The 98% rule

When I was young I believed a lot of things. I believed that the programme Manimal, about a doctor who could change into different animals at will, was possible. I believed that playing Laserquest in a lime-green shellsuit was a good idea. And I believed that the majority of people were nice.

That last one, I’ve learned over the years, is the only one that I really got wrong and instead I have the 98% rule. The 98% rule, formulated by me, my best friend and a lot of booze basically says this.

Of all the people you meet, only around 2% are worth bothering about. The other 98% aint.

That might seem a rather cynical viewpoint, but I urge you to think about it in a positive way. There’s so many people out there who can’t wait to argue with you, punch you, stab you in the back, nick your spare change, kick you in the balls or just run off with your favourite video and never return it – there’s so many of them that you should just accept it. Accept that 98% of the people in the world are simply not worth getting upset over. Most people will let you down – get used to it and minimise those people from your life.

Instead, focus on those 2%, the ones that make you laugh, lend you a pair of trousers, cover for you, remember that you like cola bottles, read your work and generally make your life a bit better. If you focus on them more you can get so much more out of life, I guarantee you. In fact, go to your social network page now and look through those ‘friends’ who just wanted to be added for no real reason – and get rid of them, your life won’t be any worse. Similarly, if you’re reading this and don’t know why you really know me, then get rid of me.

So after 6 months of blogging is this my mantra? My manifesto? Obviously it hasn’t had enough hilarious lines in, it’s something approaching me being serious for a change (I’m not dying, don’t worry) and if the 98% rule helps you understand me a little better then great.

Josh Homme, Bill Paxton and me

So, today is my birthday, well it has been for the last 17 minutes. I know I wasn't born bang on midnight but the rules of birthdays are that you celebrate from the first second of the day in question. It's quite odd.

Anyway, I thought I would reflect on the good/bad birthday experiences of my life. So here are the five most memorable birthdays for me:

5 years old (I think)
Birthday party at 8 St Margarets Close, Torquay. As with most people at that age there were about 4,324 people there (you make a lot of friends when you are 5) and my best present was a brand new tent. It was my camping phase (no laughing at the back). Anyway, why can I remember this so much? Because Louise Godfrey fell over a guide rope into the tent and broke it. I'm sure Bear Grylls never had to put up with this.

12 years old
1987, my birthday was on a Saturday. I got a Spectrum 128 computer (brilliant) and Coventry won the FA Cup. My birthday treat though was saved for the next day - a trip to Torquay's English Riviera Centre, freshly opened. For the first time in 20 years Torquay had a new swimming pool and this one had a water slide. And a wave machine. Brilliant. Except it was so popular we had to queue for an hour and it was so busy the wave machine was just a mechanism to be smashed into other people. We only got half an hour too, stupid coloured wristband system...

13 years old
What do you give a boy obsessed with his Spectrum 128 computer (told you it was brilliant) - you give into his demands to see some 'Medieval Jousting' the other side of Paignton. I imagined speedy men on steeds, Ivanhoe style spearing and perhaps a few severed limbs. Instead it was a second rate circus with one man on a horse and a couple of blokes who clearly wanted to be shakespearean actors but might have been on The Bill once hitting each other with wood.

27 years old
I went to see The Mummy Returns at Halifax's only cinema, on my own. There were four people there, and three of them worked in the cinema. Not the best

29 years old
Woke up in Wolverhampton after massive boozing and curry session. Drove to Halifax where I got changed and drove to Ilkely for a job interview (highlight was the girl interviewing me saying - "It's great working here - there's no pension, but every Friday you get free fruit". Drove to work to find out the flight I had booked to Edinburgh was for 7am, not pm. Had flight rescheduled and got to Manchester airport far too early. Sat in 1st class lounge with unlimited booze for an hour. Got on plane where I told them it was my birthday, got more free booze, landed in Edinburgh and got to hotel. Had more booze. Met up with film crew I was filming with. Had a drink.

Up to now this just sounds like the story of a man getting utterly trollied. But all that drinking gave me the courage to chat to the girl I had been thinking about for the many years since I had met her one day in Edinburgh. Gave me the the courage to tell her how beautiful she was. Gave me the courage to kiss her.

And that was the girl who this very moment is telling me that I can't go in the kitchen and peek at my presents. Yep, I kissed my wife for the first time on my birthday. And no matter what is sitting in the kitchen at the moment (no, I'm not peeking) it can't ever be as good as that.

Unless it's Buckaroo of course.

Something to smile about

It's been a rather harrowing week as one of our cats, Mr Seth, has been in and out of the vets. Poor little fella has had real problems breathing and we had to rush him to emergency vets on Sunday night and then have more blood tests yesterday.

The good news is that he seems to be doing much better and the frightening wheeze he had has gone. He does have little shaved bits on his legs where they had to take his blood though - he looks like an advert for Immac (or Veet, as it's now known).

I can now look back on that quite distressing night in the emergency vets to say that for once I was able to get through something horrid with a classic funny moment.

Whilst we were there a man came in to collect a lost dog. However 10 minutes later another man, furious, turned up saying it was his dog and he wanted the police involved. Thankfully the police had already been called as the furious man was a known local loon and had rung before coming down.

And in amongst all that, all I could think of was that at any point the policeman should have just said "Lost dog? I'm sorry, we simply don't have any leads".

That gag kept me going inside for quite some time. I love when you can actually do jokes that you've only ever read in Children's jokebooks. I once managed, in a geography lesson at school, to have the following exchange with my grumpy teacher.

Teacher - What came after the bronze age?
Me - Was is the saus-age?

Even he laughed.

Anway, I've just shared those poor quality gags with you and with Seth, who is on his cushion next to me. He either doesn't get it or really couldn't care.

Doesn't matter to me, as long as the little fella is here I'll always have something to smile about.

Wooaahhhh...my mouth is on fire

Yes, you are supposed to read that headline in a Kings of Leon style.

I like my takeaway/restaurant food. You'd know that if you've ever met me, or phoned me after I've just done something strenous like get up from the sofa or lick a stamp. Alright, I need to lose some weight, I know. I'll get round that that in a minute, just after tea in fact.

Pizza is great, especially as if I ever see a sign for, or order from, Dominos I feel the need to sing in a Latin style "PIZZZUSS.....DOMINUS", like it was dramatic choral music from a Dan Brown story. That's what gluttony coupled with a Catholic upbringing will do for you.

Having lived in the Midlands and the North however, I'm a curry fiend. Last weekend I was out in Scotchland with my lovely wife and some chums on Saturday and they suggested we go to their fave local currey house. Being the big man that I am I decided to go for a Chicken Madras. Hot, yes, but normally not anything too severe.

Good lord was I wrong.

Seems this curry house have mislabelled their food somewhat. Where it said "Chicken Madras - Medium Hot/Hot" it should have said "Chicken Madras - You know that thing that the Terminator in Terminator 2 kills himself in, you know, the molten metal, it's basically that.". I'm suprised the chicken was able to remain whole. The waiter should have had a welder's mask on as he brought it. And hands made from asbestos.

After 4-5 mouthfuls I had downed an entire pint of very cold lager and was using the edge of a poppadom to scrape my tongue to remove traces of the devil's curry. I sweated so much I had to use a bit of naan bread to mop my brow. And everytime I tried to laugh it off it felt like my eyes were being heated from the inside with 78 seperate bunsen burners.

I could still feel it as we left the establishment. Thankfully for the future of my mouth, and my lust for food, there was a nearby ice-cream shop still open (this is Scotland, that's how they roll) and a few big scoops of mint-chocolate chip sorted me out. They should use that stuff to stop forest fires frankly.

So in short, yes, the curry was too hot. Either that or I am an utter girl. And a big one at that.

Argggh! It's a crisis! Don't panic.

I went on a crisis communications course the other week. It was in London and, amusingly, I was late due to the fact there was a security alert on the train I was travelling on. For a minute I thought it might have been part of the course - in which case I was very impressed with the 70 odd actors and stunt train that must have taken ages to set up. Yelling "I know you are all actors, you can stop pretending" was a possibilty, but I held off just in case it was just coincidence.

Anyway, the course itself was where you are given a crisis situation and you have to work out how you would communicate it. The case study was of an explosion outside our offices in Leeds. Of course, an explosion in some parts of Leeds could be very significant - causing millions of pounds worth of improvements.

They kept adding in more detail and heresay and gossip in the form of emails and phonecalls and we had to keep our head. In the end it turned out the whole thing was done by terrorists who worked for our company. My idea that it might have ended with the villain being the helicopter flying, parachute trained priest who then becomes Pope was clearly not the right outcome. It is the main thrust of Dan Brown's Demons and Angels though - and that's all you need to know about that film.

Of course 'crisis' means a lot of things to a lot of people. On the train on the way back I thought up some other possible crissisis, crisees, crisi..oh, you get it, and the main ones I came up with were running out of toilet paper, bacon fries being banned and Myleene Klass turning out to be immortal.

What I did also remember was a crisis communications exercise that formed part of a job interview I had. I was given a situation where I was told 'ok, the company pay roll hasn't run - what do you do' and had to justify my decisions. The only thing was that they kept making it more difficult, to the point where it just got silly. Sample conversation from that interview

Them - OK, so you've done your intranet story, but you need to let HR know.
Me - Right, I've sent a mail to them and all the relevant people
Them - Ah, but email has just gone done and you don't know if they've got it
Me - OK, I'll ring them on the phone
Them - They aren't answering
Me - I'll walk round and see them
Them - They're not in
Me - I'll talk to people who work with them and find out where they are
Them - The person you need to speak to is dead

It was at that point I actually burst out laughing, which is never good in an interview. It was also the point at which I realised I didn't want to work for a company who had recruiters who asked such stupid questions. Fortunate I didn't work for them in the end, their offices were destroyed the following week when Mecha-Godzilla trashed it due to not getting paid.

In closing I can say this. In a crisis, get a megaphone. Get your mate to then drive you around the roads you live yelling 'DON'T PANIC' at loud volume. You'll get noticed just like we did, but mainly by the police...