So my slide towards dementia is going faster than I had feared. Today in the gym I was listening to music on my iPhone. I had decided to set the thing on shuffle so that each new track would surprise me and hopefully spur me on to even greater physical exertions. But as I cycled away towards the end of a good 60 minute work out, "That's Entertainment" by the Jam came on. This song seems to come up quite a lot when on shuffle, but I was surprised when after the first play, "That's Entertainment" by the Jam came on again, this time from a different album. Something similar had happened in Edinburgh when two Paul Simon songs had played in a row. I don't have many doubles on my iPhone and have several thousand songs on there, so it had struck me as an odd coincidence that first time, though several people had poo-pooed it on Twitter saying such things would happen every now and again. I knew that of course, but it had still been a spooky occurrence. And now it was happening again. Not wanting to listen to "That's Entertainment" twice in a row (that is not my idea of entertainment) I skipped to the next track and I was a bit freaked out when it turned out to be "That's Entertainment" by the Jam. Unbelievably I had the song on my iPod three times (perhaps explaining why it comes up more often than other tunes), but even more unbelievably it had been chosen at random to play three times in a row. This was an extended version from the second album with it on. Now that was really odd. Even the statisticians would have to admit that was a bit of a crazy coincidence. I skipped back and forth to check I hadn't made some kind of mistake, but it was clear. My sarcastic iPhone had played "That's Entertainment" by the Jam three times on the trot. That was worth tweeting about.
A William Shatner song came on next (one from the great album where he collaborated with Ben Folds - honestly worth a listen) and then the Beach Boys mournfully singing "That's Not Me". And then blow me down if my iPhone didn't randomly select another version of "That's Not Me" to play straight away again. I have Pet Sounds in both Mono and Stereo versions. This was getting beyond a joke. I suspected that Jeremy Beadle had faked his own death, in order to prank me all the better and was somehow controlling my MP3 player. Or maybe Beadle was about from beyond the grave. To have this happen within the space of six songs surely defied all reasonable odds. Especially as it had happened only a month or so ago. I tweeted away about this incredible phenomenon. I wrote "Is this a message? That's entertainment! That's not me!" But only once I had pressed send did the obvious start to strike me, egged on a little bit by a couple of replies I had just received. It was a bit more of a coincidence that all those songs began with the word "That's". As indeed the William Shatner song did. It was a bit more than a coincidence. Somehow, and I don't know how, because I don't know how or why you would want to do this, I had set my music to play, not on shuffle, but in alphabetical order. Not by artist, but by song title. Who would want such an option? (And don't worry I posed the question of Twitter and enough people gave me jokes about OCD or Martin Fry from ABC - in fact someone called it ODC which I thought was funny and that prompted me to come up with a joke that I am sure many others will have thought of before me: "I suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Dyslexia. I've got COD." You can have that one Cheggers).
I wondered if I had had the thing on alphabetical play when the same thing had happened in August as well. Sometimes there is a reason for apparently strange coincidences.
What a ninny!
But what made it all the more enjoyable was that the whole thing had played out in real time, from my astonishment to my humiliation. Luckily I found this just as amusing as everyone else. Even if I looked like a 90 year old trying to make sense of modern technology.
Thank God I was clever enough to get a nice young girlfriend to look after me in my twilight years when all reason has gone. She got suckered right into my trap. Me 1 My girlfriend 0.
The brilliant Nick Doody has been added to the Lyric Comedy night 26th Sept. Also on are Miles Jupp and Gary Delaney and a really exciting secret TV star too.
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