I didn’t really watch Extreme Male Beauty on Channel 4. I like to imagine that this was because I was furious, and boycotting Channel 4, because how can someone make a television programme about extreme male beauty without getting this particular shining example of extreme natural male beauty involved? I didn’t speak to a spokesperson, but I knew that if I did the spokesperson put down the phone, telling me to stop wasting time. Clearly the spokesperson would be overcome with embarrassment and arousal – such is the thrill of speaking to me. They must be saving me for the next programme, Extremely Extreme Male Beauty With Some Even Extremer Male Beauty Too.
However, much as I didn’t watch it, I did hear it. I was in the bath, you see, with my body marinating in a wonderful marinade of hot soapy water.
I suppose it was, some might say, cheesy. So cheesy, in fact, that at several points I wondered whether I ought to go and close the fridge to stop all the cheese escaping and dancing around inside the magic tellybox – after all, what am I supposed to put on my sandwiches if all the cheese is being used to make somewhat-poor Channel 4 documentaries? It included every cliché in the book, probably including that one. I can’t muster up anything else about it – that bloke wrote something which you should read if you want to. What matter is this: I thought the people on that programme were all complete and utter orange twunts. Cos that’s what they were, right? I’m glad I’m not one of them.
Now I’m going to change the subject completely, in move which will at first appear to be ridiculous and misjudged but will later turn out to be an action which stinks of some quite incredible genius on my part.
We were supposed to stand in front of a camera several weeks ago. I wrote about it over here. My first hour awake, which was also dominated by almost dropping a milk bottle lid into the toilet, involved much feverish beating myself about the head in a bid to stop my hair looking a bit like a duck’s haggard bum.
And after all the vain faff, it rained, so we did not stand in front of a camera. You can’t do that when it’s raining. If we stood before a camera in the rain, we’d all get wet and muddy, and it’d probably be dangerous and people would slip off the slippery wet metal structure on which we are instructed to stand so that all our pretty faces can be seen by the camera.
The rain was the excuse, anyway. I think it was just that the photographer had been sniffing around this place and seen some of my photographs, and he was too busy crying because he’ll never be as good a photographer as I am. Which amounts to the same thing, really – when someone cries because of their photographic inferiority to Josh Goodwin, that someone cries by the cloud-load.
But anyhow, whatever. What matters is that on Friday, the snapper was destined to return, his eyes wiped dry with a nice handkerchief. And when I woke up that morning, my hair was yet again in a horridly stubborn state of mind.
I rubbed my hair endlessly, trying to make it look acceptable. It was not fruitless – although it was a shame that there were no bananas lounging around for me to slice up and sprinkle onto my cornflakes – but still not fruitful enough for the hair to be in anything other than iffy. For that to happen
By the time I had bounced off the bus, all was mostly well, apart from a single lock of tumescent hair which made me look like I had had a nasty accident with a corkscrew.
Come to think of it, going down in history as the boy with a corkscrew in his head mightn’t be such a bad thing. The people of the future will look at dusty old photographs in envy of me. “Look! That chap’s got a corkscrew sticking out of his head! That must have saved him from a great many tiresome adventures, rifling through drawers and suffering knife-and-finger–related injuries. Bet his name was Vinnie.”
So now I was in an thrilled state of mind. I couldn’t wait to be photographed. Then I discovered that the photographer would be going snap snap snap with his magical device in the afternoon. And in the afternoon I was to be having my teeth tinkered with my the dentist.
I managed to find a few fibres of handkerchief with which to mop up the torrents of moisture gushing out of my eyes.
The dentist did stuff. It was most bizarre, sitting there with a plastic doodah keeping my lips out of the way, holding a vacuum cleaner–like instrument in my mouth because the dentist isn’t an octopus, staring at the boring picture on the ceiling which is much less decent than the ones on the ceiling of the other bloke’s room.
Oops! I didn’t mean to call him a dentist. He’s an orthodontist. Hasn’t been issuing me with as many gushing comments on what a sterling job I’m doing, keeping my teeth in a remarkable gleaming Joe Biden state, as usual, so I get the feeling that he’s been reading my blog and been infuriated by my calling him a normal dentist.
In the evening we went to a restaurant. It was good, but I couldn’t really smile because the orthodontist has put a big new metal thing in to push my teeth into position so I will look like, um, one of the vain twunts featured in that show.
(If you’re wondering why I did the thing with the television thing at the beginning, it was a kind of incredible juxtaposition thing where my poo-pooing of the orange Jasons and Garys was hilariously followed by my preening agony over, oh no, my hair looks even more ridiculous than usual. Also, teeth. If you don’t understand it it’s because you’re just far too useless and stupid.)