I’m sure we’ve all been caught in a conversation with someone we don’t know, whereupon when one of you has remarked, “Oh, I guess I’ve just got one of those faces.” But the thing is, I really do have one of those faces.
I’ve genuinely lost count of the number of times I’ve met people who’ve said, “Weren’t you in that thing I saw?”, “Are you sure you weren’t at my school?” or “You were definitely on last night’s Crimewatch.” It’s something I’ve learned to live with, and my “I guess I’ve just got one of those faces” face, is right up there with the best of them.
The point I’m making, I suppose, is that being mistaken for someone I’m not, is not a particularly uncommon occurrence for me, and it rarely offends me. Unlike the last time.
Now, I don’t dress up to do my shopping. I’ve seen Cougar Town, so I know there are certain women who like to trap young eligible men like me in every aisle, so I feel it is best that I don’t offer them unnecessary encouragement them by dressing up, so I go to the supermarket in my skivvies when I am doing my weekly shop. I was wearing a sweater and jeans, for the record.
“Excuse me,” said the older gentleman behind me.
I ignored him at first, because there was simply no way he could be talking to me. I hadn’t brought an old person with me, so he definitely wasn’t mine.
“Excuse me,” he said again, tapping me on the shoulder this time. I turned to face him, quizzically.
“I wondered if you could tell me where the tomatoes are?” he asked.
I was shocked! Not only had be mistaken me for a Tesco employee, but so confident was he in his assertion that he had mistaken me for an OFF DUTY Tesco employee! I was mortified.
“I don’t work here!” I corrected him, firmly, but politely.
He stared at me blankly, before slowly raising his hand and pointing to the tomatoes in my trolley.
“I saw you’d got some, and I wondered where you got them from,” he asked, somewhat sheepishly.
This embarrassing episode could so easily have been prevented if only he’d had the foresight to preface his question with, “I know you don’t work here, but…” or even, “I couldn’t help but notice you have some tomatoes in your trolley…” But no. He had to make be believe he’d mistaken me for an off duty supermarket worker.
Fortunately I went about the rest of my weekly shop free from both old people and cougars.
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Yes, I know I said I wouldn’t be posting podcast stuff here any more. But the simple fact is that my hosts have switched off angryandcliff.com over a small disagreement about how many people want to visit newsarse.com. It is a long and tedious story that I will bore you all with when it is resolved. Which should be in the next day or so, but rather than wait, I thought I’d post the latest episode right here for those that want it. It won’t appear in iTunes until the podcast site is back up, so I’m sorry about that. Honest.
Anyway, with Ben recovered from the viral epidemic, our two week hiatus is concluded with Cliff getting a new watch strap – though listening back I think he was basically admitting a sexual assault. Ben was bored at home and found a place to confess all of his sins. Online. And I did some rubber necking.
All this plus a birthday for Eric Bristow, Beethoven writing a song for his ‘bit on the side’ and why you shouldn’t buy cigarettes for kids in your dressing gown.
Go on, have a listen…
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Those of you who have been on the Internet for more than a couple of years will no doubt know and love JonnyB. His Private Secret Diary is one of the funniest things on the Internet (well, it’s in the top couple of thousand, easy), and was very much an influence on iamlivid.com back when this site was moderately amusing. Not only that, but he is also a very funny chap in real life and even bought me a beer* last time I saw him.
Well, he has written a book!!!
A proper book too, not just a collection of blog posts. It is called Sex and Bowls and Rock and Roll, and will be out shortly. I suggest you pay a visit to the book’s website to have a look, as there a few amusing snippets, and links to places where a purchase might be made.
I am confident that first editions will be worth a fortune once the movie rights are secured, so don’t waste time, go and take a look for yourself…
* that beer might have been a glass of white wine, but that doesn’t help either of our images so we’ll stick with ‘beer’.
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Every time I sit down and think, “I should write something for the blog” I almost immediately find myself thinking, “I should save that for the podcast”.
It’s difficult, because I am torn between the desire to write down lots of jokes about how Ben sounds like Louie Spence from Pineapple Dance Studios, and the desire to tell them to his face when there is a microphone to record his reaction. Then there is the fact that it takes a lot less time to say it, than to write it. Which when coupled with my inherent laziness means that I don’t write it.
But next week I am doing something which I will talk/write about after the event, but first I wanted to give you an opportunity to offer me some advice in advance.
I am going Speed Dating!!
Ostensibly I am accompanying a female friend who wasn’t keen on doing it by herself, but essentially I will be a contestant (they’re called contestants, right?). I tried this once before many years ago, but got very drunk, couldn’t remember people, and subsequently ended up going on a date with someone I really didn’t like very much. This time I intend on being sober for most of it.
Three minutes might not sound very long to spend with someone, but you can do an awful lot of damage in three minutes, so I am looking for advice on questions I should ask, and details I should/shouldn’t share. So come on, give me some good opening lines or funny questions. I promise to use the good ones and report back with the answers.
Oh, and in the meantime, you can hear Cliff and I taking the piss out of Ben’s soundalike at our podcast site, plus we discuss elephants that look like Brad Pitt and whether the Pop would come quietly…
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Scars are cool. I heard that somewhere once. I’m pretty sure the words I heard next were, “Chicks dig guys with scars”.
I’m also pretty confident that what they meant to say was, “Chicks dig guys with scars – as long as they weren’t earned in a ridiculously embarrassing manner.” And let us be clear, I got my new scar in a ridiculously embarrassing manner. I told the story on the podcast, but as I’m not putting them up here any more, I thought I’d tell the story the old fashioned way in the style of our forefathers, with my fingers via a keyboard into a computer and onto the Internet.
It started with a morning visit to the bathroom, nothing unusual in that – we all do it. This was how I noticed I was about to run out of toiler roll – which would have created an entirely different blog post. So, I went onto the landing and to the airing cupboard where I keep spare loo rolls. To help paint the picture you are no doubt mentally building, I keep the loo rolls on the shelf directly below where I keep the iron. The iron which I had no put away properly the day before.
As I reached in for a new roll I accidentally brushed against the power lead for the iron, which knocked it from it’s precarious position and sent it tumbling down onto the top of my head. Such was the rotation of the iron that it was pointing direction downwards by the time it reached my head, ensuring that the only part that made contact with my skull was the pointy bit at the front. It would probably have hurt a lot more if more surface area had made contact, right?
I shot backwards with my hand at my head and let out a yelp. And some swears. Then some louder swears. I took my hand away to notice it was already covered in blood. This was not good.
I went back into the bathroom and began mopping blood from my head, but still it continued to seep out of the top of my head. By dabbing the site of the wound with my new toilet roll, I noticed what appeared to be a puncture mark of about 1cm in diameter. I did not know what to do, so I did what any sane person does in the midst of a medical emergency. I asked Twitter.
“How big should a cut on your head be, before you consider going to the hospital to get a stitch – serious question…?”
Twitter was not much help. Mostly people just wanted to know how I had done it for their own idle entertainment. The Internet can be a cruel place at times.
I was pretty sure that all the blood was quite misleading in terms of judging the severity of the injury, plus I could not think straight due to the blinding headache and I was feeling quite nauseous and really quite faint. So I decided that instead of wasting valuable NHS resources I would just to hold a sheet of kitchen roll to my head and have a little nap.
Eventually, the bleeding stopped. The following evening Cliff and Ben came round to record the podcast, and continued the theme of people off of the Internet giving me little or no sympathy – you can here their reactions in this podcast episode.
So what I would like a new excuse, please. I am going have this mark for quite some considerable time I imagine, and when questioned I would like to have something really cool to explain it away. Preferably something that doesn’t involve the use of the words ‘loo roll’ or ‘Morphy Richard Turbosteam’.
Suggestions welcomed…
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If you want to hear this week’s podcast, head over to the Angry and Cliff podcast page…
The latest episode includes Cliff’s imaginatively titled quiz, ’sound for a pound’, Angry’s intense hatred of Pandas, Google street view, lesbian school discos, and why Crufts is essentially a Nazi’s dream. All this plus the Pope apologising to God, Ben’s training course, the very first FA Cup final and a few words from Flavor Flav.
In the meantime, I’ll be trying to turn this site back into blog…
The podcast finally reaches pensionable age – if it were a woman – and show 60 sees Cliff, Ben and I discussing the week just gone, which includes me making a drunken tit of myself in front of TV’s David Mitchell, Cliff getting into trouble at the Tate, and Ben finding the Oscars very, very dull.
All this plus dog insurance, a new drug called meow meow, how to deal with recruitment consultants, and a list of disgusting things that have been in our mouths.
We are also happy to announce our new website, which can be found here: Angry & Cliff – The Podcast. It’s almost finished, so feel free to come by and say hello. As of next week, this site will return to being a ‘blog’. A rarely updated, distinctly unpopular blog, but a blog nonetheless. Which means of course that the show will now be published on the new site. It won’t make a difference to your feeds or anything, so you shouldn’t even notice the difference, if you’re a subscriber. If you’re not a subscriber, then I ask why the hell not?!
Podcast 59 is upon us, with Cliff, Ben and I discussing our experiences over the last week, which includes a telephone encounter with a ticket tout, being whistled at in the station, and learning how ‘watching strangers have sex in the car’ became known as dogging.
Ben has also prepared one of his special quizzes, which is loosely based on footballers.
All this plus Tangerinegate, broken PS3’s and all of your everyday items that sound like they should be sex toys. There’s a lot of sex this week, isn’t there? It is Ben and Cliff’s fault, they’re insatiable.
We will have a new website for the podcast soon, and so this will return to being a terrible blog. By terrible, I of course mean formidable.
As always, iTunes users can subscribe by clicking here or you can listen to the podcast by pressing the play button below. Clever people can subscribe in their player of choice with the feed which is here.
Twitter updates and the opportunity to be in next week’s show will be found if you follow us here.
Or, you could join our Facebook group here and drop us an email at podcastREMOVE_THIS_BIT@iamlivid.com.
Podcast 58 and we return to the tried and tested format of sticking to half an hour, instead of rambling on for as long as possibly can until we literally have nothing left to say. If nothing else, it means you get your fix a bit quicker.
This week discuss Ben’s secret chorister past, we learn Cliff can’t change a car tyre, and I buy the biggest root vegetable I’ve ever seen. All this plus Gordon Brown the bully, learning sex from the Catholics, and the worst place possible to have a small domestic fire.
As always, iTunes users can subscribe by clicking here or you can listen to the podcast by pressing the play button below. Clever people can subscribe in their player of choice with the feed which is here.
Twitter updates and the opportunity to be in next week’s show will be found if you follow us here.
Or, you could join our Facebook group here and drop us an email at podcastREMOVE_THIS_BIT@iamlivid.com.
Just four short days since the Drunkcast, and we’re back for Podcast 57, where Cliff and I are joined by Ben, live from his toilet, all thanks to the magic of Skype.
We chat about how little we remember of Friday’s show, how Cliff and I have made idiots of ourself recently, and we come up with a solution to the perennial problem of fat people on planes.
All this plus birthdays for tennis players, gangster rappers and Islamic paramilitary organisations – hurray for February 16th!
Now that we have figured out how to use Skype properly, we would welcome callers to future shows, so if you happen to be a Skype users, feel free to add us (we’re ‘angryandcliff’ surprisingly), and maybe we’ll get you into a show in the near future.
As always, iTunes users can subscribe by clicking here or you can listen to the podcast by pressing the play button below. Clever people can subscribe in their player of choice with the feed which is here.
Twitter updates and the opportunity to be in next week’s show will be found if you follow us here.
Or, you could join our Facebook group here and drop us an email at podcastREMOVE_THIS_BIT@iamlivid.com.
This is Ben, mid recording, on his webcam, pondering what to set light to, his cigarette, or his hamster.
It was the cigarette, by the way.
Podcast 56 is the point we enter our ‘experimental’ phase. And what better way to experiment than by getting really drunk and then talking live on the Internet, and recording that drunken babble?
This is the bit where I mention some of the things we talked about, but drink has this strange effect where I’m not really sure what we spent 50 minutes discussing. I’ve got vague memories of a story about Ben being hit on by a tramp, and I think he might well have got married to Cliff. The rest, I really have no idea…
iTunes users can subscribe by clicking here or you can listen to the podcast by pressing the play button below. Clever people can subscribe in their player of choice with the feed which is here.
Twitter updates and the opportunity to be in next week’s show will be found if you follow us here.
Or, you could join our Facebook group here and drop us an email at podcastREMOVE_THIS_BIT@iamlivid.com.
Podcast 55 is live with myself, Cliff and Ben chewing the fat over topics as diverse as Cliff accidentally teaching his kids how to correctly use swear words, why I shouldn’t cut my own hair, and how Sir Jimmy Saville clearly hates Ben.
Each of us also shares an online conversation we’ve had with a website help operator, and we still can’t decide if they’re actually human or not.
All this plus regular segment On This Day in History with births, deaths and the quite lengthy origins of Groundhog Day.
iTunes users can subscribe by clicking here or you can listen to the podcast by pressing the play button below. Clever people can subscribe in their player of choice with the feed which is here.
Twitter updates and the opportunity to be in next week’s show will be found if you follow us here.
Or, you could join our Facebook group here and drop us an email at podcastREMOVE_THIS_BIT@iamlivid.com.
Podcast 54 is here with myself, Cliff and Ben and we’re joined by William Hague. Well, not William Hague but someone who sounds like William Hague. Okay, it’s not someone who sounds like William Hague, it’s someone who thinks they sound like William Hague – but that would have made a rubbish title for the show.
Cliff tells us all about his meeting with a genuine rock star, Ben sets Cliff and I the toughest sports movie quiz you are ever likely to take part in, and we wonder about the origins of Australia Day whilst remembering as many foreign chat up lines as we can.
All this plus regular segment On This Day in History with births, deaths and the renaming of St Petersburg. Go and have a listen. Go on. Do it.
iTunes users can subscribe by clicking here or you can listen to the podcast by pressing the play button below. Clever people can subscribe in their player of choice with the feed which is here.
Twitter updates and the opportunity to be in next week’s show will be found if you follow us here.
Or, you could join our Facebook group here and drop us an email at podcastREMOVE_THIS_BIT@iamlivid.com.
After a hiatus so long it feels like we’re coming out of retirement, podcast 53 is here! Joining Cliff and I once again is Ben Piears, who is appearing with such regularity that we have decided to permanently add him to our show’s cover image. It is an uncanny likeness, I am sure you will agree.
This week we catch up on Christmas and New Year, with hangovers, passive aggressive relatives, and texting girls you barely know when drunk.
Cliff is forced to dance with his wife, and Ben and I wonder if it’s possible to die from a headspin. All this plus movie reviews, an American history lesson and the invention of the Y Fronts. It would be remiss of you not to listen.
As it’s been so long, it’s possible you’ve been unsubscribed from iTunes (I think this happens if you don’t download something for three weeks), so don’t forget to press subscribe HERE.
Or you can listen to the podcast by pressing the play button below. Clever people can subscribe in their player of choice with the feed which is here.
Twitter updates and the opportunity to be in next week’s show will be found if you follow us here.
Or, you could join our Facebook group here and drop us an email at podcastREMOVE_THIS_BIT@iamlivid.com.
