My application for role as Speaker

Dear Gordon,

I would like to apply for the position of Speaker as I understand the role is soon to be vacated.

First of all forgive me if I have sent this to the wrong person but I know you are the ‘top banana’ in these things and having seen your winning smile on You Tube recently I sense you are a kind man who will treat my application seriously.

I think honesty is the best policy – particularly in the light of what many of your naughty colleagues have been up to! – so let me say straight away that I don’t actually fully understand what the Speaker does.

I suspect (to be even more honest) that hardly anyone in the country really does know what this odd job is all about but in recent days everyone seems to have been talking about the role with great gravity as if it is the cornerstone of world civilisation.

That sort of ‘kudos’ sounds good to me and can’t harm the old CV, hence this application. (And hey, the perks don’t seem bad either!).

I was also further encouraged to apply when I heard on that programme where Jeremy Paxman just sneers at everyone (and boy has he been going into sneering overdrive of late!) someone say that The Speaker is the third most important person in the country after The Queen and The Prime Minister.

Now, I know that is a bit ridiculous – had this guy never heard of David Beckham, Simon Cowell, Peggy Mitchell, Katie Price or Susan Boyle I wondered? – but nevertheless I feel as I am unlikely to become a monarch or indeed the PM any time soon this may be the perfect chance for me to finally hit the ‘big time.’

Clearly I am not an MP which may (in itself) be considered a bit of a disadvantage but I do sort of like politics (I have every one of the West Wing DVDs and I love The Thick Of It) and I am sure I can say ‘order, order’ and act statesmanlike as well as the next man (particularly if the ‘next’ man is called Michael Martin!)

I can’t deny I would also like a crack at a bit of power to get over some of my personal concerns.

For example, if we can get a man to the moon and create peace in Northern Ireland how hard can it be to give Bath Rugby an extra 15 per cent of space in our city centre? And I would also like the chance to persuade you and every other MP that not everyone in Bath actually lives in the Royal Crescent and so yes, we do need Government investment in our schools and health service as well thank you.

But, fear not, I won’t be parochial and I will take an interest in the whole country – yes, even Bristol.

I will also make sure that unlike the last bloke I really will crack down on MPs’ expenses.

I will, for example, ban MPs from having moats wider than the sort children put around sandcastles, I make sure that the only horse manure MPs can use is what they have personally collected themselves from nearby farms (local manure for local people I say!) and I will also ban Hazel Blears.

Above all I can be fair (well, sometimes), impartial (apart from at sporting events) and I am sure I will look very good in black gowns.

Mr Brown, I know this is a tough time for you (I have to keep replaying that You Tube video to remind me what it was like when you actually even smiled) but I believe by making me Speaker you can remove one big obstacle from your life. You can then return to dealing with issues that are obviously easier for you like, err, the economy.


Best wishes from your next third most important person in the UK . . .

Sam

Sir Alan Sugar tackles the Expenses issue

Sir Alan’s PA: Sir Alan will see you all now.

(Hundreds of sharp-suited, worried-looking people troop into the boardroom and fight for the few available seats).

Sir Alan: Right, this task was very simple. All the teams had to do was fill in their expenses in a way that was fair and was seen to be fair. First, who was the team leader?

Gordon Brown: That would be me, Sir Alan.

Sir Alan: (To everyone else) Was he a good team leader?

Silence

Sir Alan: Interesting... Now according to the figures I’ve seen, this team, as well as claiming all sorts of cash for staying in second homes, even though some of them were in spitting distance of Parliament, have also claimed for things as apparently ‘essential’ to their work as bath robes, loo seats, hanging baskets, pot plants, rug repairs, nappies, oven mitts and a pouffe. This is crazy, who is responsible for this money-no-object mess?

Gordon Brown: Sir Alan, we realise we’ve done wrong and have been doing wrong for a long time and now that the newspaper has exposed us, we’ve suddenly realised we had to do something about it.

Sir Alan: So why didn’t you do anything about it before if you knew it was wrong?

Silence.

Voice from the back: We were only following the rules.

Second Voice from the back: Jah, ve vere only obeying ze orders.

(A small, strange-looking ginger- haired woman starts waving around a cheque saying she will pay it all back. Sir Alan shakes his head and looks at the other team).

Sir Alan: So who was your team leader?

David Cameron: That would be me, Sir Alan – and can I just say how much I admire you?

Sir Alan: Ummm... So was he a good team leader?

(There are a few appreciative mutterings and one voice from the back shouts “well at least he’s better than Iain Duncan Smith”).

Sir Alan: So tell me, then, how come your team claimed for light bulbs, rodent control, horse manure, a chandelier, pipe work at tennis courts, work around a helipad and swimming pool problems?

David Cameron: I know these things look bad but I’m going to take very firm action because I’m a very firm kinda guy.

Sir Alan: Well, I think it sounds like you’re all a disaster. Nick and Margaret, how much profit did the two teams make?

Nick: They both made an enormous amount for themselves – but not much for anyone else.

Sir Alan: I just cannot believe what I’m hearing. People from the team sitting on the left have clearly forgotten their roots and those sitting on the right seem to only represent people with swimming pools and chandeliers. You’re an out-of-touch rabble – you’re all fired.

David Cameron/Gordon Brown: But who will run the country?

Nick Clegg: I will!

Sir Alan: And who are you? I’ve never seen you before in my life but I know your lot were stupid enough not to choose Vince Cable as project leader so so you’re all sacked as well.

(MPs troop out sadly, get into a fleet of waiting taxis and the BBC studios to talk to Adrian Chiles. Cut back to boardroom...).

Margaret: Well, it looks as if there’s nobody left, so who is going to run the country?

Sir Alan: I suppose I could. I’ll be Prime Minister; Nick, you can be Chancellor; and Margaret, you can be Home Secretary. We can always get Joanna Lumley to take over defence.

(There is a knock at the door and in walks the aforementioned strange-looking woman with ginger hair, still holding her cheque. Sir Alan dismisses her. Another MP then files in).

Anonymous, greedy, snout in the trough MP: Can I confirm Sir Alan – can we claim for the taxis?

Car booting to prove Napoleon right

It is Napoleon Bonaparte who is said to have first uttered the phrase: 'L'Angleterre est une nation de boutiquiers'. For those of you who aren't too hot on their French (and, yes, I speak as someone who got a D at GCSE), the term is probably better known as 'the English are a nation of shopkeepers'.

It is not my usual style to quote French (or any other type) of dictators but on this occassion I think Boney got it spot on. And I give you the peculiarly British pastime of 'le car boot sale' as primary evidence.

Over Easter we had got into active spring-clean mode as we attacked our garage and store room in an attempt to finally dump the junk. We had decided to be quite brutal (for a change) and started loading many rubbish bags for the tip and also (in the case of clothes in particular) making up lots of other bags for local charity shops. But we were still faced with loads of other unwanted books, DVDs and curious bits of bric-a-brac.

These all seemed to have the words 'car boot sale' stamped all over them.

So it was that at 7.15am on the last Bank Holiday Monday, I headed off into deepest Wiltshire with my son Oliver to set up the first ever Holliday & Son shopkeeping enterprise. He had been forced out of his beloved pit on the promise of 50 per cent of the profits which, to be fair, considering much of the stuff was his anyway, wasn't probably as magnanimous on my part as it first may appear.

I had done a few boot sales some years ago which I enjoyed but this was the first time I'd done one in the South West and I was reminded again of just what fun they are.

We took great pride in setting up our stall and then indulging in the banter and the bartering that characterise the splendidly convivial community spirit that surrounds these events.I found this bartering lark especially intriguing.

Although every single holiday brochure in the world talks about haggling as something you should always do when you're abroad, I have to admit I'm rubbish at it and so I crumbled easily as people offered 40p for the paperback I felt was worth at least 10p more. Thankfully my son is the business brains of the operation and was far more ruthless than I was and if ever the going got tough, I let him do all the negotiations. This seemed quite apt as in our experience the best barterers were definitely younger people who seemed to enjoy the thrill of knocking down prices as much as claiming the goods they received.

From our first venture in deepest, darkest Seend, we discovered that the good people of Wiltshire like their DVDs, have a good understanding of the best in children's literature (our own Jacqueline Wilson, pictured, was especially popular, as were books by Anthony Horowitz and Darren Shan) and no weird or curious nick-nack is weird or curious enough not to engender interest. We sold a couple of things which, I swear to you, I have no idea what they actually were and I was particularly impressed with one lady who bought an odd bag-like contraption (which I think is used for carrying drinks) and she said the real fun for her would be finding out how it actually worked!

At the end of our three hours of relaxed toil, Holliday & Son were able to announce 'pre-tax' profits of £44.50 (and that was after our entry fee, two teas, a burger, a coke and a couple of purchases had been paid for). Most importantly of all we have now got the bug and will no doubt be ruffling through the garage once again ready for the next bank holiday where we can show again that old Napoleon may have misunderstood the Moscow winter but he sure knew the English.

Saying goodbye to my mom . . .

As the observant among you may have noticed last week, for the first time since I became editor at the Bath Chronicle - and indeed since I started this blog - I did not have my regular weekly column in the paper uploaded here. Indeed the words “Sam Holliday is away” were printed at the bottom of where my column usually sits in the Chronicle. You may have felt that I was sunning myself in Barbados instead or, perhaps more likely in my case, that I was travelling around the UK following my beloved old punk heroes The Stranglers.

Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth – for this time last week I was actually arranging the funeral of my mother.

I’ve agonised about writing about this for a few days but as I think columnists should talk about their community but also about the shared experiences we all have within them, I decided I wanted to say something.

None of you reading this knew my mother. She lived 120 miles away for a start and was actually very quiet and somewhat shy so the chances are even if you lived a few doors away, you may not have known her.

But like most wonderful mothers the world over, she was a good, honest, decent, caring lady who was passionate about her family and proud of their achievements in that quiet, don’t-like-to-brag way that typified her generation.

Her passing came suddenly. Yes, she was in her mid-80s (she had me at the somewhat later age of 40) and she had been ill 12 months prior to her passing, but she had seemed to have been through the worst of it and was now happy living in a council sheltered home with one hand almost permanently on the telephone to keep in touch with the outside world. Her death, therefore, came out of the blue but was thankfully peaceful and quiet in a way that probably summed up her whole life.

The reality is none of us quite knows how to handle death, even though it is the one thing that unites the whole of humanity. In what I guess is a rather typical man’s way of dealing with things, I decided to act all busy last week by sorting out all the arrangements, writing letters, placing death notices, contacting old friends, etc, to keep the grieving process at bay.

I then, after just three days, came back here to the office because I thought that would help, although in reality I think I came back too soon. People have been very kind and supportive but nobody knows what to say to me, I don’t know what to say to them and there has been much evidence of tiptoeing around emotions in that classic English way.

Tomorrow, Friday, May 1, is the funeral, a big hurdle for any family member and, for some reason, I said that I would like to say something. Some of you will know that I do enjoy public speaking on occasions but I’m still not sure that this is one talk I will be able to do because just as none of us knows how to react to death, coping with funerals is another one of life’s great uncertainties.

Inevitably perhaps, I feel sad while even writing this but I don’t want it to be that way because my mom (I like to think) had a very good life and had, what we always call a very good innings, so I think celebration rather than mourning should be the order of the day.

But I know I will miss her – and I know I’ll regret the times I didn’t call or didn’t visit – and I’m confident that she’s in a happy place now and one day we’ll be able to discuss the football scores and why we both don’t like Bruce Forsyth once again at our leisure.

Rest in peace mom.

A pleasant kind of toilet humour at the dinner table

When was the last time you went to a dinner party and spent a good chunk of the time talking about toilets?

If the answer is: a) not recently,

b) not ever, or

c) not ever – and, frankly, I would rather put pins in my eyes than do so .. .

... then I can only assume you haven’t (yet!) been invited to dinner by the hugely-charismatic Gill Silversides.

If you are thinking ‘why would I be invited to dinner with Gill Silversides when I don’t even know the woman?’ then I’m afraid this is not a get-out – because nor did I. And yet, I spent last Thursday enjoying a fascinating evening with Gill plus five other complete strangers where the subject of toilets was spoken far more than any of the usual, jollier dinner-table subjects.

It was a sort of Come Dine With Me night with added loo roll.

The reason that I was seated in Gill’s Bath home was as part of a new charity initiative by the excellent Freshford-based charity Wherever The Need to get random people together to enjoy good company and great conversation but also to discuss one of the subjects that none of us really likes to talk about.

The scheme is called Dinner For Dignity and it relies on people such as Gill and her charming partner inviting strangers into their home, getting them to talk about important issues over a lovely meal and then inviting them to make an anonymous contribution for the food which goes directly to the charity and its ambitious plans to bring loos to people who need them.

It is a simple idea but, then again, most of the best charity ones are.

The subject at hand was the startling facts about the number of people who die across the globe because of poor sanitation and the lack of clean toilet facilities. I always remember being somewhat taken aback to read somewhere that only a third of the earth’s population uses toilet paper and it seems that some 2.5 billion people in the world do not have access to what we would regard as a ‘proper’ loo.

If even this talk is making you feel uncomfortable, then imagine how these people feel about this issue every single day of their life.

Not nice is it?

During the course of our meal we were shown a video produced by Wherever The Need about the type of toilets they’re trying to bring to certain communities in India (see pic) , and although you may feel that the sight of a functioning loo while you’re eating your dinner is a bit of an odd mixture, strangely it works.

It was serious stuff but in a fun environment – a genuine case of toilet humour if you like.

So I hope it may inspire others to think about holding their own Dinner For Dignity. If you can cook and can find enough people willing to risk a night with a stranger who might just talk about (ahem) ‘waste disposal’, then just contact wherevertheneed.org.uk.

At your convenience, of course.

Fashion isn't horseplay at the Grand National

On Saturday I had what can only be described as a 'grand day out'.

For along with 70,000 other people I headed for Aintree in Liverpool to savour the fun and the atmosphere of the Grand National.

I am by no means a big horse racing fan – although I always enjoy my occasional visits to our excellent Bath Racecourse – but this was the occasion of a ‘stag do’ for a friend, Brian, who loves the gee-gees.

As, sadly, both he (and the rest of us) are hardly what you would call young bucks any more, the idea of a debauched ‘regret-for-ever’ kind of stag do was never on the cards so a trip to the National seemed like a sophisticated jolly boys outing.

But the biggest surprise for me was just how sophisticated it turned out to be. One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about going to horse racing is that it is, in the nicest possible way, an entirely classless affair which seems to appeal to everyone from the Duke with millions in his pocket to the lowest paid worker with holes in his. It may be called the sport of kings but when you actually view the crowds at a race meeting, you realise it is the sport for everyone.

However, Grand National day was an altogether swankier and more stylish sporting event than I ever imagined. Among the men I would imagine that at least 75 per cent of them were be-suited (imagine that at football or rugby!) while for the women – who encouragingly accounted for about 40 per cent of the crowd – this seemed to be viewed by many as a high society wedding. Although the Grand National was not strictly speaking a ‘Ladies Day’, it seems that the vast majority of the female contingent had really pushed the boat out and I’ve never seen so many impressive dresses and designer clothes in one place at the same time.

It was, it seems, almost impossible to be overdressed (although I have to say with a slight twinkle in my eye, that many ladies also felt more than happy to be somewhat under dressed!).

Of course, not everyone got it right. One group of girls walked past us in an array of vivid slinky orange and yellow dresses which led one of my waggish companions, Wayne, to memorably say: “They look like a packet of Starburst on legs”.

Talking of vivid colours, one of my other fellow travellers, Gary, had informed us on the bus going up that in his experience an extremely large number of Liverpool women between the ages of 18-25 looked ‘orange’. I didn’t quite get what he meant until I had seen about the 50th young lady who looked as though she had been caught up in a hideous explosion at a fake tan shop. When you put one of those ‘sun’ tanned faces on top of the orange dress, it made you, inevitably, fancy a can of Tango . . .

Despite all this excess, one of the main things that I enjoyed about the way people looked was that I can’t imagine anybody felt uncomfortable in whatever they were wearing. I’m sure many of us have been caught out at events where we’ve either been overdressed, underdressed or unintentionally fancy-dressed but on Saturday in downtown Aintree, as long as you felt happy in your own skin, then anything went.

Of course, you may be wondering why I devoted nearly all this column to a major sporting occasion and haven’t actually mentioned the, er, sport but that is because the Grand National is more than just a race. It is a fantastic event and having tasted it now first hand, I’m even more fond of this delightfully British tradition.

And in case you’re wondering, no I didn’t make any money – but at least unlike many women of Liverpool, I wasn’t bankrupt before I got there after purchasing a Starburst dress.

It's the way I tell 'em . . .

Like most men I happen to think I'm a pretty funny guy.

The fact that no-one else around me seems to agree is beside the point - in my own mind I am all six members of the Monty Python team rolled into one.

So, when offered the opportunity to be a stand up comedian, albeit for just a couple of minutes, I simply couldn't resist.

For on Tuesday I was invited to go on a photograph to help launch an 'open mic' in the city centre of Bath which invites people to get up and tell jokes to the unsuspecting as part of the Bath Comedy Festival.

As we were setting up the photo, I looked at the mic and like a magnet, it dragged me onto the podium.

Faced with quite a number of clearly bemused tourists, I then proceeded to do a two minute slot that had I been in a comedy club, would have probably got me booed off. I told three or four jokes - the ones in the blog below - and was delighted to receive at least one laugh per joke which I assure you is more than I normally get at home or in the office.

So, is a new star born? No, absolutely not - but if you can do better, the microphone is available near the Bath Abbey until Sunday April 12th. And it really is great fun to try.