Okay, ground rules. Coming up is a list of vegetables, but not on that list are onions, herbs, or chillies. I don’t consider those to be vegetables in the vegetable sense. Obviously they are totally vegetables and only an idiot would deny that, but as far as this list goes they’re being treated more like seasonings or garnishes. If you can get over that, please read on because there’s a list of veg coming up that reads like a  dream…

Potatoes
Fucking hell potatoes are cool. Peel them and slice them into strips, you’ve got chips, carve them into cubes, you’ve still got chips, leave the skin on, chips again, but with “skins on”. Bake those babies up, you’ve got yourself a baked potato. Boil them, boiled potatoes. Boil them and crush them, crushed potatoes. Make a salad from them, potato salad. Mash them, mashed potato. I’ve said it many times but I’ll say it again – if I was on a desert island and I could only take a thousand items along with me two of those would be “an unlimited supply of potatoes” and “a state of the art oven”. That tells you everything you need to know.

Asparagus
They might look like hilarious Ray Harryhausen sculptures of dinosaur fingers, but stop laughing immediately because these vegetables are as serious as a crow with a straight face. Food isn’t always a joke you know. Anyway have them hot, have them cold, scatter some freshly carved handfuls of hard Italian cheese on them, and this is the side order of the gods. The downside is that it makes your piss smell like your dick did a fart (or like your vag did a fart if you have a vag).

Fennel
I confess I didn’t have a clue what fennel was up until about a month ago. But then something amazing happened, I had some fennel – I was suspicious at first, who wouldn’t be? The paleness of it, the unfamiliarity. But thankfully like a girl in the street who’s just been given flowers out of the blue by a potential rapist I was won over immediately. I’m going to eat this every day until either I die or until all of the fennel in the world runs out.

Those mini corn on the cobs
Hey who wants to hear something amazing? I hate HATE corn on the cob, and yet I love the mini corn on the cobs they sell in Sainbury’s specifically for people like me who absolutely excel at stir fries. I’m a very complex human being. Seriously girls, don’t try to figure me out.

Cabbage
When I was a kid my mum would present me with a bowl of cabbage and I’d chuck it at the wall and send her back to the kitchen in disgrace. This pantomime went on for nearly fifteen years until I finally buckled under her relentless high pitched pestering and tried the stuff. Now I can’t stop eating it. Ideally I like to enjoy it fried in a pan with some caraway seeds and placed next to a lump of meat from an animal’s arse or face.

Broccoli
In some countries broccoli is still used as microphones on cheap TV stations, but really the best way to enjoy it is to eat it. Boil it up, steam it, stride into Waitrose with a skull double the size of everyone else’s and demand to know where the purple sprouting stuff is – however you enjoy this, it’s delicious.

Tomatoes
Tomatoes are fruit blah blah blue, blue blah blah. Ner ner ner no they’re not. Stop trying to be clever. To be honest I should probably have put these nearer the top of the list.

Chick Peas
I like these because they are heavily responsible for hummus, and even though I can’t stand those unbearable office girls who say things like “OMG Hummus alert!” or “I’m 98 per cent hummus right now hon!”, I do still enjoy it in private. Particularly a brand they flog in Sainsos called Sabra.

Radishes
Seriously I could eat radishes like they’re crisps, just give me a bag of them and I’ll be on my way chomping them down stalks and all. They’re crunchy, they’re fun to look at because they’re pink, and best of all you don’t need to waste time cooking them. Foragers called things like Tobin or Elias have been known to eat these straight from the hedge.

Raw carrots
Try and serve me a cooked carrot and I will strike you down, but present me with a raw one, perhaps grated like they do in France, and you will find yourself with a friend for life. There’s a good chance we’ll even go on holiday together at some point.

Literally nothing is more embarrassing than having someone burst into the shower just as you’re about to hit your peak during an emotive soul recital. You’re naked, you’re squealing, those vocal runs you’re doing are much more impressive in your head, they’re pointing at you and sharing crude pictures with their mates on Instagram. It’s a sorry situation for everyone involved. But that wouldn’t be a problem for any of these guys, who can sing the fuck out of shit because they’re bloody amazing… MY FAVOURITE MALE SOUL SINGERS LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. Feel free to go absolutely apeshit in the comments section because I’ve got it all wrong and didn’t include Stevie Wonder…

Donny Hathaway

The greatest of them all, his voice is smoother than a long piece of wood you’ve spent the last week sanding down for eight hours a day without stopping. Do the maths, that’s basically smooth as fuck. Stupidly, he decided to kill himself in 1979 by jumping out of a window. I was just three at the time, which is neither here nor there.

Otis Redding

It’s nuts to think that Otis Redding was just 26 when he was killed in a plane crash, he sounds so mature and borderline-elderly when he sings. Confession time guys! Otis Blue is one of the few records I own that I could listen to from start to finish every single day without tiring of. I have no idea why I just made out that was a big confession.

Frankie Beverly

You might not have heard of this cat, because Frankie Beverly was never a solo star in his own right. He sung with the band Maze in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s and possibly beyond, and those cats were funkier than a stink on a hot summer’s day. Some of you might have noticed that I’ve suddenly started saying “cat” a lot in this paragraph. Go with it, I’m just trying it out.

Bobby Womack

Bobby Womack’s enjoying another blast in the sunshine after collaborating with Damon Albarn on that album about a year ago. Everyone liked it because it combined modern day sounds with old style singing. I didn’t listen to it because I’m a bearded vinyl twat who pretends to only like old stuff like 1970s albums and vintage shirts. I do love Bobby Womack though, he always sounds about this close to a violent coughing fit.

Ronald Isley

I’m going through a big Isley Brothers moment that doesn’t appear to be stopping any time soon. I love them because they looked like a great big pile of fat black Elvis impersonators, I like that they could throw down serious funk jams next to syrupy soul ballads. I adore them especially because Ron Isley has one of the most slippery voices the world has ever seen. And I mean that in a good way.

Marvin Gaye

If I had to pick my favourite Marvin Gaye album I’d go for I Want You because it’s the sexiest record ever made, full of secret messages in between the lines saying stuff like “come here woman” and “I’m gonna hold you real tight”. Chicks love that kind of shit. I also like What’s Going On, Trouble Man, Let’s Get It On, Here My Dear, and basically every other record he ever made.

Luther Vandross

Whether fat or thin Luther could sing the phone book and while everyone would listen for a minute then whisper “is this guy actually singing the PHONE BOOK?” to each other with an incredulous look in their eyes, they’d all agree that the lyrics might be boring as fuck, but that fat guy’s got the voice of an angel.

D’Angelo

When I was a student in Bristol I spent my days frying up pieces of bread for my world famous fried bread fried bread sandwiches and listening to Brown Sugar by D’Angelo. Man that cat could groove. That’s right everyone I’m back to saying “cat” again. Deal with it.

Aaron Neville

Obviously I’m never going to die, but if I did – IF I DID – during the bit where my coffin is lowered into the ground while all manner of beautiful women in black howl to the heavens I’d like someone to put on Hercules by Aaron Neville. It tells the story of a man just trying to get through life and deal with the struggles. I know what you’re thinking – that’s me in a nutshell. Great song, and what a voice.

Willie Hutch

Ah man, the last spot was always going to be a nightmare. Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, even Lionel Richie had a shout. Then you’ve got Bill Withers and Gil Scott-Heron who I adore. Terry Callier’s amazing. Sam Cooke. White soul singers like Joe Cocker and Rod Stewart. James Brown who grunted a lot but could also sing amazingly well, Michael Jackson who took soul to the billions. Smokey Robinson, any of the Temptations, I even like R Kelly a little bit. But in the end I went with Willie Hutch who’s just plain wicked.

I’m going to miss the MasterChef final because I’m going on my own stag do to Berlin. I’m going to be eating big sausages, drinking strong lagers, doing robotronic dancing to Kraftwerk and eventually I’ll probably be crying in a strip club. While that’s happening, someone will be crowned MasterChef champion, and I won’t be there to see it. I’m not saying this is already ruining my potential enjoyment of my stag do, just that it’s making me look forward to it around 43 per cent less. I love MasterChef, I’ve got all their albums.

Okay, so my piece about the semi-finalists last week proved to be all over the shop. I dismissed Natalie as just some crazed dope smoker who’d accidentally entered a cooking competition while she was high on superskunk, but I couldn’t have been more wrong about that chick. She’s the one to beat. Gregg and John obviously have a soft spot for her, she cooks up mind boggling combinations like last night’s ice cream with a bit of Crunchie bar and some flowers all over it. Even pompous Italian artists struggled to disguise that they’d just had to suppress a mammoth ejaculation after the first bite. Her confidence is growing, and while girls aren’t in the habit of winning this show, neither are Welsh guys. It’s all to play for. She’s got her eye on the prize. He who dares wins. Just do it. Old Spice – the mark of a man. I have no idea where I’m going with this.

The other two finalists are Welsh, after Torrode and Wallace decided to give that kind Indian lady the boot despite her cooking up some really nice curries. Problem was Gregg just couldn’t get past the time she popped his onion bhaji in a white paper bag and gave it to him. A WHITE PAPER BAG?? ON MASTERCHEF?? That was doing his fucking head in for days. He could barely sleep. Was she taking the piss? She had to go, which is a shame because I love Indian food. I particularly enjoy a little known traditional dish called Chicken Jalfrezi (pronounced Jal-frey-zeeee). Try it with rice.

So to the Welsh guys. In one corner there’s Dale, who looks like the kind of guy who thinks impressing someone with a strong handshake is really really important. Then there’s Larkin who looks Chinese, but then speaks English in a mixture of Welsh, West Country, and a small spattering of posh. I think he’s a lawyer. He might not be though. I haven’t checked. Let’s assume he’s a lawyer. And while we’re at it let’s assume that Dale spends his time at work wearing a headset and occasionally shooting finger pistols at hot girls.

Food-wise Dale is consistently decent, but not particularly exciting. He makes bog standard stuff like meat with a swoosh of thick cauliflower milkshake and a potato. He also stands there and bursts into tears if you say anything at all about his cooking. My favourite moment of the entire series so far was when Torode and Wallace showered him with praise and he replied “that was close, I almost started crying for a second there”… then started crying. God I hope he doesn’t win.

And then there’s Larkin. I’ll be honest, I’m fucking livid with that guy at the moment. On his day he’s ridiculous, and I mean that in the way rappers do, like when something’s good. Early on he was cooking shit with bunsen burners, delivering his plates to the judges while still wearing safety goggles. Even taste buds that famously don’t have penises or vaginas were getting hard-ons and wide-ons. Then Marcus Wearing happened. Looking like every baddie in every single movie made in the 1980s, the most feared chef in the land marched into a room, sucked out the atmosphere with his horrible personality, and by the time he’d finished Dale was obviously inconsolable and Larkin was a shadow of himself. In every round since he’s basically come third when he should be winning this thing.

So that’s where we are. Three finalists, only one winner. At the moment it’s Natalie, but I want it to be Larkin.

That means Dale will win.

Or will he?

Seriously though, I don’t know who’s going to win.

Two of my earliest loves died this week – Richie Havens died. Back when I was a teenager pretending to be deep into 1960s music, his rendition of Freedom on the Woodstock album did something to my mind via my ears and I fell in love with folk music sung by gruff soul voices. RIP to him. The second was more! magazine – which folded after 25 years in the game – the women’s fortnightly (latterly weekly) where I worked from 2000-2003 as first a Junior Writer, then just a Writer, always one of only a small spattering of manly faces in a very sexy womanly office. My time there might have been extended had I not resigned by accident during an unsuccessful one-on-one with a new editor who was there to whip everyone into shape – I said something flippant, she got the wrong end of the stick and thought I’d handed in my notice, so I thought fuck it, I’ll go with this. It was like chucking a big figurative log into the river of my career and allowing the ripples to take me from office to office to office to office, kind of like a Littlest Hobo, only considerably less loveable and often less useful. And smelling a bit too much like wet dog a lot of the time. God I’m amazing at imagery.

Anyway the point is I’ve worked in roughly a million offices since, buzzing with newspaper types, thick with testosterone, or overflowing with electrifying speak and jargon that I don’t understand, and none can quite hold a candle to more! between 2000 and 2002, which spoilt me for laughter, camaraderie and inventiveness. It was a hub of great ideas and brilliant humour, and despite what people seem to think there was much more to that glorious rag than just Position of the Fortnight (which was obviously always missionary or doggy from a different camera angle – what else is there??). It was a dream job for a young writer - I did things like dress up as a hot woman for the day to see what that was like, I dicked around with some unbelievably posh kids in Cornwall for a weekend, I auditioned to be a male stripper, I starred as a prison guard in Bad Girls, I became an air steward like Brian from Big Brother 2, I flew around the world, I interviewed famous people, on a couple of occasions they walked out on me, on one occasion I walked out on them. I became a professionally trained lawman called Judge Josh who would decide punishments for misbehaving boyfriends whilst wearing an old fashioned wig. I went to the Phoenix Bar on Charing Cross Road with my friends and we all got fucked up on Aftershock, I spent long afternoons laughing it up in The Victoria near Mornington Crescent. I used to pretend to be looking through a box of CDs under my desk but really I’d be sleeping. It was a wild technicolour ride, man. But then in 2002 sometime something happened that gradually transformed me into a very bad fit for the magazine I loved working on. People in suits started just appearing in the office like a mundane hallucination.

We’d heard about these “big cheeses”, they lived a few floors up in bigger snazzier apartments, and people would occasionally report glimpses of them in the communal lift, or you’d spot them fingering and handjobbing one another at company parties. Their floor in the building was bursting with the smell of perfume and fresh flowers they said, women with hair that was so pristine, straight and so shiny it was like liquid gold. If you went up there you could hear them saying “sure” to each other over and over again into eternity. Yet suddenly they’d decided to descend a few floors to roam our dirty little quarters like masters of the house demanding to try the soup, and whenever they spoke to me my confidence drained, my hands would tremble involuntarily and I’d laugh like a maniac until they went away. Were they going to put me in a cage like a caged monkey? What did they want?

To answer the first question, yes they wanted to put me in a cage. Specifically me. And the rest of the editorial staff. This was about big business now. They arranged us into a semi-circle so they could confuse us with sales figures, and they told us that from now on we must have big bold numbers on our magazine covers. That’s what people responded to. Why would anyone want to read a NUMBERLESS magazine? We all nodded. Hands went up. What about 129? Great number, very good. Is 312 too much? No way, 312 is barely even enough! My trembling hand darted skyward – how’s three, the magic number? NO JOSH, THREE IS RIDICULOUS! You’d need to times that by ten, and then probably times that again by two. People wanted BIG numbers. I blushed until my left eye popped out. I pushed it in again, and digested what they were saying. They wanted numbers that related to THINGS, things that people could look at. Like pictures mainly. And that wasn’t all.

Turns out they’d also been arranging clandestine meetings behind our backs with two way mirrors, bottles of whiskey, a thick fog of cigarette smoke and possibly women in pencil skirts wearing stockings and suspenders and shoes that could kill you. I don’t know. I have no idea how these FOCUS GROUPS work. They’d held these meetings to ask bog standard members of the public how they felt about our beloved magazine. Did they like it? Was there anything they’d change? Was it time to put an erect penis on the cover? Talking of which were we featuring enough Victoria Beckham for them? We really weren’t cutting the mustard. Not enough celebrities and way too many words, they said. We’d need to get to the point quicker. More numbers, massive pictures and less words. The small friendly magazine was suddenly being steered by big ruthless businesspeople with enormous balls and nice juicy boobs, and the public had spoken. Lightbulbs exploded all over the place, craniums pulsated like pistons in some kind of large industrial factory, and the dice men decided to switch positions brazenly and suddenly, taking the power to inform the readership away from the magazine and flipping it 180 so that the readership informed us what we should be doing. It was a bold move that you just can’t come back from. And I’m not sure anyone ever did.

As time passed and I travelled from place to place like a sexy gunslinger only much less cool it turned out this was happening absolutely everywhere, not just at more! magazine. Less words, less pages, more celebrities, bigger pictures, NUMBERS NUMBERS NUMBERS. These new rules had become part of the DNA, and while the ship was temporarily steadied, sadly I’m pretty sure the rot had already set in, slowly transforming these big brash beautiful magazines bursting with ideas and opportunities into a skinny apologetic houseguest on your coffee table really not wanting to be any trouble. It’s a genuine genuine shame and if I had my way we’d all say SOD IT and up the word count, scrap the numbers, shrink the pictures, make no money, and put the kibosh on gargantuan images of Kim Kardashian’s wonderful tits and large impressive arse.

And that is precisely why I’m not a magazine editor.

RIP more! magazine. You will always be one of my top three places to work. Now here’s me as a chick:

MasterChef has been back for a while but I’ve resisted writing about it until now on account of there being three episodes a week and a conveyor belt of cooks that has been chugging along at such a pace it’d be impossible to keep up with who everyone is. But now it’s semi final time and we’re left with just four contestants – Welsh guy, Indian woman, Superstar DJ who may or may not be known on the social scene as Spliffo, and some Oriental dude. They’ve all got one thing in common – they can cook the fuck out of shit.

It’s been a great series so far. Gregg’s lost a load of weight and now looks like half a Gregg. Torode has started doing a bit where he cooks everyone dinner then gets them to cook him five dinners in return. That’s how big businesses start. And there have been some shocking early casualties. A really posh guy who likes throwing dinner pardies for his cool mates looked like a contender at one point. There was a student from Edinburgh who moonlights as a goddess in the kitchen who got the hoof for undercooking either a seagull or a pigeon. That was an embarrassing shock for me on a personal level because I’d been telling everyone for weeks that she was definitely going to win. And when I say I was telling everyone for weeks, I mean the thought drifted in and out of my mind once. Another new segment finds past winners invited along to judge the new contestants every Friday evening over a gargantuan ten course supper, among them the lovely Shelina, the one with curly hair, old man, fatso, gappy tooth, and Tim who says things like “let’s get our sushi on” or “let’s get our steak on”. He’s so American.

Anyway enough of this summarising the show so far bullshit, let’s analyse the semi finalists, all of whom have names but I can’t remember any of them.

Welsh Guy - he means business, he’s got a game face, he has an A game. He brings the thunder, he’s real. If he didn’t like you he wouldn’t slag you off behind your back like a little bitch, he’d tell you to your face. That means you can trust him but you should also fear him. I was worried that he was taking it all a bit too seriously and would probably commit suicide if he didn’t win, but then he made burger and chips in one of the rounds and that was an absolutely hilarious thing to do. What a fucking nutter.

Indian Lady - This chick knows her way around a stove, and cooks a mean takeaway. So far she’s done chops in a green sand made of spices and chillies, she fried an onion and popped it in a white paper bag, and when the teams were forced to cook a huge feast for a load of guys who were either strippers or actual firemen she threw together a sponge and custard that you’d probably serve to Zeus. Everyone loves her, she’s more cheerful than a talking erection and if she doesn’t win this thing someone else definitely will. I want her to win it for her kids.

Spliffo – that Spliffo’s a bit intense isn’t she? When she first turned up on the show I literally yelled “NO CHANCE” and threw a brick out of the window, but then like a tennis ball you’re really trying hard to get rid of in a park while you’re walking the dog, she just keeps coming back. God I’m amazing at metaphors. Anyway, she’s now starting to show a bit of steeliness which is weird because she was all meek and timid at the start. I just don’t know where I stand with this maniac. As things are she’ll probably come fourth, which seems appropriate because she’s a DJ in real life so is probably having orgies all the time.

Oriental Dude - keep an eye on this guy, he’s got some mad skills. On his very first day he did raw fish with an egg that tented John and Gregg’s trousers, he then did curry with chips and rice which is absolutely fucking unthinkable but had literally everyone spaffing all over the place. Then the other day he made some kind of fish thing, or it could have been meat, and served it in a mist underneath a home made thunder cloud that tasted of Paradise. He’s basically a cookery genius and the one to beat. Although now I’ve said that he definitely won’t win. But now I’ve said THAT he probably will. But again, now I’ve said that he won’t… but now I’ve said he won’t he probably will… you might as well go now, I’m going to be doing this for ages…

About five years ago I lost my job. I was working for a small company as a writer and editor, I was getting paid absolute peanuts on account of it being a new company with not much money, then one Monday evening at the end of the working day I was told that my time was up. I’d become too expensive they said, and apparently the bloody Credit Crunch hadn’t helped things. It sounded like total bullshit to me, but rather than put up any kind of fight that might result in them blurting out “look, you’re shit okay!” I thanked them as though I’d just been eliminated from the latter rounds of the X Factor, I shook their hands and emerged into a scary world numb but well aware that I was in my 30s and suddenly unemployed. Fucked basically. This wasn’t part of the plan. I’d already put over a decade of my life into journalism, I’d made some absolutely appalling decisions along the way but I’d stuck at it. Those bad decisions would require me to write an entire book to explain which would be very boring for everyone including me, but in summary I’d been far too lazy in my early-mid 20s because I didn’t care about what I was doing. It wasn’t important to me then like it is now, and whatever ladders were there for climbing I pretty much took to with a flame-thrower for one reason or another. Plus I’d resigned from at least three decent writing jobs far too soon because I was listening to my instincts and my instincts are all twats.

So there I was, it was definitely raining which felt appropriate, and I was standing a few streets away from my ex-office sheltered in a doorway smoking a cigarette. I was wondering who to call. I knew I should call someone, because otherwise I’d be forced to stand in that doorway for the rest of time with my inner voice intermittently yelling “shit… shit… SHIIIT… shit… SHIT… fuck… FUUUUCK… fuck….fuck … fuck!” in a bewildered rage while I chain smoked myself to death. I couldn’t think of anyone. Not my mum, she’d make me afraid about homelessness and starvation. I didn’t have a girlfriend because I was young and sexy and no one particularly wanted to go out with me. If I’d told anyone else in my family they’d start panicking around my mum and the world would burst into flames. Most of my friends would just laugh. I could try Samaritans but then I’d have to pretend I was thinking about killing myself, and rubbish though this was I still enjoyed the whole being alive thing I had happening. In the end I flipped a one billion sided coin and called my friend Olly who took me out, got me drunk on weak lager, and in a totally bizarre twist of fate, he introduced me to the girl I’m going to marry next month. But again, that’s another story.

Now at this point I could dive further down into the malaise, I could explain how unemployment makes you feel metaphorically castrated, as though the job was your balls and not having the job now means you’ve got no balls. Just a really big dick all on its own. I could go on endlessly about how there were no jobs anywhere for me, no one was looking (at least not for me), and I could barely land a commission having been in the employment wilderness for a good few years on account of working for just one company full time. I could whine about how every ounce of confidence you’ve built up evacuates your soul within a few weeks. But I’m not going to, mainly because none of that’s true – apart from the bits about finding new work. Being unemployed is definitely scary and it can’t go on forever because your spirit would probably whither and die. But I was on the dole for around six months five years ago and I can honestly say it was the greatest six months of my entire life. Here’s what the crippling agony of signing on taught me…

1. You don’t really NEED things dooooood! (far out far out etc)

When I had money I spent money. My clothes were all new and probably made of gold, and the minute an old pair of trainers got a bit funky I’d simply throw them into the street and march into Footlocker shouting “MORE NIKES!” until someone gave me a new pair of Nikes. I was chucking money around like I were Joey Essex bouncing wheelie bins off shop windows. Whatever that means. My point being that suddenly having to ration my cash meant I couldn’t just spend spend spend, and weirdly I didn’t really notice. If anything I noticed how many nice things I already had that I’d probably been neglecting. Old shirts got another blast in the sunshine, records I’d not listened to for years became the soundtrack of my days. I couldn’t afford the cinema, so I’d buy a video for a quid from the charity shop down the road and have my own kind of premiere at home. Without wanting to sound like too much of a wanker there was a time when I wasn’t worried that I was missing out, I was worried that other people were.

2. If you want to be creative, do it man, be creative

From the day I was cruelly booted out of one office on account of the “Credit Crunch”, it took probably around ten months before I was called upon to get dressed and spend an entire day working in another office. That was a weird day, which I mainly spent stopping my internal monologue from becoming external like it probably would do if I was at home. It was ultimately nice and entirely necessary to get back in the groove, but even still those months in between offices were some of the most productive I can remember. I set up this very site. I thought fuck it, I want to write, I’m going to write. I didn’t need PERMISSION to do something I enjoy doing. So I set about assembling the finest website known to man, a multi-award winning rollercoaster ride, a money making machine, an “irrepressible canter through popular culture” as it was described in THE TIMES. I have of course since realised that it will never make me a penny, but that’s fine. I love this bloody thing with all my heart. It spawned a brilliant comedy night which featured lots of people who are now really amazing and famous, and it made me fall in love with writing all over again. I NEEDED that.

3. Cheap food can taste really yum

In the last few years I’ve been in the money again, so I’ve eaten in some lovely places – the kind of places where they rest your meat at an angle on some veg, in fact fuck it, just the kind of place where they REST your meat. And there’s a tear of sauce on the side of your plate. And a jus. And a puree. I’m also just up the road from Brixton Village, where people in tweed jackets are urged to eat organic treats at reasonable prices. It’s all been a wild ride man, but nothing will ever come close to lunch at the cafe across the road from the job centre every two weeks after signing on. A fortnightly treat that set me back a fiver, I will never have a more delicious meal.

4. The world doesn’t implode when you lose your job – you just feel like a cock for a bit

Probably the best lesson I learned during my time out of work is that you’ll be okay. When you’ve got a job it’s easy to think that without it the whole world would implode and you’d be left with nothing. But that’s not true. You survive. You find out how lovely people are, or not depending on how they react to you perpetually badgering them for money and cigarettes. But seriously (removes huge shoes) I realised that there are always ALWAYS ways of getting by, and since signing off the dole to a triumphant fanfare and an emotional hug from numerous council workers (which was not forthcoming) in 2009 I’ve appreciated every minute of my unemployment. It’s played a big part in re-landscaping my entire future, and I now take nothing for granted. That’s a pretty good lesson to learn and I got that FOR FREE. In a way.

Movie monster Mark Gamble is back, and this time he’s been watching everyone’s favourite pint-sized Scientology god pretending to live in the future. Here’s what Mark makes of it all…

Director: Joseph Kosinski
Actors: Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Risborough, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Melissa Leo

What’s It About: Sometime in the distant future, Earth has been attacked by an alien race (the Scavs). Humanity won the battle, but with our moon destroyed, earthquakes, freak storms and just about every other natural disaster have left our planet a desolate wasteland.

With most of the the surviving civilisation now living on one of Saturn’s moons, Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) is now one of a few inhabitants remaining on earth, stationed there to repair drones. The drones are there to protect machines harvesting the last of earth’s resources. Sounds boring, huh?

When one day a spaceship crashes, with a lone survivor onboard, Jack begins to realise that not all is what is seems. And then things just get more and more confusing.

Thoughts: Oh Joseph Kosinski! How long are you going to keep this up? With TRON: Legacy and Oblivion, you’ve demonstrated two main things: 1) You make films that look incredible. 2) You make films that either lack a decent narrative, or lack any coherent narrative at all. Please, stop it.

Visually, Oblivion is stunning. Beautiful even. This isn’t surprising, when you predominantly film in Iceland. The barron landscapes and remains of some of the US’s most iconic landmarks look fantastic, and you can genuinely believe this world exists. BUT, a beautiful film does not a good film make… or something.

Cruise is as reliable as ever, and Riseborough is shaping quite a decent career for herself. Both play their roles well, it’s just a shame the plot takes away from those performances. The film mixes a number of tried and tested Sci-Fi clichés, that you’ll have seen used in more successful movies from the last decade or so. Ultimately though, they’re the cause of a story that ends up making little sense at all. Add to that, the film feels long. If you actually manage to stay interested in anything other than the scenery, the plot still leaves you thinking “Huh?”. I don’t want to say too much, for fear of giving anything away, but everything that happens post Jack’s encounter with Morgan Freeman’s character, feels like it could have been more successful had the writers just kept things simpler. Being clever and trying to be clever can be the downfall of a potentially good thing.

Musically, on a personal level, I was pretty disappointed with M83′s musical score. It should’ve helped carry the film, and could’ve been a great pairing, but it lacked any real atmosphere. There was a distinct lack of Gonzalez’s soaring melodies, and the moments they do appear are almost on the level of a parody Blade Runner soundtrack. Shame.

Finally, and I have to mention it, there’s the Scientology themes. Do they exist? Maybe. Self sacrifice, redemption and a heightened belief in oneself (of God like proportions) run throughout the film. Without them, the film would lack any meaning at all. With them, it gives the film a convoluted and preachy message.

Summary: A slow, but interesting first half. A slow, boring and confusing second half. Beautifully crafted, visually stunning, with some good performances from Cruise and Risborough. Ultimately, it’s let down by too many confusing and messy plot holes / twists. If a great movie like Moon had sex with a blockbuster like Independence Day, and Prometheus watched, this would be the bastard child.

Watch If You Liked / Avoid If You Hated: Battle Los Angeles, Prometheus, Tron: Legacy

Rating: 5 drones out of 10

To hear more from Mark, visit his great new site Let’s Kiss To Make It Real

I’m no book expert. A few years ago I was working at a magazine and we were in a meeting talking about doing literary reviews, I piped up saying I’d happily do some I LOVE BOOKS GUYS -  how long would we have to read them? A couple of weeks? A month? A few months? Everyone immediately started nudging each other until they couldn’t hold it in any longer, they burst out laughing, some were laughing so much they sweated right through their polo shirts and twisted denim shorts, some started vomiting in bins. My face went an explosive colour of scarlet. “Two days Josh. You’d have two days” deadpanned the editor peering through his vintage spectacles. He then pointed at me with his massive thumbs and shouted “FUCK! Who employed this dick?” (FYI: he had). I felt like a philistine. I felt like a philistine and I’m not even 100 per cent sure what a philistine is. My point being that if you’ve come here for brilliant incisive book reviews, you should probably put your underpants back on, stub out your pipe and walk away now. We’ll speak no more of this. But if you’re interested in hearing about some nice reads from a himbo who gets through around ten a year, then welcome, it’s great to have you. Here are some memoirs you should think about reading. Please make your own recommendations in the comments section…

Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

Steve Martin got an A in his comedy degree from the University of Being Funny, and to this day there’s no better opening to an act than his walking on and going “thank you, thank you” over and over again long after the audience has stopped clapping.You just can’t write gold like that. Although Steve Martin obviously did exactly write gold like that, so I’m not quite sure where I was going with that sentence. Anyway, I absolutely flew through this memoir, which in “me reading a book” terms means it took me a few weeks even though it’s quite short. If you like factual tales about showbusiness, magic shows, panic attacks, and hippy women with pubic mountains the size of Vesuvius you’ll fucking love this.

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

You’ve seen Chef Ramsey shouting “oh just fuck off!” at salads, you’ve enjoyed it when Jamie Oliver smooshes around some sauce and spazzes heaped teaspoons of gravy all over a fish, now it’s time to pick up an actual book and read about the brutal realties of life in a professional kitchen. The knives, the massive gold earrings, the casual and uncasual sex marathons, the piles of drugs to put into your mouth, arm or possibly your anus. It’s all here in this book by Anthony Bourdain, who’s the kind of guy that can bang a waitress to absolute perfection then cook table seven’s dinner immediately afterwards without any threat of self-loathing. Ironically this book goes really well accompanied by a Marmite sandwich or a packet of nice cheap biscuits from Asda. How arch of me to notice!

Just Kids by Patti Smith

Before I read this book by the lead singer of the Patti Smith Group, I knew her for two things. Firstly for being the lead singer of the Patti Smith Group. Secondly for definitely being a lesbian. She had the same lesbian haircut as first modeled by the Queen of the Lesbians, Keith Richards. She had furry armpits which have always been an anarchic calling card amongst the lesbian community. She’s definitely a lesbian. Wrong actually. WRONG. Not a lesbian. Quite the opposite in fact, she’s a rampant heterosexual woman. Again I’m not sure where I’m going with this. I love this book though. I think that’s what I’m trying to say. It captures an exciting time in music, whilst simultaneously chronicling a terrifying time for society when the wild sexual landscape of the late 70s and early 80s was completely carpet bombed – and she captures it with amazing detail, great humour and with pathos. That’s right, I said pathos. Fuck you. This is about BOOKS.

You Got Nothing Coming by Jimmy Learner

I don’t know about you but I’ve spent years fantasising about prison – the late night sing songs, the friendships forged for life, the week long table tennis tournaments punctuated by massive lunches and dinners. In short I’ve been a foolish fool who’s both deluded and DELUDED (and possibly lying just a little bit for dramatic purposes). As it turns out it’s nothing like that at all. The reality is a putrid, frightening and horrible existence that involves nasty things like racism, gang rape and massive brainless skinheads with no sense of humour and various Nazi soundbites misspelt in scrawls all over their faces and necks. It’s no place for a good middle class Jewish boy from Brooklyn… which is what makes this memoir so gripping and fascinating, as an upper management guru turned convicted killer tries to make it through chokey without completely losing his marbles. The first two thirds of this book are astonishingly good. The final act, less so. But still great nonetheless.

Bossypants by Tina Fey

Because she was once the go-to guy on Saturday Night Live and now she plays a fictional Liz Lemon character essentially doing the same job on 30 Rock, Tina Fey’s professional life seems to be one perpetual act of holding a mirror up to a mirror up to a mirror until your mind caves in because it doesn’t know what’s real and what’s made up anymore. That seems to be the way of American comedy now. Larry David’s been doing a similar thing for years, Louis CK now stars in his own sitcom written and directed by himself and about himself. It’s all completely mind-boggling, and yet somehow still brilliant. My plan is to one day write a sitcom about me writing a sitcom, or it would be if Seinfeld hadn’t got there first. Anyway, none of this matters, what matters is that I sped through this book in record time because it’s great, it tells an inspring tale of a woman not just surviving in a majority male environment but literally strutting in, setting up shop and ruling the roost. I’m now definitely not going to write “you go girl”.

Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson

They say the best way to find out the history of your own country is to wait for a few years until an enthusiastic American guy comes to live there, then he’ll probably write an entertaining book about it at some point and you can just read that. A convenient fact that leads seamlessly to the inclusion of this, which tells you everything you need to know about life in Britain, like how lovely and quaint stone walls look, or it’ll mention the names of places that are probably just a couple of hours away on foot where you’ll find moving and historical artifacts. Of course you’ll still definitely never visit them, not while there’s telly on, but it’s nice to know they’re there. Thanks Bill. Fantastic writer that Bill Bryson. Really knows how to string a um… a sentence together.

Le Freak by Nile Rodgers

Celebrity autobiographies are a different animal these days. Where once they were at least slightly written by celebrities, nowadays they generally involve someone like Jordan stomping into a room, hurling random thoughts at a confused ghostwriter for three minutes, then fucking off to go horse riding. They might return a few hours later to say “Oh yeah, I thought of something else – I don’t like porridge! Don’t know why. I just don’t like it. Put that in the book” A few months pass and their book arrives on the shelves with their entire history reimagined by someone else, and the weird thing is they believe it all to be true. In that sense, ghostwriting is about as close as a journalist will ever come to playing God. Anyway, this is all moot, because Nile Rodgers of Chic, Madonna, David Bowie, Debbie Harry, Duran Duran, INXS and Grace Jones fame did this himself, and it’s a modern musical masterpiece. His excesses were huge, his achievements gargantuan, yet a thread of humility stretches throughout. I read this in about a week.

Kafka Was The Rage by Anatole Broyard

Like pretty much anyone who lives in London I went through a phase of being completely obsessed with New York and all the New Yorkiness that surrounds New York. Woody Allen films, Martin Scorsese films, Spike Lee films, other films with New York in them, the music, the outfits, the hotdawgs, the way they munch through words like they were food too, it’s so edgy and cool. So I decided to read this memoir about Greenwich Village in the 1940s. Turns out it’s a completely pretentious book, full of people tying their minds in knots and getting terribly confused about how to act in extremely simple social and sexual situations, but it’s also a fine documentation of the original hipsters, who didn’t just buy stone washed jeans and large glasses to be admired. They read, they studied, they really put the work in to behave like complete pricks. Cracking stuff.

Pimp by Iceberg Slim

Growing up as a white boy in a very nice part of Oxford I spent most of my youth rapping Wu Tang Clan lyrics into a full length mirror, so when Ice-T mentioned this book, alluding to it being a gangsta rap bible, I was all over it. By which I mean I went to a book shop, barked “direct me to Iceberg Slim biatch!” at some old lady, then took that motherfucker home (the book, not the biatch) and probably spent about a year reading it. It took so long to read for two reasons. Firstly because I was a teenager so most of my alone time was devoted to other things like taking myself to heaven and back. And secondly because it was written in an unfamiliar vernacular, and came with a rich glossary at the back full of street slang terms. The true story of the rise and fall of a Chicago pimp, this is bloody fantastic.

Dispatches by Michael Herr

Whenever I think of war memoirs I think of men in V-necks getting stubby erections reading Andy McNab books, and for the most part I’m still convinced I’m right about that. Those aren’t for me, I can’t drive and I don’t watch Top Gear, I’m not in that demographic. But this book might be the one exception to the rule. It’s one man’s Vietnam, both in a figurative and literal sense as he tours the country during the war painting vivid pictures in your mind that later got imagined on the big screen in movies like Platoon and Apocalypse Now. If there’s a better book about the horror and humour of war I’d be very surprised.

And that’s all I’ve got. Any more for any more?

The internet is a vast unruly landscape and unless you’re willing to stand bogside poking around with a shitty stick for ten hours a day you’ll find that tracking down the good stuff can be impossible. So thank fuck for me! I actually do that. I get up at some stupid time in the morning, I roll up my sleeves and root around this bastard thing until bedtime, then I have tantric sex for five hours, two hours snoozing, then it’s up and partially dressed and back into cyberspace. Anyway, this is just a long winded way of saying here’s a bunch of things that you might like. Or not. I don’t know.

Donald Byrd LIVE

Donald Byrd died and no one told me. That hurts on so many levels. The main level being the one which involves me now explaining how he was an important part of my record buying journey. Huge in fact. One of the first records I bought many moons ago was The Best of Donald Byrd which featured a line drawing of him on the cover. It’s still one of my favourite albums, alongside The Best of The Beatles and The Best of The Rolling Stones. Seriously though, I love this man.

Reasons My Son is Crying

There is literally nothing in the world more boring than mountains of pictures of other people’s children. To counteract the swathes of baby snaps on Facebook I once seriously considered swamping the thing with images of my nan. I then realised that her craggy disapproving face was too disturbing even for me. Anyway, I’m not sure where I’m going with this apart from to say that sometimes baby pictures can be good. So long as the child is crying hysterically for an embarrassingly mundane reason.

Maxwell singing This Woman’s Work

If you’re a fan of The Voice you’ll remember that last weekend some stage school kid wowed the world with a genuinely excellent version of This Woman’s Work by Kate Bush. “Josh did you say the word EXCELLENT about The Voice?” Yes, I said excellent. It was excellent. But it wasn’t quite as excellent as Maxwell’s version, which I recently described to my woman as “very excellent”. That makes it mathematically two or three times better than the one by the guy on the Voice.

Seinfeld Scripts

Hands up if you’re a massive Seinfeld geek. For a while it was the most popular show on the planet so I’m going to go ahead and assume that around 10 million people just raised their hand. So check it out, I found a site where you can read every single Seinfeld script ever. EVER. Of course I have no idea why you’d want to do this, unless you’re like me and you like reading scripts just for the fun of it. Does that make me weird? Fuck you, you’re weird.

This Picture again

You may or may not know who these tough guys are. If you do, how cool are these! If you don’t, I feel sorry for you because you’ve missed out on Canada’s answer to the X-Men. They’re called Alpha Flight, one’s a tiny little dwarf gymnast, there’s a hot one called Aurora who I genuinely wanted to have actual sex with when I was a kid, there’s some green chick who I didn’t want to bang, Snowbird who I probably would have if Aurora wasn’t interested or if she was busy that afternoon, a guy from Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, some other dudes, plus the first openly gay comic book character called Northstar. A groundbreaking comic, that Alpha Flight.

Plebs on ITV On Demand

Plebs is a sitcom on ITV2 that is a bit like The Inbetweeners but set in ancient Rome and I only tuned in to watch the first episode so I could see how much I hated it. And then something weird happened. My face started contorting and joyful honking sounds began spurting out of my mouth. If you haven’t put two and two together, that was my over-elaborate and slightly pretentious way of describing laughter. I’m saying that I was laughing. Because it’s funny. And you should watch it. And here’s one more short sentence. Paragraph over.

Russell Brand’s Thatcher article

This whole Maggie dying thing has been a massive drag. Viewing figures for the news plummeted, Twitter became unbearable, everyone suddenly morphed into a weird hybrid of 1980s Ben Elton and 1980s Billy Bragg. Or any era Billy Bragg for that matter. It was almost as if a geriatric essentially dying of old age after a very long life was some kind of social victory for the common man. It wasn’t, she won, and the best commentator on the whole thing turned out to be Russell Brand – a man whose comedy I don’t really like, but whose writing is so good it makes me insane with jealousy. If you didn’t read his piece, do it now.

This Ghostface Killah track

If I had to name my favourite members of The Wu Tang Clan in order it’d go: Ghostface Killah, Rza, Gza, Pzza, Old Sexy Bar Stard, Gideon, Marky Mark, Richard the Chef, Method Man, Pukewan, will.i.am, Tom Jones, Jessie J, Danny from The Script, and then probably either Tobin or Lucas. So yeah. Anyway I love this track. I connect to it at street level.

80 Blocks From Tiffany’s

Being extremely white, in that both parents are white and one is even a bit ginger and my ancestors are just one long unending trail of white woman and Celts and probably vikings, I obviously have a deep fascination with New York street gangs from the 1970s and 80s. Hence when I stumbled across this amazing documentary on Youtube it even gave my beard (because I obviously have a beard) a bit of an erection. I recommend you take the afternoon off work to watch it.

There’s an intensely moving scene at the end of the disco drama Saturday Night Fever where the street-philosopher-slash-ballroom-dancer Tony Manero looks deep into his woman’s eyes and explains: “there’s ways of killing yourself without killing yourself”. It meant nothing at the time, and it’s still very foggy. Like Tony’s dance routines it was a flash of brilliance out of nowhere in between a barrage of pelvic thrusts. What did he mean? Who would say something like that? But then funnily enough, Tony might actually have been on to something. In that there are also ways of getting sacked without getting sacked.

I was sacked without getting sacked in the summer of 1998 – around the same time as a small footballer called Michael Owen took the ball down with his right ankle, ran past a few Argentinean guys, smashed a goal into the top corner, and made the entire planet shout in astonishment. Literally everyone went wild. Feral. Absolutely berserk. Everyone except for me, because I’d just put two and two together in my head and realised that my day job at a sandwich shop was fading away fast. It was my livelihood. I looked on as Owen ran towards the crowd with his arms outstretched like Christ, but any surge of joy had been countered by the plummeting realisation of impending unemployment, leaving me totally centred. Neither happy nor sad. Just perfectly balanced chakras.

As it happened I had been working in a small Bristol sandwich shop called either The Upper Crust or Sexy Lunches. The sign might have featured a woman with stockings and suspenders on licking a baguette, or it could have just been a French stick minus the hot girl. I don’t know. It was 1998 – that’s ages ago. As I recall the initial plan had been to train me up as a manager, based on the fact that I looked really trustworthy, and because I had a second class honours degree in Sociology which used to open a hell of a lot of doors before the credit crunch. Unfortunately my employers hadn’t taken into account that someone could be unbelievably bad at making simple lunches for people – something which quickly became apparent during my first shift, when cheese played second fiddle to pickle, when I inadvertently insulted a regular by suggesting his girlfriend looked like a horse, and when the takings didn’t make any sense because I hadn’t a clue how the till worked. I’d based my pricing on what people should probably pay for things.

My boss put it down to first day nerves. It was all the adrenaline of a live lunch service. But by day three it dawned on him – he’d employed the only person in the West Country completely unable to carve an entire slice of bread. I prided myself on at least being fast at my job, but that was mainly because people left clutching a bag full of deconstructed sandwich ingredients all haphazardly clumped together in no particular order. Custom started to dwindle, one man walked into the shop and said “not him” pointing at me. No one wanted me in charge of making their meals. I had become what is known in the trade as “a bad sandwich maker”.

Of course at this point my boss should have stepped in and explained that things weren’t really working out. I would have understood. I’d have cried and spluttered for forgiveness and just one more chance for a few awkward hours, but then I would have cleaned the smears of butter from my forearms, removed the specs of cheese from my underpants, peeled the gherkins from my pubes, put my top back on and left that shop with some dignity. But no, he was too scared. He was cowardly like a guy hiding behind a bush while a group of kids walk past. He began a slow burning assault to undermine my spirit that ended with me not really enjoying Michael Owen’s goal. I’ll never forgive him for that, and if I remembered his name I’d tell him so. He lessened my shifts. At first by one a week, then two, then three. Until eventually I had one shift on a Thursday between midnight and 3.57am. I knew it was over. Very few people can live on less than £7.42/week.

“It’s not really worth my while working for you,” I suggested on the phone, calling time on this ridiculous charade.

“Ahh, that’s a shame Josh,” he lied. “We’ll miss you. Thanks for all of your help.”

Oh, fuck you! (I didn’t say that bit).