge that these were not actually crafted by Lyttleton but rather by Iain Pattinson, who along with producer Jon Naismith has made this show the very best British radio comedy of the last twenty years.  Iain’s ability to stretch the double entendre beyond paper thin and yet never to tear it completely has I’d assert brought more happiness to Radio 4 listeners than anything else.  Certainly much more than having John Humphrys shout in your ear before the sun has had the decency to even show its face.

It was Beyond The Fringe that was not only crucial to the birth of satire in this country but also cemented the idea that writer and performer should ideally be one and the same. Valid this may be in many cases but as with pop music it isn’t necessarily so.  Whether it’s Ray Galton and Alan Simpson being truly responsible for shining a light on the nature of Tony Hancock; Eric Sykes et al penning every last ooh, aah and raised eyebrow for Frankie Howerd to bestow on us; or Ken Hoare bringing to life Stanley Baxter’s extravagances the cost of which made many a TV executive weep, it’s a particular generation of writers we have to thank.  For without them hunched over keyboards and chewing Biros to destruction, our television screens would have been a much less colourful corner of our front rooms over the last few decades.

Nigella, Delia and Dick cavorting on the mortician’s slab

When I set up this blog my dream was to have a little bit of the online world in which I would write pointless things about food and very, very few people would read them.  Unlike most of my dreams, this one came true.  In recent months I have very rarely written anything, pointless or otherwise, about food and I’ve merely copied and pasted my columns from the Sunday Express instead.  Today’s blog is no exception – however, it is about food.  Actually so was the horse meat piece I wrote (copied and pasted) too and which I’ve only just remembered. 

Well, this one is more specifically about cookery books.  Goddammit, I realise I’ve never really stopped writing about food but please, please, please don’t read it, otherwise my dream will be shattered.  A bit like the time I was having a lovely one about being able to fly over the sea with some pink and blue horses who spoke a beautiful, lyrical kind of German and I was woken up by my postman ringing the doorbell and wanting to use the loo because his prostate problem had caught him short. 

**********

Fifty years ago nobody ever needed to ask, “What shall we eat tonight?”  On a Friday it would be fish, Monday’s meal was a reconstitution of the previous day’s roast, and no doubt chops would play a starring role somewhere down the line.  The cycle would repeat itself ad infinitum only to be broken up by large events like Christmas or a stay in hospital with an ulcer.  

I doubt very much the patron saint of Norwich FC, Delia Smith, would like us to return to those grim days but interviewed recently she bemoaned the nation’s cooking skills and put part of the blame on shows such as MasterChef. 

Rarely have I watched an edition of MasterChef and thought to myself “ooh that looks tasty.” For the length of time it would take to open a bag of Cheesy Wotsits, I’ve considered the possibility of cooking pan-fried wallaby liver on a bed of lichen mousse with a side order of meadow flowers set in a sea spume and turtle mucus jelly and then had beans on toast for my tea instead. 

Living in an country where many people get by on ready meals and Pot Noodles, it’s a profound curiosity to think we inhabit an age where mere cooks can be known by first name alone.  But Delia and Nigella need no further introduction.  Recognisable by a single moniker, a status usually reserved for individuals of profound international and historic importance like Jesus, Adolph, Beyonce or Boris, in their turn they have instructed and giggled, guided and seduced their way out of our television screens inviting us to make things to eat while we sit goggle-eyed, spooning microwaved lasagne into our gaping mouths. 

Whatever she says now I can’t help but think Delia is partly to blame.  Back around 2008 both her and Nigella published books and had TV shows which advocated the use of convenience foods.  This was supposed to make the preparation of proper meals easier in our hectic lives.  The gist of La Lawson’s series was that she produced dishes very quickly by opening jars and packets and sprinkling grated chocolate on the contents.  These time-saving techniques enabled her now to do things like get on buses and go to the pub, apparently.  We were shown this in action.  Prior to that , like most people I’d enjoyed watching her ooh and aah over the likes of roast chicken and banoffee pie; how she told us she was the greediest person she knew and yet had the figure of a streamlined Marilyn Monroe; and the wooden spoons she fellated were the happiest kitchen utensils I’ve ever seen.  It was spellbinding. 

Meanwhile, over on the other side Great Britain’s chief home economist Delia came out with her How To Cheat At Cooking, a book made up of recipes the main ingredients of which were tinned mince and frozen mashed potato.  Her shepherd’s pie was one of the most gruesome things I’ve seen that didn’t have a starring role in Silent Witness. 

If the cooks themselves are now often the stars then it comes as a shock to think there was a time when a cookbook might be selected on other criteria.  But if you’ve always felt safer in front of the stove knowing there was a face off the telly telling you what to do then in the past all manner of celebrities were at hand to help out a hungry nation.  Richard O’Sullivan’s Man About The Kitchen is aimed at blokes who might want to impress girls.  Confident in the knowledge that he can’t underestimate his readership’s culinary prowess it contains glum instructions such as counting out the number of strands of spaghetti needed per person – 25, if you’re wondering.  Dick Emery’s Cookbook, however is a far more joyous, full of terrible puns and jokes and recipes for unappealing dishes like Vicar’s Chicken Livers Bordelaise and Instant Steak Casserole (sit down Delia, this isn’t about you).  The photographs are a triumph. Now, as a rule, I suggest you never use a book with pictures in it; as you compare what comes out of your own oven with the corresponding photo you’ll experience a stabbing twinge of ennui and self-loathing but here that dictum is turned on its head.  The food looks so horrifying you can’t help but have done better.  For instance, his recipes for various desserts are illustrated by a chocolate cheesecake which has all the charm of a pastry case into which a cat has vomited, positioned next to a middle-aged man in drag, photographed in what appears to be a gents’ toilet.  Bon appetit.

This week two new books were published to swell the our shelves yet further.  One celebrates Palestinian food and the other is a collection of recipes which might have been eaten by characters in Shakespeare’s plays; I’d always assumed Falstaff got by on kebabs.  Who knows how well they’ll sell but for a nation that loves reading about food and watching it on the television I doubt very much they’ll do much to lift us from being a people who basically are a bit rubbish when it comes to making anything nice to eat.  

Of non-fox hunts, milk shortages, and the beauty of London’s night sky

Just what you don’t need – something to read on a Monday afternoon as your circadian rhythms slip ever downwards.  Oh well.  Below is my column from yesterday’s Sunday Express; an anti-paean to the joys of the countryside.

*****

Neville Chamberlain was getting a bit ahead of himself when he declared that there was “peace for our time.”  In photographs he doesn’t strike you as the epitome of wide-eyed optimism, but if only he could have been knocking about Heston Aerodrome seventy-five years later his words might have been less misplaced.   

Something called the UK Peace Index tells us that Britain is a more peaceful country than it once was.  The other day as I was caught in the crossfire of some school children effing-and-blinding at each other on a bus, using all the fried chicken bones and spare chips at their disposal as weaponry, I questioned whether we really have reached this higher state of Zen-like bliss, but then it turns out as I live in London what else should I expect? 

For inevitably, the more peace you want the more likely it is you’ll have to live in the countryside to get it.  Coming top of the list is the district of Broadland in Norfolk which is the geographical equivalent of a floatation tank with soothing whale music played on pan pipes wafting through the steam.  And that’s my problem – as with a floatation tank, I wouldn’t be able to get out of the place quickly enough.

Don’t get me wrong..  I’m sure Broadland and indeed all the other spots listed high on the Peace Index have in spades masses of what they’ve been congratulated for having; and theoretically I like the countryside with all its hills, dales, sheep and speeding drivers: the locals’ definition of life in the slow lane being not the same as someone who encounters speed cameras on every street corner.

Several people I know have retreated over the last few years out of cities whether to retire or to bring up children.  Shortly after doing just that, I visited some friends who had moved to Wiltshire.  They showed me their lovely, big house whilst I did my best to politely ignore the large population of spiders which seemed to dangle from each and every beam, and then we sat in the garden to drink a cup of tea.  My eyes reddened as the whiff of a neighbouring farm’s silage charmed its way through their hedges, and with tears coursing down my cheeks I made approving noises about how delicious that was.  Then suddenly all hell broke loose.  With only the briefest toot on a horn for warning, the garden suddenly filled with yapping dogs.  Just as we stood up to see exactly what was happening we realised the hounds were a mere amuse-bouche for the main attraction of what appeared to be every horse in the county thunderously dropping in carrying people, red of coat and face, who were enjoying a relaxing afternoon out on a non-fox hunt.  Chairs went flying, and a recently planted hydrangea was trampled under an infinite number of frantic paws and hooves.  Some of the humans who were theoretically in charge of this chaos waved at us, most galloped by, and two briefly stopped to apologise.

We gathered up smashed crockery and crying infants from the devastated garden which was now a scene to rival Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, and then hurried inside.  Shooing away yet more spiders we put the kettle on to reattempt tea.  My hosts now looked at each other with grief.  All the milk they owned was soaking into the mashed-up lawn, and the one shop that didn’t require a car to reach it wasn’t open for another forty hours. 

Oh, but how fickle I can be.  Within a day I was desperate for those braying hordes to return, hoping against hope they might have dropped something and would come looking for it.  For there is simply nothing else to do in the countryside.  We’d all sit about sighing in a relaxed way, each in turn pointing out how wonderful it is that time goes so slowly in a place where you can’t buy milk.  Well, no wonder it does: all you’ve got to look forward to is some semi-skimmed and the prospect of watching nature decompose all around you.  We listened to a silence only hindered by the noise of spiders artfully building yet another nest.  I stared at the vast sky – an excellent canvas for scribbling on all the things I didn’t like about the place, and then after what seemed to be a fortnight our weekend was over.  

Returning home, I revelled in the sulphurous glow of London’s night sky.  I still take delight in the fact that by and large my neighbours don’t pop in and not one of them owns a horse; but most of all I feel horribly smug in the knowledge that should I fancy a cup of tea I have the wherewithal to get one.  Milk and all.

Working class I may be, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know my way around a French menu (although I don’t)

There are some immutable facts in life: most Popes are dead, there is always less meat on a roast duck than you might have hoped for, and marrying outside your class upsets the natural order of the universe thereby demanding retribution.  The current travails of Chris and Alice in The Archers are proof positive of this. 

With this in mind, and the BBC’s recent attempts to re-categorise class in Britain, last weekend the Sunday Express allowed me to chuck in my two penn’orth in a column about class. Having practically nothing of any intelligence to say on the subject, I won’t have increased a single person’s understanding of the topic by so much as even two penn’orth.  You can read it online here or scroll down.  Or skip it entirely. 

***

Productivity in countless workplaces took a hit this week as thousands of people spent their time responding to questions in the Great British class calculator on the BBC website.  Once completed, they posted their findings on Facebook enabling their friends to laugh and sneer at them, a splendidly British tradition when it comes to matters of class.  Having declared a fondness for opera amongst other things I was deemed to be Traditional Working Class.  For supper that evening I had carre de porc provencal.  With chips, obviously.  Alongside the Prokofiev-devoted, horny-handed sons of toil there are the equally recognisable categories of Elite and Established Middle Class; but to mix things up a bit apparently we now could be categorised as New Affluent Workers, Emergent Service Workers or as a member of the Precariat.  Three groups which sound like warring tribes in some bleak dystopia set in the near future.

No longer are the simplistic definitions of upper, middle and working classes relevant to our lives in 2013.  Made famous by John Cleese and Ronnies Barker and Corbett the idea that “I look up to him” and “he looks down on me” is entirely illogical now.  We all look down on each other.  At the top table sits a cabinet of chaps with millions of spondulicks in the bank, inherited more often than being gained through any efforts of their own, and they like nothing more than to instruct those in the middle to sneer at and berate those at the bottom for their “culture of entitlement,” people who might well be just getting by on only a few quid a day.  And some of of them like to stick two fingers up at everyone else. 

Once you start digging down even within class-based groups things are more finely tuned than you might imagine.  Listening to George Osborne making a speech earlier this week, I noticed he was trying out a curious new Mockney accent for size, reminiscent of Tony Blair on that chat show sofa.  Mockable Mockney it may be but it could simply be a reflection of the fact that whilst in the Bullingdon Club he was known by the likes of David Cameron and Boris Johnson as ‘oik’ for having only attended St Paul’s School, one of London’s most expensive, but not in their eyes obviously of the same calibre as Eton.  Trying to make the best of his impoverished start in life the future chancellor of the exchequer explained most movingly in an interview some time later that the benefit of such lowly origins was the enormous variety of social types it enabled him to mix with.  Parents of his friends were, he explained, anything from dentists to solicitors to television directors.  Pretty much everyone covered, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Twenty years ago John Major hoped for his “classless society.”  Shortly after that John Prescott declared, possibly with clunking fat tongue in cheek and as well as a croquet mallet in hand, “we’re all middle class now.”  And with everyone being able to borrow money like they were playing some whirligig version of Monopoly to many of us it seemed that way. 

Rather than an iron, a top hat, and a racing car our new playing pieces were a four-wheel drive, three foreign holidays a year, and a maxed-out credit card.  Community Chest cards didn’t inform you that you had just inherited £100 (barely enough for the monthly family gym pass) instead they reflected the niggling worries of the day: “You’re in Waterstone’s and you can’t find a third book you want to read in their three-for-two offer.  Go back five spaces.” or “You have a Dyson.  Your son Oliver has to correct you when you call it a Hoover.  Go to jail.  Do not pass go.  Do not collect £200.”

To keep their strength up, everyone started eating organic vegetables; then they had a weekly boxed delivery of organic vegetables; and finally they built a compost heap to accommodate all those uneaten organic vegetables.  Did you know that in 2004 most people who spent at least 5% of their income on alternative healing attempted twice yearly to make their own mayonnaise.  Of these, 93% found that it ‘split’ and resorted to serving Hellmann’s, which they decanted into a small bowl first.  No?  Me neither, but I imagine it was probably the case.

However, put the clocks forward less than a decade and all this seems like a different era.  Now, the middle classes may still be saying things in French when English would do perfectly well (obviously I’m telling you that strictly entre nous) but you don’t need a BBC survey to tell you that for a lot of people now – whatever bracket they fall into – everything is quite a bit more precarious than it ever used to be. 

Of the Rovers Return fire and Deirdre Barlow’s quilted dressing gown

Enthusiast and connoisseur of Coronation Street I may be, but until now no one has ever paid me to write about this particular object of my affection.  Thankfully last weekend that all changed and my column in the Sunday Express allowed me to express this devotion of mine within the nurturing covers of a mid-market tabloid.  Should you have an inclination to do so, you can read it here, or below.

***

Much as I love almost all about Coronation Street, there is something a nice, big, noisy tragedy offers which particularly serves to gladden my devotee’s heart.  This week sees the Rovers Return go up in flames.  Again.  The last time was in 1986 and Bet Lynch had to rescue herself by stringing together all her leopard print miniskirts and using them as a rope ladder just before the inferno emitted one final fiery Newton & Ridley flavoured belch and blew itself out.  

We can all dream of how the latest calamity will change life on the cobbles.  Personally, I find the children of Weatherfield pretty monstrous, most notably Simon and Faye – Satan’s little helper who lives at number 6.  Maybe the flames could terrify them to such a degree they scarper and have a spin-off series of their very own on ITV4 leaving the rest of us in peace.  In case they feel lonely they can take Peter Barlow’s newly acquired goatee beard for company. 

For this latest conflagration, our heroine landlady is Stella.  Foxy cougar she might be but in a previous life she’d tried to murder Ian Beale in EastEnders and has an accent which wavers between Mancunian and cockney to prove it.  Thankfully everyone in her pub is too polite to mention that (or indeed the attempted murder) and so she is free to follow on in the fine tradition laid down by many of her forebears: choosing less than flattering outfits, existing on a diet of chewed pencils with which she tries to balance the books, and from time to time rushing into the back room to bellow, "I need all hands on deck, we’re snowed under out there" only for us to cut to a scene where said pandemonium is Emily Bishop sipping a small sweet sherry framed by two extras mouthing silently at each other, like goldfish gasping for air.  Living with Stella in the Tardis-like flat above the Rovers is her mum Gloria and daughter Eva, a woman whose eye is irresistibly drawn to unsuitable boyfriends in the way that mine is to saveloys.   From next week all this will be no more.

Soap opera addiction is like finding yourself padlocked onto a seat by a sushi bar’s conveyor belt.  Before long the same old dishes trundle by over and over again – yet another portion of Teenage Pregnancy Teriyaki or Psycho Boyfriend Tempura – and so you occasionally hanker for something with a bit more wow factor to reinvigorate the palate.  And inspiration can be found in the most unpromising of situations.  The rest of mankind might consider waiting for a bus an event of little note but in this parallel world it’s akin to dusting down a ouija board, lighting black candles and requesting Lucifer do your bidding.  One minute you’ll be anticipating a crop top you’ve had your eye on in the Arndale Centre, perfect for yet another hen night presaging that month’s doomed wedding, and the next you’ll have embarked on an affair with someone so totally wrong for you even Vicky Pryce would raise her eyebrows. 

But a dodgy romance is mere child’s play for some; let’s not forget careless talk can cost lives.  The tram crash of 2010 was started by Gail-she’ll-always-be-Tilsley to me.  With her face like a chewed milk bottle top, whilst waiting for a single decker she bemoaned the fact that not only did her boiler seem to be on the blink but why was it she never married anyone who wasn’t either a serial killer or murder victim?  And let’s not forget that her eldest had recently returned from Canada with a head transplant and ears that were several sizes too large for him. Anyway, before you knew it like the flapping of a evil butterfly’s wings bad karma spread across to the health centre, swirled around Bessie Street Juniors, gathering strength with every passing moment until all the goodwill of the soap opera universe could hold it back no longer and a tram fell off its tracks trapping Rita Fairclough under a deluge of aniseed balls whilst Deirdre Barlow was obliged to stand on her doorstep in a Germoline-coloured quilted dressing gown, eyes the size of mini roundabouts, and a jaw as slack as you like.  Husband Ken, meanwhile, put down his improving novel to rush about powerfully, and Molly the temptress with eyes that could give Deirdre’s a run for their money breathed her last.  That’s how things roll on the street.

How this latest disaster pans out is yet to be seen but one thing you can be sure of is that just like that Weatherfield bus if you happen to miss it there’ll be another one along before you’ve had time to finish your hotpot. 

Maybe I’ve just not met the right onesie yet (with thanks to Jane Roper for that excellent pun)

In the week of ground-breaking equality legislation, a crisis in health care, food scares across Europe, and no doubt more catastrophic news on the economy, it is instead the horror of the onesie that occupied my thoughts in the Sunday Express.  Read it here or in a nicer font I feel, below:

*****

Are you sitting comfortably?  Then I’ll begin.  Times are tough and the weather is dour, so who can really blame others for taking solace wherever it may be found?  Well, I can.  I don’t blame everyone, you understand, but I would like to pick on a minority.  Sadly, not that small a minority.  Up and down the country people are choosing to wear onesies and I can’t find it in my heart to forgive them.

As The One Show demonstrates on a nightly basis things with ‘one’ in their title should often be viewed with suspicion, or as in the case of The One Show ideally not at all.  And wearers of the onesie certainly fit into that category.  The donning of this awful thing seems to be a stage in the evolution of a phenomenon we started hearing about a couple of years ago.  People who decided to go shopping in their pyjamas.  Life was so hectic for these types apparently that the effort of getting dressed had to be relegated to the maybe-one-day list along with re-pointing the brickwork and visiting the pyramids.  Sensibly, a couple of places even banned shoppers from coming in if they couldn’t be bothered to put clothes on.  So, ever responsive to the market’s needs someone else then came up with the idea of the onesie.  “You don’t need to bother getting dressed,” this garment seems to suggest, “ but at least you can say you have.” 

I’ll be honest with you, working from home much of my life is spent in a condition only a myopic optimist would describe as properly dressed; the day’s brightest hours see me sporting a dressing gown topped off with this season’s must-have accessory of a crumpled face of mid-life disappointment.  But I promise you hand-on-heart I would not leave the house like this.  Probably not even if it was on fire.  I know how terrible I look.  The smallest respect I can show my fellow man is to be arsed to put some clothes on before we might encounter each other.  However I know my voice is not in keeping with the times.  Recently I spotted staff in a London shop having to cajole customers into forming an orderly queue in front of the onesies’ display so that there was fairness in the doling out of these things.  There were two designs on offer: a leopard print number and the other was a teddy bear with large velvet ears. These items were being bought by adults to be worn by adults and adults should you need reminding are humans who sometimes drive vehicles and are left unsupervised for long periods of time.  The type of human you might have imagined who would consider aspiring to look like something in the animal kingdom as a distinctly odd way to interpret the term “getting dressed.” 

As I struggle to comprehend the appeal of wearing a out-sized romper suit it occurs to me that childhood comforts might be to many a salve for the scrapes and heartaches of adult life.  But as people struggle to pay the bills and suchlike do they imagine that those sorts of very grown-up worries will fade away in a mist of irrelevance if they only dress like a small child?  A baby grow was intended to be worn by a person at a stage in its development where responsibility came in the form of deciding which shape fits into which hole, not for someone who has the capacity to vote in and out politicians, operate machinery, and get excited about composting.  And whereas on a baby a baby grow with a polka dot pattern or pictures of reindeer can pass for the epitome of cuteness on a grown-up the effect is less cute and more all-in-one body bag designed by a psychotic clown.

Frankly I blame Harry Potter.  Before the boy wizard and his tiresome chums made an appearance in our national life children’s books tended to be read by children but suddenly all manner of people were goggle-eyed with excitement as they nagged you to share in the fun of reading about muggles, Lord Voldemort and Quidditch.  It’s one smallish regressive step from that to wanting to get back to a time where even children’s books are a bit too heavy-going and so should be drooled over instead of being read.  Where next?  The wearing of nappies around the house to save you all that effort of going to the toilet?  The future is impossible to really know.  However, my money is on this year’s must-have Christmas gift being a huge dark sack filled with churning amniotic fluid in which people can bob about and really put the cares of the day behind them.  Good night, children.