Well you lot,I have a little announcement

After 12 years together, myself and my partner, Claire are finally getting married.  I know, about time too, says you.

We moved in together in late 2002, and finally got engaged in 2005.  Of course, a lot of things happened after that such as a crippling recession that put our lives on hold for years.  But things are picking up now and I finally have consistent work with a good company.

We are getting married out in Cyprus, because my mum lives there now.  She has been appointed Wedding Planner, as she is in the area, and knows everybody.  I think we are going with a Catholic church, as there is a nice one in Paphos with a restaurant next door that caters for large parties.

This means we get a little sunshine and the country appeals to a Classicist such as me.  So I wil keep you posted on the developments as they come in.

Of all the speaking jobs, and there are indeed many, none strike me as more nerve-wracking as stand-up comedy.  For the simple reason that it is just you and your voice entertaining a crowd of slightly drunken locals looking for a good night out.  Add to that, the fact that what ‘funny’ is, is difficult to define.  So it  takes a set of brass balls to pull it off.

But indeed some people do pull it off, night after night, in hostelries and clubs up and down the country.  Prominent among them is an old Twitter friend of mine, Dave Twentyman.  He is, as I write, somewhere between North Yorkshire and Hull, gigging.  If he can make a Yorkshireman laugh, he knows no fear.

Do you have a natural fear of public speaking and how did you overcome it?

Yes, I really struggle with the word ‘comfortable’. I’ve no idea why so I just say ‘comfy’ instead.

As a comedian you have played some pretty scary places.  Give us a good ‘rough gig story’?

For the next few months I am doing a few posts on speech and speaking. As some of you know I am a lifelong stammerer. It makes my life more of a challenge, but then again, no one said life was ever going to be easy.

I have always been slightly in awe of people who can and do use their voices for a living. I wanted to know what the secret was. How do you tame and control your speech like that?

So I have been in touch with a few people who make their livings from their voices.

The first one, which will be along shortly, was comedian Dave Twentyman.

Our story starts way back at the end of 2008.  Your intrepid hero here, was working as a manager within the hospitality side of a exclusive Golf and country club.  It was a great job and I enjoyed it a lot.

I had heard on the news something about a recession hitting America, which must suck.  A few companies had gone under and Wall street was starting to resemble the panic of 1929.  Now this was a little worrying, but still nothing really to do with me and mine.  The TV was full of pictures of people suddenly devoid of jobs, with huge debts and no savings or insurance to fall back on.
Like the Tsunami of 2005 I figured this was all pretty awful but still very far away and ultimately nothing to do with me.  Then the recession hit Britain with the force of an economic hurricane, destroying all in it’s path.  People in some industries were being made redundant, not in tens or twenties but in their hundreds, and even thousands.  Businesses, often high street names, were folding at a rate of one a day.  It was shocking and bewildering, especially to someone with a sense of history who had seen all this happen before.

Then one day I found a letter from the management in my pigeonhole.  I was one of three people selected to be made redundant at the end of the month, which happened to be December.

This was completely unexpected, and thoroughly frightening.  I had been doing really well at my job and had learned how to run large functions in a relatively short time.  And now my skills were no longer needed, simple as that.  They simply couldn’t afford to keep me on.

I knew the big executive cars in the car park were getting fewer and fewer.  The Golf club had just paid out millions to build a hotel extension on it’s side, and now had been caught short.

With a pay-off of barely two weeks wages I was let go the day before Christmas eve.  You have got to love the Dickensian twist on that one.

By sheer luck my better half knew of a guy at a small hotel chain who needed a night-desk receptionist for his premises. Naturally I took it while I looked out for something else.  But it was quickly clear that there was nothing else.  Nothing at all.

So I set to work every night, on my own in pitch blackness.  Naturally I hated every minute, and simply could not adjust to such an inactive role after management.  I sat and wrote my blog, as you can see through my posts of 2009.  Some of my best writing was done at 04.00, fueled by some very strong coffee.  You can probably tell.

After nine months I was promoted to day-time supervisor, which was much better.  I felt I was finally getting back to somewhere like where I was.  I had a huge restaurant and bar to look after, and a lot of responsibility.

About this time we were intending to relocate from Oxfordshire to Warwickshire, to be closer to my partner’s parents.  They had not been well the past year and it would hopefully be cheaper to live up there, and find work.

Indeed we did find a home to rent just around the corner from her parents, at a surprisingly cheap rate.  We both found jobs at a local pub and hotel.  We settled into the town with little trouble, but not into the jobs.  It is difficult to say why, but we just didn’t fit.  We came from a different culture with a different style of management.  The new place was run with a rod of iron, even though the end product was not great quality.

I began a desperate search for something better somewhere else.  But therein lay the problem.  Our new town was positioned between three cities containing well over fifty decent size hotels and clubs.  Yet jobs were rare any applying for work had somehow become a nightmare.  Literally hundreds of people were applying for every single position, no matter how small, or part time.

My current job was simply unbearable so I decided to take a gamble and do agency work for a while.  Now this would be an experience.  It was wholly manual labour, and very demanding at that.  While I had stamina, I had no remarkable physical strength.  Suddenly I found myself emptying trucks and lifting packages of every size and shape at all hours of night and day.  It was very hard work, but I had nothing else so I could not complain.

As so often happens with agency work (as I found out) I got a phone call to say I was no longer required there.  No reason given, beyond that they were a bit quiet there at the minute.  So I applied to another agency.  From now on I would be packing internet orders for a well known British high street shopping chain.  I packed everything from dresses to toys to christmas gifts.  Then suddenly after christmas it tailed off completely, for over six weeks.  Now this really left me out on a limb.  I had no money, no work and no prospects of getting a job.  I applied and applied, stating my numerous qualifications and years of experience, but somehow nobody seemed interested.  I was so scared and bewildered.  It just didn’t make sense, I had done nothing wrong, but I was an outcast.
As a person, I changed.  I must have been unbearable to live with.  I became prone to outbursts of temper, deep, dark moods, and attacks of panic every time I checked my bank balance.  One day when another agency cancelled my shift again, I sat at home on my own and screamed at the top of my lungs for maybe ten minutes.  I had just had enough.

Even now, writing this, I feel haunted by that day.  I had known people who had committed suicide, and had seen the devastation it caused their families.  It was only that knowledge that kept me from ending it.

The calls from the bank came daily and more persistently.  I just couldn’t get through to them that I could not pay bills with no income.  But, through family help and sheer bloody-minded persistence I managed to scrape work here and there.

I took an assymetrical move back into hospitality by becoming a chef.  Something I never really wanted to be.  At first I wasn’t very good.  I had trouble prioritizing and committing menus to memory.  Luckily my head chef was no overbearing Ramsey type, and very patient with me.  Mostly because I never refused a shift and would change my plans at the drop of a hat.

At the same time I was still doing agency work as a packer for an internet sales company.  But work came in drip form and money was tight

But I just kept chipping away and I found another job as a chef for a small garden centre cafe at weekends.  I held this down while still doing two other jobs, and barely scraping to survive.  Then a chef went out sick and I was required to cover two more days a week, which was just fine.  The new kitchen was much harder, however and required a level of skill that I did not possess at this stage.  Although my new chef and manager were great people and true professionals, I knew I was letting them down.  Also, I needed to find a job with a full time contract, somewhere, somehow.

For a long time, none seemed to be forthcoming.  Your applications just seemed to get lost without a trace.  Other interviewers who saw me would smilingly offer a zero hours contract.  This meant they could drop you like a stone at zero notice.

The summer of 2012 and very miserable and suited my mood entirely.  As desperately as I tried, I just could not make enough money to pay the bills.

Around this time two of my biggest character strengths began to pay off.  Firstly I have huge physical endurance.  This let me just go on working without getting ill or overly tired.  Secondly, I have a sheer bloody minded refusal to quit anything I start.  If you show patience, sooner or later, the other guy will blink, or get bored and make a mistake.

A vacancy came up for a chef at Birmingham airport.  I heard about it through a friend, who put my case forward to the powers that be.  In an echo of an earlier episode of my life a long line of “no’s” ended up with a  guy taking one look at me and saying “yeah, alright.” and put me on a trial.

The job itself was right up my street, cooking food fresh and fast.  But the hours were hideous, and still are.  But I adjusted my life to suit.  The only other problem was my security clearance that took a lot of work.  They needed a full career history of everything I had done for everybody for the last five years.  Now this took some doing, and involved taking two weeks off work while it was all sorted out.  But now it is done and I am a bona fide chef for a very good company with international perks.

So, on that note I am downgrading my state of personal emergency to a code yellow.  I am looking forward to 2013 and maybe getting my life back in some sort of order.  I may even return to writing.
Be good, you lot.

Amid a stream of high fashion and stick thin models it seems that Britain’s Ms Average (who according to survey is a size 16) has been passed by.  For too long she has been dictated to by the godawful Fashionistas of Paris and Milan.  Not only that, she has been force fed every fad diet going from Atkins to Dukan.

So at last, and to some personal relief, some home grown talent has finally emerged that would not disappear if you beckoned her over a cattle-grid.  Josie Blood, set up Curvy Model Management on her own initiative to cater for fashion models with a fuller figure. One of her first signings was Britain’s Got Talent star, Fabia Cerra.

Her timing was excellent, the same month, the Editor of Italian Vogue began a campaign to highlight the curvier figure. To her credit, Franca Sozzani had decided it was time to break free of her French cousins and take her magazine in a daring new direction.

So I caught up with Josie to see how the girls of this Brave New World of modelling were getting on.

Is the fashion industry missing out on a huge revenue stream by not appealing to curvier women?

Yes most definitely,  the catwalks should have healthy plus size models on the catwalks. On Loose Women the other week they were saying how models shouldn’t always be ‘stick thin’ but more ‘real’ women. Marlyn Monroe was a size 16 and she was stunning and very curvy.

Who is your favourite photographer to work with?

Colin Hampton-White,  he is also the agency photographer and he is part of the agency as well.  Colin works for Conde Nast and in particular Vogue Italia.

Are there any other UK based Curvy Model agencies out there?

Well obviously I did a little bit of homework on the modelling agencies and no,  we are the first plus size modelling to have launched in the UK,  there is one agency that goes up to a size 16 but our models are size 16+,  but can i also stress that the models we have on our a books are a size 16+ healthy models,  we are in no way promoting unhealthy models.

All photos courtesy of Colin Hampden-White photography.

Check out his site here: http://www.colinhampdenwhite.co.uk

Twitter is one of the most used social networking sites of modern time. Along with facebook it now has millions of users worldwide. Not only is it the forum for the average person, but als0 for film stars, celebrities, sports people, statesmen, journalists and activists.

It has become the must-have online accessory, everybody who is somebody has to have one, and use it at least ten times a day.

Not only that, it has had a powerful impact on public relations, leveling the playing field between celebrities and us poor folk. Suddenly we are getting their life stories, minute by minute, and usually straight from the horses mouth.

More Journalists are posting to their twitter account than going to the newsroom. On Sky News the other week they just showed a twitterstream rather than trying to describe the news in question.

(I will explain the twitterstream thing in a minute)

Twitter was invented in 2007 by a small brainstorming group from the podcasting company Odeo. The idea was to work on extra small, constantly updated blog posts that could work like a text message. A short message, or a ‘tweet’ can consist of no more than 140 characters, be they letters, or punctuation. They can also be used for internet links.

So to get started, type in www.twitter.com into your URL bar and follow the simple instructions. Believe me it is pretty easy.

Then what?

Then you have to find people to follow. They may be friends, relatives, football teams or celebrities. Use the search engine to find them. In addition, when you first join, you can use a feature to check your email address book for anyone with a twitter account, and it adds them automatically.

So how does Twitter work?

Imagine your town high street, completely empty. Now imagine someone walking down the street toward you. They may be a follower. If someone walks past you, up the street they are someone you are following. The more people you follow, the more people are likely to follow you back. Now the high street is filling with people all walking up and down the street. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the twitterstream.

How can it help you?

Well in lots of ways. You can use it to make friends and influence people, you can promote yourself, your products or your interests. Some people use it for flirting and dating, others have found a good support network in the twitterstream.

Where can I use Twitter?

Wherever you like, as it works via PC, Mac, iPhones and any relevant Apple technology. You can take it anywhere and it operates worldwide, 24 hours a day.

How do I post pictures?

You can use various other sites to post pics to twitter, such as moby.com or lockerz.com but in truth it is easier just to use twitter’s own photo uploader. All they ask is that you keep it tasteful and don’t post anything offensive.

How do I post links?

Knowing how to post a link to a website is a vital skill. It magically teleports people from twitter to your website, which should be your real shop window. To start, you have to have your web page up in a separate window. Then you copy and paste the link to twitter, write a brief description, and send the tweet.

Links can, of course, be very long so you can use the site http://www.tinyurl.com to shorten the URL which gives you more room to type a description.

What are hashtags?

They hash key looks like this # Before twitter is was one of the most under employed keys on the board. When twitter came along the hash key found itself in an exciting new role, as a digital sheepdog. On twitter, people talk about all manner of subjects constantly. To get people who want to talk about the same thing together you need a hash tag. For example, if a news story came up, and you wanted to tweet about it, you could type:

#News Has anybody heard anything about this?

Or if you wanted to talk to people about a programme on TV running live you use the name of the show as the hashtag:

#Frozenplanet Those penguins are cute, I want one.

Often they will now flash up the hashtag at the start of the show.

What is Follow Friday?

It is just a networking opportunity for people to meet more people to follow. Use the hashtag #FF or #Followfriday and type in the names of people you wish to include. They then do the same with people they want to include and you find new mutual friends to follow. It is like mingling at a party.

Is there much Spam?

Sadly there is an awful lot of people who want to sell you things, loan you money or get you to sign up to their site. Usually it will be a photo of a girl in a bikini with an absurd sounding name with four numbers behind it, this is the giveaway. Ignore this person completely, and block them.

Are there many stalkers about?

There are a few, so follow the online safety guide. Do not respond to provocative tweets, no matter how offensive. They just draw you into a stupid pointless argument.  For more information please watch this documentary by Richard Bacon of the BBC:

Is Twitter safe for kids?

In all honesty, I would not recommend Twitter to anybody under at least 16 years of age for the reasons I have outlined above.

So that is my starter’s guide, I hope it is of some use to you and any feedback is always appreciated.

When you are stuck for a gift to buy a loved one it is worth remembering that you cannot go far wrong with a book.  So it is with this in mind that I present you with two books written by good friends of mine.

First of all may I present Miss Fabia Cerra.  She was last seen turning Simon Cowell scarlett on X Factor with her raunchy Burlesque routine.  Since then she has been busy as an ambassador for www.bodygossip.org and running her own Burlesque class at R&R Frontline Studios in Oxford.  Oh, and she just got snapped up by www.curvymodels.co.uk

She had two books up for grabs:  Her life story, In Two Minds, available in print, and Ciao Bella! her Bible of style and beauty, now available as an e-book.  It will be available in print in 2012, if you can wait that long.

Secondly, I would like you to meet top chef Mike Saxon, culinary Jedi and author of Chef’s Tales.  Now Mike is a chef who has cooked his way around the world.  His culinary journey took him from Yorkshire to Toronto, the Bahamas, the Phillipines and Malaysia.  Whether he was delivering room service to naked people in Toronto, fighting off Phillipine rats or dodging bullets in Houston, work was never dull.

He met weird and wonderful characters such as the mysterious Mr Teppenyaki. Then there was  the psychotic French chef who would chase people around the kitchen with a meat cleaver.  And a whole cast of mentalists who, in spite of, or because of their peculiarities, produced the most amazing food known to man.

Both are well worth a read and now available via Amazon.co.uk

So the list as follows includes:

Cheap Gold Jewellery

Although the gypsy girl look may be the thing this season, this does not extend to looking like you take the money on the dodgem cars.  Gaudy, gold plated chunky jewellery is just an absolute no-no.

Any Practical Electrical Appliance

This includes vacuum cleaners, kettles, steamers, trouser presses, microwaves and so on.  A gift is supposed to be a gift. A token of love and affection, not a reminder that your trousers need ironing.  It is something you should want, and not really something you exactly need.

‘Sexy’ gifts

Or at least things we think are sexy.  This includes cheap, tacky underwear, sex toys, or other silly ‘erotic’ gifts.  The underwear thing seems to be the biggest bugbear.  I suppose it is better, then to get them a La Senza gift voucher and let them get on with it themselves.

‘Thoughtless’ gifts

Now this one is wide open.  It depends on how long you have been together I suppose and the gifts we buy are a measure of how much we listen to our better half.  Thoughtless gifts don’t have to be cheap, they can be expensive as hell, but even the things we want them to like just don’t tick the right boxes some days.  So the trick is this:  Pay attention to them, if in doubt, ask them what they want.  Good presents are rarely a surprise.

Well we are barely a month away from Christmas, the time when we traditionally buy gifts for our loved ones and they return the favour.  But it is also a time when we show how little we really know each other and what we want.

So, after a lot of research on Twitter, this is the short list of the things men don’t want for Christmas.

Jack Daniels Merchandise

We like Jack Daniels.  A lot, don’t get me wrong.  But we don’t need the wallet, the coasters, the key ring, the mousemat, the playing cards or the poster.  We just want a proper 70cl bottle of the good stuff and a glass.  To get through the week we are going to need it.

Chilli gifts

We love a good Chilli con carne or a curry.  But we don’t need chilli oil (we still have a bottle from last year), chilli plants, chilli chocolate, chilli sodding roulette games, or chilli beer.  Please, for heaven’s sake, just give us the beer.  It goes down well with the Jack Daniels.

Ice Road Truckers/Top Gear DVD

Just because we watch it on TV during the day doesn’t really mean we like it, it just means there is nothing else on.  Channel Dave devotes hours to perhaps one or two episodes of Top Gear that it seemingly shows on loop.  But do we want a DVD about a bloke driving a truck in the snow?  Nay, lass.

Christmas Jumpers

I know it is a tradition, but it is a crap one.  We have a draw full of gaudy knitwear stretching back to the eighties that even Oxfam wouldn’t accept.  Please, no more.

We are now deep into the season that hates our face more than any other.  Cold wind chafes and chaps our visage like never before.  In the dark, early mornings, shaving suddenly feels like the krypton factor.

So it is sometimes good to get back to basics with these things.  Fortunately our friends at Bluebeard’s Revenge have just the thing we need.

The short film was produced by Adelia TV, and stars Andy Dunn, a real bloke’s bloke and an expert barber, among his other jobs.

So check it out and keep an eye on the upcoming offers from Bluebeard’s Revenge range of gifts for Christmas.