Antony N Britt – Author

Happy Birthday, Doctor Who.

I’m actually four weeks older than the time lord. However, that doesn’t make me 1200 years old. I mean I was born a month before the programme began in 1963.

These days, I’m jealous. You get all sorts of lovely toys to play with. Look …

During my childhood, I had no such luxury. Do you know what I had to use my imagination on? The free cardboard figures you got off the back of a Wheetabix packet.

Yes, those. And I collected the lot. Wish I still had them.

And the same feeling of being short-changed is applicable to DVDs. I didn’t have a VHS video recorder until I was 20 so as a kid, the only way I could relive the adventures was by reading the classic Target novelizations (Yes … I do still have those).

Ahh, the memory of my childhood, trying to picture how the Tardis materialising looked on TV simply from Terrance Dick’s description of a blue box appearing to the sound of wheezing and groaning. He actually coined that phrase which has stuck down the years. These days, the only wheezing and groaning I come across is the old couple up the road having sex with the windows open.

And talking of Doctor Who merchandise …

You can’t half get ripped off. There are now limited edition replicas of props from the series you can buy. The latest is a cube from the Series 7 episode, The Power of Three. It retails at about £40.

Come on, it’s a frigging lump of plastic. The words rip and off come to mind, as does the the term, sucker … and I don’t mean the things which the Daleks use as an arm, either.

You wouldn’t catch me wasting money on something like that. Well, apart from my genuine Tardis key, that is.

Okay, so if I had the money, I’d get a cube.

Not mush-room left on the plate today.

A couple of times recently I have moaned about mushrooms, or the lack of them, especially when requesting extra.

Ahhh … The St Paul’s Crossing Restaurant, the only place in Walsall who know the true meaning of the words, more mushrooms.

The morbid sights you see about town …

Fascinating. Decapitated heads in a shop window. Enough to give you nightmares.

What a load of plebs.

The case of MP Andrew Mitchell (or pleb-gate) has been in the news again this week. Mitchell is the politician who was accused of having a run-in with police officers guarding Downing Street when he tried to cycle through a security entrance. He quite rightly, lost his job for his disrespect but has always maintained he never used the word, pleb.

There is no evidence either way what was spoken by Mitchell, or the plebs, but the MP does admit to arguing and swearing at them. Following investigations into whether officers lied about this, there have been calls for Mitchell to be reinstated in his job.

Now then, he denies calling them plebs, but he did swear at them. Hmmm … I call swearing at a police officer who is trying to guard your life, ten times worse an offence than referring to them as plebs. The enquiry team presiding over this seem to have conveniently forgotten that.

Poor old Andrew Mitchell, you have to feel sorry for him. I mean, he’s not done that much wrong in his career … apart from insulting hard working policemen … and lobbying to lift trade embargoes on foreign companies who gave donations to his parliamentary office … and investing funds into firms involved in tax avoidance. Yes, just the sort of person we want running this country, or rather one we should send on a holiday abroad and politely ask if they’d leave their passport at the door.

And here’s a man who should be called more than a pleb …

Hull City owner, Assem Allam is the latest in a long line of tosspot millionaires coming into the game and trying to rewrite history. He wants to change the name, Hull City to Hull Tigers. Now fans have complained to which the knobhead has responded by telling them to die. Hate to say this, Assem, these fans were there many years before you were, and they’ll be there long time after you have departed.

It’s like Cardiff City with a pillock of equal proportions in Vincent Tan. Using the football club as his personal plaything, the Malaysian businessman raised anger by changing the long traditional blue kit to his favourite colour. So, we now have a team nicknamed, The Bluebirds, playing in red.

Note to this and any other investor who believe in their own God Complex mentality. If you want to treat football clubs like toys, go and play with this.

Right, enough ranting …

I start two weeks of very long shifts tomorrow so probably won’t be a Sunday Roast next week. I’m going to watch Doctor Who … and maybe play with my sonic screwdriver.

Cheers.

Nick