September 2009 – TheBoyEllis Blog

Scott Mills: Proof I’m Getting Old?

There comes a time in everyone’s life when an overwhelming feeling of ‘oh god, I’m getting old’ begins to surface on a daily basis. Perhaps you struggle to find a town centre pub in which you can enjoy a ‘quiet drink’, maybe the younger guys you work with all suddenly appear to be acting like school kids, that PS3 you bought three years ago suddenly looks far less tempting… for me, it happens every time I tune into Radio One and catch the Scott Mills Show.

The title for this post is perhaps a little harsh. Mills himself is actually tolerable, and at times even marginally amusing. He clearly has a talent for broadcasting which the BBC admire.

The problem with the show are the hangers-on who seem to be a nagging, whining, whooping irritant in the background of almost every radio show these days, bar Chris Moyles’ breakfast jaunt which is genuinely funny. Even Jonathan Ross has one. I’m not sure of his name or what is role is, but he appears to be employed simply to giggle at anything and everything Ross says. Indeed, he ruins what is a pretty good podcast.

Mills’ bunch are something else, though. There’s one who doesn’t talk, which in itself is irritating. Irritating, because we wouldn’t know he was there if they didn’t call him ‘The One That Doesn’t Talk’. I can’t imagine that moniker ever being either funny or informative – two pre-requisites of most radio shows.

Chappers, the sports news reader, was described by my girlfriend recently as ‘slimy’, and that’s a pretty accurate description. Aside from occasionally reading the news, he spends the majority of his time on air laughing almost incoherently at nothing. There are either many cliquey in-jokes between the Mills team, or I’m simply missing the point. We all know Scott Mills is gay, and lots of Chappers’ sniggering can be pinpointed to an underlying acknowledgement of some form of innuendo. This simply isn’t funny, and hearing him faux-giggle himself to death has nearly lost me my car radio on many an occasion.

Last, but by definitely not least, there is a girl called Becky. I have no idea what her role is, but it too consists principally of her constantly laughing at nothing. An atypical posh bird the BBC is adept at employing, her insistent, childish chuckles whenever Scott says something remotely sarcastic or irreverent, are always the cue for me to come to my senses and switch to Radio 2. She is by far the all encompassing reason for my new found hatred of this show.

So, am I simply growing out of this station? Is this a form of entertainment for the new teenage and 20-something generations? I sincerely hope not, as it’s the most vacuous, unintelligible, uninspiring dross I can recall hearing.

Orange Apple

iphone-orange We learn today that Apple has secured a deal with the UK mobile operator, Orange, to supply the iPhone later this year.

It was always clear the iPhone/O2 bubble would burst after a while. It was, after all, excluding a massive proportion of UK mobile users from Apple’s seminal smart phone.

Oddly, this also stifled any attempt Apple may be unsuccessfully concealing for world domination. I was surprised to learn that just 1million people have an iPhone in the UK. I thought it would be a lot more. Indeed it would be a lot more if more than one network were allowed to sell it.

So, great news. Soon, there’ll be more people I can ‘bump’ my phone with to share stuff. More people to help me bore everyone else at parties about how it has changed my life. More people with which to share the short-lived joy of iFart.

But how else does this benefit the existing iPhone user? Well, I, for one, have had my 3G for a while now and come end-of-contract-time, I’ll be looking for a better deal. If O2 had continued to be the sole supplier of the iPhone, I’d have been stuck with them and consequently stuck with their somewhat rigid pricing structure. With Orange on board, competition suddenly comes into play, and that is crucial if us consumers are to be treated fairly.

It’ll be interesting to see what Orange do with regards hardware and tariff pricing, although I predict it will be the latter where the real saving are to be made. Let’s see…

Who is ‘Watching Over Us’, Exactly?

I thought long and hard about writing this piece. Not least because it has been somewhat of a touchy subject for centuries, has started and ended wars, political battles and caused mass acts of terror. I don’t particularly want TheBoyEllis Blog to be the spark that sets off any of those things, although the pitiful average hit rate it receives each week should rest my mind a little.

I remember sitting in a religious education lesson at school and being asked to draw God. The teacher explained this was to be our interpretation of him, whatever that may be. I reached for my pen, opened the dog eared, neglected R.E. lesson notebook and drew Dhalsim from Street Fighter 2. For those that didn’t spend their youth drooling over the seminal beat-em-up in arcades, Dhalsim was a fictional street fighter with extraordinarily stretchy arms and legs. He could punch his opponent in the face whilst standing twenty feet away which made him eminently interesting to a fight-shy 13 year old. He could even spit flames out of his mouth by simply uttering the words: ‘Yoga flame!’. An odd combination, as you wouldn’t normally associate the relaxed practice of yoga with extreme violence. Awesome stuff, nonetheless.

Why I drew him, I’m not entirely sure. It certainly wasn’t my interpretation of God. That would just be silly. I think I drew him because I was simply a bored adolescent who had absolutely no interest in religion. Having never been baptised or brought up to believe in anything other than good manners, it held little resonance with me. The same holds true today.

I fully respect others and their beliefs. If you want to believe in God, that is entirely your business and not something I should comment on.

However, two things have happened recently which have prompted me to revisit the possibility of the big man ‘watching over us all’. And, more than ever, I’m fully confident that he isn’t.

He creates difficult situations and puts us in peril to test us, apparently. If this is true, fine, but why doesn’t he just give us a really hard jigsaw to complete? Or force us to listen to experimental jazz?

I won’t lavish on the events I’m referring to, as that wouldn’t be fair for those involved, but suffice to say my patience has been completely exhausted. I simply can’t believe any single being has our best interests at heart. If anything, this is yet another reason to live every day like it’s my last, a mantra I will certainly obey from here on.