I found myself in the offices of
Endemol this morning, for a meeting with their chief executive, all because of
this dumb idea.
The man I was meeting had been having breakfast with Gary Barlow (maybe his life is weirder than mine) and was a little late and so I was left sitting, twittering in a board room with a picture of a rather stern Noel Edmonds looking down at me with disdain. His eyes seemed to follow me round the room. Surely it wasn't some kind of magic Harry Potter style photo that was capable of registering its feelings about whoever looked at it. But I was pretty sure Noel wouldn't like my sarcastic commentary idea. And the photo looked like someone had just farted in the Deal or No Deal studio.
I hadn't just farted though.
The meeting was fun. Of course there's no way that they were going to do it. But we had a nice chat and I got a free coffee. So Warming Up is really paying for itself now. Oh they also said that if I liked I could go to the studios and sit in the same room as the banker. How's about that? But looking at the picture of Edmonds I think it might be a trap. He's not the kind of man you want to cross. There are dark forces....
In worse news the credit crunch has at last hit me and I have lost a job. The editor of the New Statesman website emailed me today to say that my
fortnightly blog was being dropped in a big shake-up at the site. After two years of working my arse off for these people, finding a blog I'd already written and then copying and pasting it and sometimes even slightly changing it, my services are no longer required. Bastards!
The money I was getting for that, as you can imagine, was pretty much keeping me afloat during these difficult times. I will miss the Kentals who commented on many of my entries. I hope they won't miss me too much.
I headed down to the gym this afternoon - February is this year's January and I have half a stone to lose. The trousers I was wearing in November don't do up any more. I passed by the former Mellows massage parlour, that I seem strangely obsessed with. I was writing about it on the
train of lost souls, but then got a bit distracted. It is, as you'll recall, now a church or at least the office of a church, which seems like a turnaround.
Today I noticed that above the main window is a quote from Matthew 11:28 which reads, "Come unto me, all he that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest", though to be honest that might well have been there when it was still a massage parlour. If not then some of the previous clients might be confused and come to relieve their heavy loads.
But then I realised it might be cleverer than that. The massage parlour front is just too obvious. The authorities can spot that one a mile off.
But who looks at a church and thinks - well that's a knocking shop. Perhaps the Church of Christ is just a ruse of the beleaguered Mellows management and that quote from Matthew is a beacon calling all the former clients back to the sauna, jacuzzi and titwanks that have always graced those (I imagine) fine cubicles.
Tonight I followed the exciting story of Stephen Fry being trapped in a lift on Twitter. It was genuinely rather thrilling. Jon Ronson was worried his wife might be in there. I hope to God she isn't
one of these. After the rescue of this motley crew I was concerned to hear that Graham Linehan was stuck
half way up his stairs. Oh what fun we have on twitter. I felt like a stalker. It felt good. I apologise for being so rude to my own Kental stalkers. I can now see the appeal.
