A thing you should watch

Lately I’ve been having a lot of fun watching Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont-Spelling Bee, which is on iPlayer and I think BBC3. It’s an Australian panel show and it’s really silly. (Guy Montgomery is a New Zealander, and I think it’s run in NZ for several series already, but only the Aussie version is on iPlayer.) It’s genuinely great.

Guy Montgomery clearly knows how dumb the show is and can’t hide how much his stupid jokes and tasks make him laugh, which I find very funny. His assistant is Aaron Chen (I’ve seen him before in Fisk, which you should check out too, it’s a very dry Australian sitcom that we blasted through in no time), who brings an enormous amount of awkwardness to everything he does.

If you need an explanation to get you started, it’s nominally a spelling competition where the guests have to spell words to earn points. But the rounds are all different every time, they’re all enjoyably stupid (spell your hat, spell the name of the random audience member, spell the celebrity name while doing an impression of the celebrity) and some are explicitly designed to give the guests a really hard time (spell the ethnicity of the mystery guest). I don’t know who the guests are, with the exception of Tim Minchin, but that doesn’t seem to matter. They’re just comedians falling into elaborately built spelling traps.

Please enjoy this thing I have also enjoyed. Thank you.

Phrase phase competition – April

We’re back again, like a lingering distant family member you’ve not seen for over a decade who now won’t leave you alone because he or she needs investment for their new business idea; lemon shorts.

Phew. Glad I changed my number after the first eleven missed calls.

Can we keep mining that rich seam that resulted in March’s gold? Let’s see:

Take that language and fold it up, turkey – sassy comeback for some sassy character you’ve been saving for a rainy day
Sweet Petunia! – an exclamation that suits every single situation you could possibly imagine, also makes you look really smart
Leave the beef on the bench – telling your co-worker that the stapler war they’re engaging that tool from the other department with isn’t worth their time
Double denim venom – when your friends don’t understand your fashion sense
Comma comma hashtag, whaaaat? – you know you’re the comic relief if you’re coming out with gems like this

I bet there’s one in there that you NEVER thought you’d ever see again. You know what? You’ve only yourself to blame because I had forgotten it until you mentioned it. Ha ha!

Anyway, keep all your suggestions (or any suggestions whatsoever) coming in. When we reach halfway through the year, I’ll bring forth the best so far into some kind of mega poll based on feedback received.

Yah boo sucks.

The many states of Daisy

I heard that Kev really loves posts about doggos so I decided to do one of my own. We wouldn’t want him missing out now, would we?

Daisy doesn’t have as many names as Fizz does. Not even close. She doesn’t actually have other names, they’re more like states. In certain situations she changes into something else and is no longer Daisy.

It’s best explained in the following very expensive-looking CGI AI graphic below.

It’s very simple:

A) FOMO – if we all leave the room at the same time, Daisy will follow shortly thereafter. She likes to come on her own terms and make it seem like it was her decision, when really she doesn’t want to miss out so she’ll scoot along quick sharpish

B) ET – very specific circumstances when she is mostly covered by a blanket and resembles ET when he’s hiding in the basket on the front of the bike

C) Baby inspector – if the Orb is lying on the floor, Daisy will come over and sniff him. It’s as if she’s checking he’s okay, like some kind of inspector. I’m sure all inspectors smell what they’re inspecting, right?

D) Meerkat – in order to see what’s going on outside, she’ll stand on her hind legs to get maximum visibility. This one speaks for itself

I will be sure to update you all if any further states are discovered.

Hope you enjoyed the post, Kev.

Fancy pub checklist

Pubs all used to be more or less the same, back in the day. Dark brown furniture, brass rail along the bar, limited range of warm beers that were predominantly bitter and included something called “mild”, and the only food offering was pork scratchings.

Nowadays pubs come in a wide spectrum, from the old man boozer to the soft play family carvery. Most pubs serve food of some description. But every now and then you find a pub that is genuinely fancy.

How fancy? Well, now you can find out by scoring your pub against this helpful checklist.

Guest ale on tap: 1 point
Guest gin with home-made marketing display on the bar: 2 points
Man at bar is wearing a gilet and has an extremely large dog asleep at his feet: 1 point
Dog snacks on the bar are in a stylish glass jar: 1 point
Separate “restaurant area” for dining, though you can also eat in the bar if you want: 1 point
“Please wait to be seated” sign in dining area: 2 points
Separate menu for Sunday lunch: 1 point
Separate menu for dogs: 2 points
Exposed wooden beams: 1 point
Exposed wooden beams that are actually structural and may be grade II listed: 2 points
Table service for diners: 1 point
Table service where the waitress is an actual waitress and not one of the bar staff: 2 points
Made-to-order bar snacks available: 1 point
Made-to-order bar snacks feature miniature fish and chips served in one of those fake mesh buckets as though it’s just been lifted out of a deep fat fryer: 2 points
Made-to-order bar snack menu features n’duja, olive tapenade and padrón peppers: 3 points
Men’s toilets do not smell of urinal cakes: 1 point
Men’s toilets look clean: 2 points
Men’s toilets actually are clean: 3 points
Men’s toilets have hand lotion in little squirty bottles by the sink: 5 points

Chaos defrost

Lo and behold.

The time of the end is nigh.

Though you may thinketh long and hard about the answer,

You know nothing in life has ever prepared you for the force of the

It might defrost your chicken pasta bake.

It might defrost your hat or the gloves under the radiator.

Could it be that you call your father and he’s feeling a little warmer than usual, but not too warm in that the main power of the microwave was used? Could it be?

Once that button is pressed, who knows what will happen. Nay nonny no nay, never touch that button.

Specs offender

A few weeks ago I set a little quiz, with pictures of my trying on a range of spectacles, in an attempt to make light of my ongoing ocular deterioration.

Nobody had a go at guessing which ones I would choose, but the answer is these ones, and to thrill and delight you further I am pleased to now present a fashion shoot in which I demonstrate everything my new glasses can do.

It’s official. Now I’m on the bandwagon, spectacles are the new rock and roll.

Never mind Ian, am I losing MY mind?

Most days, when I’m not at work, I take the dog for a walk, and most of the time we go to the same place, which is some woods near us. I’ve written about them before – I like walking in woods, the dog likes having lots of space to run around and bark at squirrels, and they are full of intriguing military wreckage.

A couple of weeks ago I suddenly stopped in my tracks. Following a path through the trees that I follow every single time I go there – let’s say every other day of my life, on average – I saw something I had never noticed before. Can you see it?

About fifteen feet to the left of me, fifteen feet away from a place I walk over a hundred times a year with my eyes wide open, was something I had literally never seen before. A whacking great big concrete pylon.

You literally can’t miss it. It’s huge. I suppose it’s the same colour as a tree and about the same size as the tree trunks around here, but even so, I might miss it once but I don’t see how I’ve missed it every day since 2023.

It looks like it’s been there for decades. It looks like something from the 1940s that’s been disused since before I was born, slowly being forgotten in the depths of the woods.

But I can’t help wondering if that’s true. Has it really been there all along? Or has someone just put it there in the last month or so? Are they trying to mess with my head? Is it me they’re targeting? Is this something I have genuinely never noticed in all this time? Can it be true? Am I losing my mind?

Phrase phase competition – March

This time I tried much harder. Promise.

Another month in the pot (?), another round of potential life-changing phrases to waft past your glorious eye holes. I can see that you’re all gleaming and desperate to know what’s what. You can guarantee that whatever I’ve got, it won’t be handed to you crimsonly, that’s for sure.

Could you be anymore excited? I doubt it. Here’s five more word lines to baffle your friends and influence your peers with:

Control Alt Discreet! – something to whisper when you’re trying to keep a low profile and someone accidentally steps on a clown horn
You got your set squares all mixed up, Sigmund – catchy catchphrase for mid-tier US sitcom. Laughter track provided where required
Smift me all the way to the bank – a made up word handily inserted into a sentence most people use on a daily basis. You can decide what it actually means
May angels lead you in and devils drag you out again – cool guy phrase for when you’re about to blow some mother away, possibly at the end of a film
Fox me up, fox me RIGHT up – a solid exclamation for when your friends decide to drag you on a night out to cheer you up and you want to look your best

As we can all agree, the calibre of this month is a hundred times better than February. I believe I’m on a bit of a roll and I still have a few tasty morsels put aside for April, you lucky, lucky people.

(Although between you and I, the word ‘grapefruit’ snuck its way into another one of these for some reason. What is it with me and grapefruit?)

As always, if you have any of your own suggestions send them my way and I’ll consider both it and you.