I should just resign

My alter ego, David Mitchell, not only agrees with me on everything, but says it better.

Students bring out a violent streak in me. When I see NUS spokespeople on TV talking simplistically about tuition fees, even though I basically agree with the sentiments they express so unattractively, I want to punch them. But I also like watching them chuck stuff at the police, smash windows and jump up and down on vans. I'm not so keen on the fire extinguisher hurling – I lose my appetite for the scuffle if I think someone might get killed – but a bit of a ruck with some bobbies dressed as X-wing pilots seems entirely appropriate.

It's the peaceful protesting that winds me up: the super-keen "political" students who've nosed their way into being interviewed to show how clever they are. They seem unrealistic and unaccountable and you can smell the self-interest and grubby ambition lurking beneath the veneer of unworkable ideals. Like pre-election Lib Dems.

My inner Victorian thinks they should be seen and not heard. But I don't mind seeing them piss through the letterbox of Nick Clegg's constituency office. 

A few short clips of jerkily televised vandalism make the government look like it's failing to govern. The fact that more damage gets done to public property every day by people turning round quickly while holding something hot is irrelevant. A photo of broken glass is a thousand times more politically threatening than a kid with an unwise haircut whining about his allowance. 

At least the protests are being taken over by independent organisations rather than the NUS, which is just a kindergarten for obedient New Labour MPs (almost every President since the 1950s has become one).  


Hats off to one of Mitchell's commenters for this line too:

You can say what you like about this government, but it took Margaret Thatcher 3 years to achieve riots and a royal wedding. David Cameron and Nick Clegg have achieved it in 6 months.

Nice guys finish 5th

Cynical Ben, my Popular Culture Correspondent, mailed me this morning with hot news (literally: it's from Heat magazine, which I've never opened).

According to that other pillar of respectable society, Mr. Chris Moyles (an inexplicably popular radio announcer), my doppelgänger David Mitchell (and not the very good author) is 5th on the Weird Crush list. Moyles is upset: the porcine ego is a mere 18th, and he feels that Mitchell 'looks like a puffin'.

The attractive Puffin

The 18th weirdest crush in Britain

Mr. David Cameron is 24th on the list.

So there you have it. I'm either more attractive than these characters, or it's much weirder to find me attractive than them. I'm not sure what the metrics are, but obviously I'm vicariously pleased for Mitchell (or mini-Me, as I think of him).

Nothing like me

This is David Mitchell. We have nothing in common. Except appearance, birthday, sartorial taste and opinions.

Lookalikes

Apparently, according to friends and complete strangers, I look like this chap:

But I also look like this one:

And this one:

Cameron contemplates the menu

Hmmm. OK, I have slightly goggly eyes and more than the usual complement of chins, but I still don't see the Miliband and Cameron resemblances. Still, I could develop a comedy routine based on all three characters…

Jobsworths

I've been coming to work every day for 10 years (yes, I'm unemployable elsewhere), even during the holidays when nobody else is around. Every day, I say hello to the security guards. I know their names, they (mostly) know mine.

Only one of them demands to see my ID every time I walk through the doors. Even more ridiculously, I show him my card. The card which has a photograph of somebody else on it. David Mitchell, in fact. Every time he looks at it, he lets me through.

It's becoming a weird experience.

I'm Louis Theroux. I'm Louis Theroux and his wry smile at the orgy.

I should just erase myself from the scene. Bloody Mitchell looks like me, sounds like me, dresses like me and expresses my frustrations far, far better than me. This is really worth watching.

Grammar Nazi

I share a look, birthday, tailor and opinions with David Mitchell. In light of my previous apostrophe comment, I thought I should post this. I really am like this.

"Maybe nobody minds about things as much as me."

Update, August 2010: Hello to my repeat visitor from Grosse Pointe, Michigan (great film, by the way). Glad you can't stay away. Do they have Peep Show in the US? Leave a comment, tell us why you keep coming back!

Friends, colleagues and drunken strangers on trains and in the street have repeatedly remarked upon my resemblance to Mr. David Mitchell, the ubiquitous comedian with whom I share a birthday, a tailor, and every single opinion.

My friends will also be familiar with my antipathy towards hairstyling. Haircuts = fine. Hairstyles = needless complication (though I am being educated in this matter).

In this fine video, Mitchell lays off the cultural implication of hairstyles, but summarises my feelings about going to the barber with considerable wit.

I've never accepted the offer of a wash in the salon. I wash my hair before going. It seems polite.

Selected Peep Show quotations which remind me of me:


Peep Show is a comedy about an uptight loser and a lazy selfish loser. It's photographed from 'behind the eyes' of the characters, and the dialogue in brackets is their internal monologue.

Jez: You're a posh spaz.

Mark: Oh really? Well I'd love to know in what way I am a posh spaz.

Jez: In the way that you do posh, spazzy things like... tidying up and... ironing your socks.

Mark: I do not iron my socks!

Jez: Socks, shirts, whatever!

TV: I'm basically looking to meet someone like myself.

Mark: (Pfftt. That's exactly the opposite of what I'm looking for.)

Mark: [Before having toast for breakfast] (Brown for first course, white for pudding. Brown is savoury, white's the treat. Of course I'm the one who's laughing because I actually love brown toast.

Mark: (Well that was a fucking disaster. I want compensation. I want reparations. I want the Rhineland. It's going to be 1919 all over again, fuck the inevitable backlash.)

Mark: This is the sort of thing people do when they're having a good time.

Mark: Dancing? Y-yes... dancing... I love... dancing... (It makes me look like a coma victim being stood up and zapped with a cattle prod.)

Mark: (Sure, an orgy sounds great, but you're basically just multiplying the number of people you're not going to be able to look in the eye afterwards.)

Mark: I'm dangerously close to getting what I want. Feels a bit weird.

Jez: You're still living in your Hitchhiker's Guide world where you'll go around in your bathrobe and have a nice cup of tea.

Mark: (Look at me; I've got a girlfriend. A proper girlfriend reading a best-seller about child-abuse. I go out and have croissant. I'm just a normal functioning member of the human race and there's no way anyone can prove otherwise.)

Mark: Nothing means anything to you, does it? Friendship, loyalty - they're just fusty old words like sixpence and codpiece to you, aren't they?

Mark: She’s good for me, Jez, She’s dragging me into the twenty-first century with its meaningless logos and ironic veneration of tyrants. It’s all good, my friend.

[about Jez and Sophie being nice to Mark after he walked in on them almost having sex]

Mark: (Why are they being so nice? Maybe they've had a big chat about me and they're suddenly realised I was right about North Korea, I was right about the European Constitution, and by God I think I'm right about the congestion charge!)

Mark: (Look at them all - the Christians. It's not fair. I could be that happy if I believed in a lot of rubbish.)

Mark: Why does everything have to be fun to be worthwhile? Crick and Watson have discovered the double helix. Did they do it on a skateboard? No? Well fuck off then, I'm not interested.

Mark: The absolute worst thing anyone could say about you is that you were a selfish, moral blank, whose lazy cynicism and sneering, ironic take on the world encapsulates everything wrong with a generation. But you my friend are not evil.

Thursday's version of Friday's Conundrum

Hello all. I'm skiving tomorrow. Cynical Ben, Neal, James and I are going walking on the hills around Macclesfield, armed with pies, but lacking Dan and his map skills. After that, Neal and I are joining James for a weekend of carousing and debauchery in the fleshpots of Chester. Or, we'll find a poky indie club in which to feel old. Either way, no blogging for a few days.

How was David Mitchell's appearance, by the way? I'm afraid I missed it.

So - the Thursday Friday conundrum. It's easy. What, if everything had gone your way up to this point, should you be doing now? Where would you be, with whom? I know Cynical Ben would be where he is, with Jo, but be a published author, but he's a spawny get, to use the demotic. The rest of us - not always so easy.

I, of course, would have received the Golden Boot after scoring enough to get Stoke City to the top of the Premiership and won the Champions League. Again.

OK, maybe not. I wouldn't have minded being a decent fencer, and I'd certainly like to be living in the Welsh mountains, overlooking the sea, or perhaps in Ireland or Shropshire, holding down a full-time post in English/Welsh literature. A book or two published, debt-free, and perhaps somebody there with me. As long as she didn't scratch my records or crease my spines. Not too much to ask, is it?

Alternatively, I'd like to have been running a moderate-sized country, consigning large sections of the population to camps for possessing hairstyles, using mobile phones as stereos, dropping litter, voting Tory, driving 4x4s and generally being objectionable. This is not a vision I have yet relinquished, by the way.

Au revoir, Stereolab

My favourite Marxist French krautpop retro-futurist electro-poppers Stereolab have split up, or at least gone into hibernation. I am genuinely saddened by the demise of a band which have soundtracked my life since the early 90s. Their albums lost a little something when Mary Hansen died, but they're still wonderful.

Dear All,

As we recently made #51 with Emperor Tomato Ketchup in the Amazon 100 Greatest Indie Rock Albums of all Time we feel that our work is done for the moment.
We have had to cancel the last two shows that we were scheduled to play, apologies to all that had bought tickets, and there are no plans to record new tracks.
Duophonic are working on the release of Chemical Chords 2, we also have plans for a new Switched On and remastering of the back catalogue.
We are are all going to have a bit of a rest now after nearly 19 years and work on a few other projects.
The website will still be updated and disks released but there won't be any new Stereolab product for a while.

Cheerio

Meanwhile, I'm sure you're all dying to know what books I acquired yesterday. Well (deep breath): Lucien Laurat's Marxism and Democracy (Left Book Club 1940 - I collect this series), Political Allegory in Late Medieval England by Ann Astell, two Sheri Tepper novels, The Fresco and The Companions (I really rate her thoughtful eco-feminist science fiction), Jane Austen's Poems, padded out with her 'favourite poems', which is a bit of a cheat, a collection of Jonathan Swift's Major Works that aren't Gulliver's Travels, The Oxford Book of Welsh Verse, Jeff Noon's Nymphomation (Manchester cyberpunk, yeah), Njal's Saga (Icelandic, good miserable stuff), Robertson Davies's The Rebel Angels, another copy of Richardson's Pamela to replace a 'borrowed' one, Gwyn Jones's Short Stories, Langguth's Patriots (studies of the Fathers of the American Revolution, Postmodernism: a Very Short Introduction, an amusing bullshitters' guide called The Eng. Lit. Kit, and Sean Latham's Am I A Snob? Modernism and the Novel.

All in haul, a fascinating hall, no doubt to be divided into the 'must read now' pile and 'should read one day' stack.

Don't forget: tonight's edition of Who Do You Think You Are? features David Mitchell. I'm hoping my dad doesn't turn up on it.

Sssshhhh…

The Guardian has a piece today on how to arrange your book collection. They're very scornful of my chosen method: alphabetical. Actually, mine's alphabetical for anything bought more than two years ago. They go from floor to ceiling on all four walls, including the 20,000+ vinyl records, but not the CDs, which are stored here and there. Everything else is piled in any space on top of properly shelved books. Then there are vertical columns of books behind the wardrobe, a 1m x 1m x 1m cube of unread books on the floor, then some piled randomly, then a stuffed bookcase at work and a few piles on my desk.

One of the wittily contentious things this article proposes is how to arrange your library to attract people.

The "I'm desperate for a shag', female version

Doesn't really require books – it's the last thing a man will notice. But on the off-chance you bring someone home who can read, it might be an idea temporarily to lose anything too intimidating by Andrea Dworkin.

Unless you're a lesbian, in which case you might like to put it on the coffee table.

Ladies: do not listen to this at all. Should I ever enter your house (that isn't entendre, by the way), I'll go straight for your bookshelves. I may well read a book or two right then and there. Or I'll leave in high dudgeon having seen Dan Brown, Coelho, or others of that ilk. Critical theory particularly appreciated.

What systems do you use? One or two of you, I know, will say that one's piled on top of the other one, but this is for the rest of you. Size? Genre? Degree of affection? Mark uses the Dewey Decimal system, which I respect. I'll use it when I finally get a place with enough room. I'd like a poetry corner, though that smacks of ghettoisation a little. A proper library in dark wood with a rolltop escritoire, ladders on runners, a wood fire, squashy armchairs and a card index. Someone snoozing in one corner as rain beats on the windows, a marmoset nibbling on a Jeffrey Archer in the other (my version of a shredder). A clock ticks, Radio 4 mumbles warmly from concealed speakers, a violin case sits on a side table and on another Marmite on crumpets await. I of course will be wearing a dark, three-piece tweed suit and a tie knitted by Anne Shirley, who's finally dumped that awful Gilbert cad (he turned out to have been a devotee of 'Hunnish practices').

Or, an ultra-modern German/Scandinavian-style glass and steel building, zero-carbon, naturally-ventilated, Passivhaus machine for reading in, perched on a cliff overlooking one of Norway's fjords.

Well, it beats Whitmore Reans: my place look's like Bernard's back room in Black Books, which is funny because he's right about everything as much as David Mitchell

I may as well give up

Yes, David Mitchell not only shares my opinions, he writes about them much better. This week's column was on cricket, holidays and air travel - I don't disagree with a single word, though I'd be a little harsher in the selfish bastards who think that unrestricted air travel is their right. Being a fan of the 1930s, I've no compunction about consigning people into camps and I regularly fantasise about using grenade launchers on SUVs.

Neal (posting there as Manuelelo for some reason) makes the reasonable point that it's the frequent long weekenders who cause the damage rather than a worn-out family taking the kids away once a year (a point Cynical Ben has made too), though he also thinks that encountering new cultures makes us empathise more. Really? Neal: I give you the British Empire, and any of the other empires you care to mention. I also reference the British in Spain - tucking into fish and chips, watching Sky, speaking English and STILL hating foreigners…

I may visit Germany in August: I shall be taking the train, and considering the journey as part of my holiday.

Enjoy the show, peeps

Morning all. How are you this sunny Monday morning (if it is sunny and Monday)? I had a lovely weekend. Amongst other things, Imaginary Friend and I saw the new Harry Potter film (it was quite effective) and I bought some books. Returning to Wolverhampton I was greeted by leaden skies and the most complete, shining rainbow I've ever seen - like one of those appalling posters with a Biblical quotation that Christian teenagers have in their rooms instead of Slayer/Backstreet Boys/whoever. I took a photo on my camera but seem to have lost that device. Perhaps it's at home.

I hope you all enjoyed David Mitchell on Desert Island Discs. I was torn between hating his choices in music (apart from Elgar's Cello Concerto) for being utterly lightweight, and respecting his honesty. I suspect it's true that the music we find meaningful for the context in which we heard it, and the memories associated with it, is often banal: Mitchell chose music he may not listen to for its own qualities, but because it was associated with particular people, places and times. Amongst them were Katrina and the Waves' 'Walking on Sunshine', Radiohead's 'Creep', some Acker Bilk and Herb Alpert, the Elgar and Kermit the Frog's 'Rainbow Connection', which was a piece of genius with which I wasn't familiar.

Mitchell was, of course, charming, thoughtful and self-deprecating, and prepared to address the contradiction between wanting to go through life unnoticed and choosing a career as a performer. I did wonder about his presence on DID. They have widened their choice of guests recently, sometimes to the detriment of the show, which at its best can be a meditation on a life lived badly, sadly, wisely or well. Mitchell was the perfect guest in many ways: witty, thoughtful, distinctive: but he's only 35. His songs reminded him of his parents, his time in Cambridge. Let's have him back when he's 60, when he's faced love, loss, death, triumph and failure, and has more experience about which to be self-deprecating.

Anyway - well worth listening too, particularly for his views on fashion (essentially: showing off) and his self-portrait 'tweed on the inside'. As I suspected, we have a lot in common: nerds, still living in squalid student accommodation, alone, so very alone. Except that he's funny, gifted etc. etc.

It's on Radio 4 again on Friday morning. Or possible Thursday, I can't remember. It's not on Listen Again though for music copyright purposes.

34 - waist and years in perfect harmony (dammit)

I've popped home to receive birthday congratulations from the Aged Parents (copyright, the Mitfords). It's such a joy to be in the countryside rain. Everything's green, lush and wet. The cat's as pleased to see me, as pleased as any cat can be anyway, and the bantams are hopefully greedy, which equates to love in my world. 

Anyway, thanks to my dear youngest sister Helen, who made me my favourite biscuit cake, with my age picked out in Smarties. Coincidentally, it's her favourite cake too - she swears that's what she'll have for her wedding. Now she needs to persuade someone (and yes, he reads this blog), to POP THE QUESTION. Though perhaps marrying someone who loves biscuit cake this much is too much to ask. 

So, how to review the year in the time remaining before The Wire starts? What achievements do I have to my credit? I've gained several hundred pounds in books, some of which I've read. I've lost several hundred pounds of gelatine, most of which has stayed off. My hair's thinner and my fuse is shorter. I've attained two years' stability as far as work goes, though this may well change in September thanks to a combination of management evilitude and global political/economic stupidity. My fencing is improving and I'm doing a lot of refereeing and child protection stuff, so I'm doing my little bit for society. 

I'm also a lot angrier, which usually manifests itself in sarcasm and despair. Everybody tells me that people get more conservative as they get older. Not me. I get more and more militantly leftwing. Ten years ago I was a wishy-washy liberal. Now I'm a rock-solid Trotskyist with a streak of serious-minded anarchism - tolerance of what we allow to be done to us is gone. I'm also a failed Communist, in that I'm not in a party and do nothing to radically change society. Sure, I do my best to warp peoples' minds (sorry, enlighten people) through education, and I'm feeling my way in the union, but basically I just whine about stuff on my blog or in the pub. Still, I'm purer than the PFJ. Splitters!

Ah yes, the blog. Thanks to all of you. It's been going since November and I'm slowly gaining a readership. I love the fact that we often disagree (I'm looking at you on politics, Ewarwoowar), are from all over the place (Merciless, Intelliwench, The Quiet Life, SCW, The Deer Friend and lots of others) and now don't all see each other on a daily basis. You ignore my lefty rants and abuse my haircuts and taste in music and I love it. I'm no stylist, unlike lovely Cynical Ben, who can really write, but you're performing a valuable service. If I didn't unload on you, my office mates would have torn out my tongue long ago. I've found lots of people to respect and like on the web, such as all my fellow bloggers and superstars like Bad Science and Pharyngula, who remind me that there are other troublemaking lefties around who don't spend their time building rockets and planning to start again on some other planet (or Norway, which is my ideal). 

What else? I've read a lot of books, and bought a lot more, often recommended by you. For a seventh year in succession, I haven't managed to find a flat to live in, partly because the thought of buying enough shelves for books and records would bankrupt me, and partly because I'm a lazy man. I haven't been to Wales or Ireland enough this year, and have certainly spent too much time in the Black Country, though Dan has organised some brilliant walks (without the Map Twats, life would be utterly featureless, despite their perpetual harassment). I've religiously visited the upei.ca site every week in the hope that one of their English department teachers has a terrible accident (after reading all 8 volumes of Anne of Green Gables, and I've thrilled to the weekly sight of Stoke City slaying the pretty boys of the Premiership. It's been a weird sensation to be on the winning side in something. It's never happened to me in sport (playing or supporting) and definitely not in politics. I mourned Labour's wins under Blair because it covered the loss of all socialist ideals. 

So am I happy, all things considered? Yes. I'm fitter, better-read, and surrounded by great colleagues and brilliant friends, and unlike many, there's an overlap. I've almost done a PGCE and need to get on with some proper research. I'm still single (restrain your shock), but that enables me to get a lot more reading done and lo-fi listened to. 

Aims for the next year? Teach less, teach better. Move out. Pun more. Read more. Be funnier. Get thinner. Get out on my bike again, as Neal's restored it for my birthday - what a brilliant present. Write letters. See my distant friends more often. Stop whipping my arm back with every attack - people see it coming and referees don't like it. Cook more cool stuff. Remember birthdays, anniversaries and peoples' names. Lighten up. Perfect my ironing technique. Resemble David Mitchell less. Conduct ceaseless war on apostrophe abuse and superfluous wordage ('still continuing'? - deserves kneecapping). Add more heroes to my pantheon of Arthur Dent and Marvin the Paranoid Android. Say what I think. Devise an anti-SUV weapon. Upset more Christians and 'alternative' therapy adherents. Listen to the wind and merge with some waves. Climb every mountain, etc. etc. etc. 

Oh. It is my birthday now. Happy birthday to me. 

Wisdom from the master

I went shopping recently, and reported to you that it was a dispiriting experience. I was right, and my instincts have been justified by an impeccable source. Who said this?

I look forward to an eco-friendly future where everyone wears drab and similar clothes until they wear out, just like I do. Obviously I don't do it out of environmental conscience, but laziness and the fear that, if I try to demonstrate taste, I'll be exposed as a twat.

But however puny my motives, I am basically right not to buy expensive yet flimsy new togs all the time.

That's right. My alter ego in his latest column, amongst many other pearls of wisdom.

Staring horror-struck into the celebrity mirror

I've now had time to review the David Mitchell interview you all kindly pointed out. The results are frightening. He's both creepy and absolutely right about everything. As am I.

We share a birthdate, background, opinions and quietly devastating good looks. Ahem.

Oh, and this in common:

One major change even Mitchell can't have avoided must have been his new attractiveness to the opposite sex. For one thing, he has undergone a quite dramatic, A-list-style weight loss

This Friday's conundrum

A nice one this week.

Who are your fictional heroes? With whom do you identify or admire? I'm opting for Arthur Dent ('I seem to be having trouble with my lifestyle'), who fruitlessly and accidentally travelled the universe in search of a decent cup of tea, which is disastrous. He also sported a fine dressing gown, as I have been known to, loved cricket and was pretty decent.

I've been accused of resembling Mark Corrigan too. It's true that he (and David Mitchell) is right about most things, worries about ordinary human decency, comes from Shropshire, wears a good dressing gown and the actor shares a birthday with me, but I'm ignoring all that. (Some people say Mark's conservative - they're wrong. He's just not a liberal). My university ID card has a photo of Mark on it. Nobody has ever challenged me.

(Today's xkcd cartoon is a lovely typography one - don't miss the mouse-over. Did you know I went to watch a film about Helvetica and own several books on fonts?).

Enormous swell of popularity

Dear God, I've acquired 2 followers who aren't bound to me by inescapable extra-web bonds - people, surely you've got better things to do? I'm slightly unnerved though - Flowerface has used a picture of Mitchell and Webb as his/her profile photo. Is this satirical? I'm used to being shouted at on the street for looking like Mitchell. We share a birthday. His thoughts are essentially my thoughts…

But welcome, anyway.