Mr & Mrs

Jo tugged at my arm excitedly. “Look!” she whispered.

I’d spotted the woman as we emerged from the hotel reception. A dark-haired, sullen, pouty, predatory type dressed in dark brown and standing with her back to the grey-haired man loading luggage into the boot of a small saloon car. I hadn’t given the couple a second glance.

“It’s Mel Gibson”, she hissed. I looked back. He was much shorter than I’d expected, but the face was unmistakable. There was Braveheart, slamming down the boot lid as his new Russian girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva slinked into the passenger seat.




I can understand why celebrities like the Post Ranch Inn, a modest title for one of the most exclusive hideaways in California. Set high on the clifftops of Big Sur, sixty miles of scary hairpin bends away from any sort of town, the hotel is a collection of secluded chalets carved into the hillside. From the outside they look like little hobbit homes with grass roofs; inside, walls of glass display an expanse of Pacific Ocean a thousand feet below. Without television, internet, mobile phones or children, it’s more rustic than luxurious. New age music plays from the stereo – pan pipes and piano evoking opulence and exotic spa treatments. Perfect for a honeymoon, it’s evidently also a celebrity love nest.

“I know, let’s ask him if he wants to do a reality series,” Jo said suddenly as we walked up the hill towards our infinity pool jacuzzi. “He needs rehabilitating after his anti-semitic outburst in Malibu – tell him I’m a Jewish television producer.” I think she was only half joking.

Both Jo’s parents are Jewish, and our wedding had been held in the garden of their home. This was nothing like my previous experiences: the Tibetan Buddhist ceremony set in the Himalayas, or the Church of England affair, complete with bishop. Our ceremony was performed by Cantor Yonah Kliger of the Emanuel Temple in Beverly Hills, synagogue to the stars. A delightful man, who has been Jo’s close friend for nearly twenty years, Yonah also has the most beautiful singing voice, which is why people like Steven Spielberg book him for their children’s bar-mitvahs.

I liked the way the cantor does all the singing – no communal grunting through unfamiliar hymns, the hundred or so guests simply enjoying the sea view and the romance as Jo and I plighted our troth under the chuppah – symbol of our home – with my two sons as best man and “ringbearer”.
It was a moving, intimate wedding and, as it will undoubtedly be my last, I was determined to enjoy every moment. I loved the unfamiliar rituals: Jo circling me seven times, the stamping on the glass, baby Izzy waving at the crowd with a tiny yamacha perched on her head, and the laughter and tears as Jo and I read out the vows we’d written ourselves.


Jo looked so breathtakingly beautiful I think in the heat of the moment I even vowed to obey her – but as I’ve been doing that for the past six years I guess it won’t make too much of a difference back home.

After all that excitement, the honeymoon hotel was a moment of tranquility on the way to the Napa Valley for some wine tasting and fine dining with my divorce lawyer Gary and his wife. Although the legal fees in my last protacted settlement can’t have come close to Mel Gibson’s £640 million divorce from the mother of his seven children, Gary and I became very good friends during our three-year battle.

At The French Laundry, said by some to be America’s finest restaurant, somewhere around the eighth course I toasted Gary and formally discharged him from service.

“I no longer need a divorce lawyer — you’re fired.” “L’chaim!”, he said, raising his glass: “To Life!”.

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Drama In Dana Point

It’s been an emotional couple of weeks.

Weddings are supposed to be stressful affairs, but Jo and I have been fortunate. Instead of the customary panic with caterers and table plans, we’ve quietly enjoyed our Northumbrian summer while the real pressure lay with our generous hosts, my future (now present) in-laws. They’re a delightful, warm couple living in an opulent gated community overlooking the sea in Southern California.

Nothing much happens in Dana Point. The local paper, the Orange County Register, must have the most bored crime reporter in America. “Thousands attend food and fun fest”, declared its front page the day we arrived, referring not to our forthcoming wedding, but to the Orange International Street Fair. On the inside pages, a short paragraph about an unidentified homeless man found dead in nearby marshes (“Police do not believe the death to be suspicious”) was eclipsed by reports of charity fund-raising events. The community is a million miles away from the fires belching black smoke into the atmosphere on the other side of Los Angeles. Here the air is cooler, the sky always blue.

The Pines scarcely blinked when the Gutteridges descended on them: baby Izzy, my boisterous children, and their 88-year-old grandmother. We’re not exactly the quietest of families, but they welcomed us with open arms.

However I think the stress of the occasion finally got to my father-in-law the first night we all got together. He’d commandeered a local Italian restaurant and, inspired by several glasses of Merlot, stood up and made a moving speech welcoming the union of our two large families. Like a scene from The Godfather, his tears flowed with the red wine as he sat down to appreciative applause.

Unfortunately the occasion must have been a little too much for him. His eyes closed and we all watched transfixed as, in agonisingly slow motion, his head lowered itself onto my mother’s chest. She scarcely blinked, but, with calm English aplomb, gently turned to the side, thereby allowing the head to continue its journey downwards into a plate of warm spaghetti. It was a momentous sight.

Jo, of course, was mortified, and immediately ordered me to carry her father to the car and drive him home. It was there that the drama really started. Declaring himself perfectly fit, he stood up, whereupon his legs crumpled, he fell forward and demolished a valuable antique coffee table, then lay moaning on the floor.

Not sure whether her father was injured or dying, Jo dialed 911 and within minutes the sleeping neighbourhood was woken to the sound of fire engines and ambulances. I counted 11 paramedics in the room as they thoroughly checked their patient, then pronounced a good night’s sleep as the best cure for what they politely diagnosed as an allergic reaction to the wine.

The following morning Billy was utterly remorseful. He needn't have been. Generous and open to a fault, we love Billy and I'm proud to have him as a father-in-law, even with his head in the spaghetti. He and his lovely wife Lisa gave us the wedding of our dreams, for which we're truly grateful. More of which later. Whether Dana Point has recovered from either event yet is another matter.

All the excitement must have rubbed off on the rest of the town, for the following morning my son and I were calmly collecting our suits from the dry cleaners when we heard gunshots, the screeching of tyres, and more than a dozen police cars surrounded the motel across the street. Within a few minutes we were in the middle of a scene from CSI. A police helicopter circled overhead, a fat detective with a loud Hawaiian shirt barked orders at officers with fearsome-looking rifles. The Orange County Register reported next day that a man, upset over a breakup with his girlfriend, had opened fire at nothing in particular from his motel room. Now that kind of thing doesn’t happen too often in Morpeth.

After that, the wedding itself was comparatively calm: a warm, loving family occasion with the sun setting on the sea behind us, and a honeymoon shared with my divorce lawyer and Mel Gibson - really (see the next post).

In Sickness and In Wealth

On the first morning of my new job in California, the head of HR came into my gleaming office with a shopping list.

What sort of dental cover did I require? How many of my children needed insurance? My job status brought top-of-the-range medical cover, but did I want any extras? Prescription glasses? Chiropractors? I could even set aside a proportion of my salary towards additional “uninsurable” costs, like therapy, or the cost of babysitting. They’d send me a credit card and I could buy whatever I wanted, tax-free.

This was an eye-opener. I’d expected the system to work a bit like private medical insurance in the UK, where you pay an annual premium and they give you a list of what’s not covered and which hospitals you can’t stay in. In Britain, if you’re lucky and your employer pays the bill, you’re taxed on value of the benefit. By contrast, in America it’s a highly sophisticated, complex and expensive industry. In the US the number of insurance administrators and advisors comes close to the number of doctors.

With half a dozen insurance cards stowed safely in my wallet in case I was run over by a bus, I felt secure in the arms of the best system in the world: for those in the system. A feeling not enjoyed by those 47 million Americans who rely on the public hospitals, Medicare (for the elderly) and Medicaid (for the poor). Obama’s dilemma is how to enfranchise the 47 million without lowering the excellent healthcare standards of the comfortably insured.

The republican scaremongers are using our antiquated NHS system to beat Obama’s reforms. I shouldn’t have thought for one moment that his administration was considering using the NHS as a model for US healthcare. There’s much that’s good about the different systems but they are just that: completely different.

When Joanna first came to the UK, she had a blocked sinus that was causing her incredible pain. “How do I find an Ear Nose and Throat specialist?” she asked, picking up the Yellow Pages. “You don’t,” I said, and rang the local GP in Hampstead. “Come on down,” said the chirpy receptionist, and twenty minutes later Jo walked out of the surgery with a prescription and a huge smile on her face. “They said it was free – what amazing service”, she said and has been hooked on the NHS ever since. She excitedly rang her girlfriends in LA to tell them that the day after our baby was born the wonderful GP in our village trekked out to the house unannounced to introduce herself, followed by a number of healthcare visitors.

But when it came to the pregnancy and birth, Jo opted for the private route. You see, in the US you expect a completely different level of service. The thought of antenatal appointments with a succession of complete strangers and delivery by an unknown midwife without the skills and training of a surgeon filled Jo with horror. Sure, it kind of works over here, and most people are happy enough because they know no better. In America you choose your own consultant who sees you right through your pregnancy, and then personally delivers your child.

In my experience, the country with the best and most equitable system is France. Like America, it operates on a private but insured system. Patients choose their own physicians who in turn have autonomy over their own medical decisions. It’s all paid for by a combination of public and private insurance, however basic insurance is compulsory and universal. There’s no wasteful system of GP referrals, no waiting lists and minimal bureaucracy. It costs far less than the American system, but a lot more than ours. My hunch is that Obama will plump for the French model; shame we can’t afford to do the same.

Howay The Lads

On Saturday night BBC1 found itself with a real scoop. For the first time a major network was broadcasting a football manager’s team talk live at half time. The fact that it was in the middle of Newcastle United’s opening game in the Championship made it even more exciting.

Except that, sadly, the team wasn’t there. Alan Shearer was in the commentary box, meticulously unpicking the failings of our team’s first half performance. Bright, attacking football was giving the team good possession, but they were one-nil down because nobody was finishing the job. My namesake Mr Gutierrez was tearing up the left wing and then lobbing poor crosses to nobody. Why, suggested Shearer, don’t our midfielders go up to help out?

I wouldn’t have thought they had BBC1 on in the team dressing room, but thankfully a few minutes later the opposition goalmouth was full of yellow and orange shirts (that’s our ghastly new away strip). Kevin Nolan passed the ball to Damien Duff, who in turn passed it to the back of the net. Told you so, said Shearer, as 1700 travelling supporters went wild. The manager-in-waiting, like the great statesman he is, politely waiting for the team to be sold so he might be hired back to finish the job he started last season, was auditioning for the role in front of millions of viewers. Goodness knows what West Bromwich supporters must have thought of such unashamed BBC bias.

What is it with Mike Ashley’s fear of selling? Earlier in the week the Office of Fair Trading referred his company Sports Direct to the Competition Commission for failing to sell some stores. Don’t they realise there’s a bit of a monopoly going on here in Newcastle as well? We only have one football club to support (sorry, Mackems and Smoggies, after 50 years, a transfer of my allegiance is never going to happen). The damage caused by all this indecision is not just to the club: it generates gloom across the entire region. If yesterday’s rumours are true, and Ashley has decided not to sell and instead install David O’Leary as manager, then that’s fine by me. Please just get on with it: it’s the uncertainty that’s killing us.

Mind you, I’ll say one thing for our current demise: I’ll probably have a better view of the action at the first home game next weekend. As I moved back to Tyneside mid-season a couple of years and five managers ago, I could only get season tickets in the corner near the goalmouth. You needed binoculars or an earpiece tuned to local radio to find out what was happening at the other end. But tickets are like gold dust and I was just pleased to be part of the crowd.

So a few months ago, more in hope than expectation, I wrote to the club to see if there was a chance of moving closer to the halfway line. The day after the deadline for renewals I had a phone call from a nice lady in the box office. “About your request to move seats,” she said wearily. The voice didn’t sound optimistic and my heart sank. “Well, I do have some nearer the centre – in fact they’re right in the middle”. “You mean at the back?” I suggested warily. There was a pause, and I immediately understood why she might be a little stressed. “Well, to be honest, you can have almost any row you want. How about second from the front?”

The fans have voted with their wallets. Nice one. But if next week there’s black and white smoke coming from St James Park and we finally have an owner and a manager, you can be sure the place will be packed and the crowd cheering as loudly as ever.

Stormy Weather

This morning a man in the Meteorological Office in Bracknell is sitting in front of his weather charts with a smug grin on his face. As the rest of us wait gloomily for the next downpour to wipe out the cricket at Edgbaston, or gaze out at the rust forming on our shiny new barbecues, he’s positively beaming.

Only he and I know why he’s so happy. You see, like me he’s invested in a holiday home in England. Not for himself to enjoy – he has more sense than to risk the English weather for his own vacation. He rents it out to those optimistic enough to believe that England can still produce the long hot summers we read about as children. Earlier this year, as the recession bit, his holiday let bookings fell off the cliff along with the value of his property. So I reckon he panicked. Over a cup of strong-to-gale-force coffee in the Met Office canteen, he thought up a wonderful wheeze.

“Let’s announce a long-range weather forecast for the summer”. “That’s impossible”, said Tomasz Shufflepants (a strange name for a British weather forecaster, I know, but his real surname is even weirder). “Nobody can say what the weather is going to be like that far ahead, not even with our squillion pound new computer.” “It’s hard enough predicting the weather for this afternoon”, added Rob McElwee, with that mysterious stare he thinks female viewers interpret as enigmatic charm. “You know how we play spin the coin for next week’s forecast?”, chirped up little Dan Corbett, “We could do the same for August”. “Who cares about the summer?” added Tomasz. “It’s always wet in England. Even worse than Poland”.

“Ah, that’s where you’re wrong”, said our man with the holiday home. “What do you think the odds are on a some sunshine in August?” he asked. “A tiny bit better than fifty-fifty, I suppose”, conceded Shufflepants. “Exactly: it’s odds-on, then”. “Well they’re not very good odds”. “Perhaps, but so long as we warn there may be 'heavy downpours at times', we should be covered".

So it was that on 30th April 2009 our Met Office published its famous press release that began: ‘The coming summer is odds on for a barbecue summer’. The following week, I had a flood of enquiries for my holiday home, Barnhill House: the whole of August was sold out within days. Thanks, Met Office. And commiserations to my clients who moved in this weekend to yet another downpour.

Of course I’ve no evidence whatsoever to support this outrageous conspiracy theory but it’s hard to imagine why else the Met Office would have made such a rash announcement about something so clearly unpredictable. Unless, perhaps, someone there has shares in B&Q, whose sales of barbecues have gone through the roof this year. Or maybe one of the forecasters writes cookery books on the side. I’ve been given several “Summer Grilling” books this year and there’s a whole pile lying remaindered in a bin in my local bookshop. Sometimes I open the pages just to slaver over the photographs and imagine the smells that should be emanating from my new patio, built in response to Met Office optimism. Jo and I even got our lovely Californian garden furniture out of storage, dusted it off and waited.

We’re still waiting, along with Alan, our farmer neighbour, who is looking for three consecutive days of rain-free summer to crop our hayfield. Otherwise it will go for silage and the alpacas in the next village will go hungry. But I’ve told him not to worry, because the Met Office has told me exactly what the weather will be like over the next few weeks. They absolutely, confidently guarantee it will be warmish and fairly sunny every single day for the next month. Unless, of course, it rains.

The F-Word again

When Jo mentioned the F-word, I felt a surge of pride. “I’ve got flu,” she said.

I confess I couldn’t stop myself. “How exciting – you’re the first person we know who’s got it”.

Swine flu is the latest must-have: I couldn’t believe our luck. This pandemic that’s been hyped throughout the media has actually reached our little community. Even here in deepest rural Northumberland we’ve managed to get the latest big thing.

Jo had been feeling pretty lousy all week, but she’d only gone to the GP to take Izzy for her six-month-old checkup. Izzy was fine (16 pounds and giggling), but the GP said that Jo had a temperature, achy limbs and a sore throat. Flu.

“But it’s not swine flu”, Jo went on. “How do they know?” I said, trying to hide my disappointment. “She just knows: she’s a doctor. It’s ordinary flu and you have to look after Izzy and be nice to me for a week”. “Did they give you Tamiflu?” I asked, hoping to salvage something from the setback. “No, I don’t need it. You’ve just got to bring me meals in bed, keep the kitchen clean and change all the nappies, even the pooey ones.” This real flu sounded much less interesting than the pig version.

In the interests of journalistic research, I checked out Jo’s symptoms with the new National Pandemic Flu Service. Its website, which received 9.3million hits per hour when it first went online, is efficient, easy to use and alarming.

Was Jo any of the following: “Unresponsive or unconscious, floppy, limp or difficult to wake?” If it had been about me, I’m quite sure Jo would have ticked the YES box. “Drooling excessively?” That’s me too, when I’m unresponsive, floppy, limp and difficult to wake: classic symptoms of too much red wine, not flu.

“Is she having a fit?”, the website went on. I looked at Jo, happily singing “The wheels on the bus” with Izzy guffawing on her knee and ticked the NO box. That’s a relief, the website said, you don’t need an emergency ambulance.

I answered all the other questions to the best of my ability. Sure enough, Jo has flu and, because there was no stopping the website once it got going, we now have an (unnecessary) prescription for Tamiflu. Presumably she is also a national swine flu statistic, one of the 100,000 who were supposed to have contracted it last week. But she doesn’t actually have swine flu, just boring old “you do the nappies for a week” flu. This didn’t make her feel any better though, poor thing with her aches and pains and stuffed up nose. So I felt for the hapless Labour candidate in the Norwich North by-election, who missed his own defeat because of swine flu and sent his wife to face the music. Mind you, it would have cleared up pretty quickly if he’d won.

Predictably the political parties are trying to mutate this pandemic to their own ends. Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Flu Secretary, claims the Government’s “dithering” has left the NHS unable to cope with the hysteria: “there won’t be enough intensive care beds to deal with demand when the virus spreads”. It’s precisely this kind of scaremongering that caused the “pandemi-onium” in the first place.

You can’t help but be confused by the conflicting messages. On the one hand, we're told that in a fortnight’s time 100,000 people will be catching it every day, and 60,000 may even die. On the other hand, it’s evident this strain is so mild most people will just stay at home and watch England winning the Ashes. Even though, like Jo, you’ll feel pretty awful, you’ll be happily cheering from your armchair. Unless Flintoff catches swine flu: now that really would be a national catastrophe.

Follow-up from the last Post

My regular followers (I use the term in its technical, geeky blogspeak sense, not to imply evangelistic fervour) will know that I write a regular column for The Journal, a daily newspaper published in the North East.

Yesterday I told the story (embellished further in the post below) of my encounter with three diet-busting restaurants in the space of one week. What was supposed to be a jocular meander through my culinary guilt turned into a rather mordant, even truculent attack on one of our great northern eating institutions, Seaham Hall's White Room restaurant. I concluded that, despite its Michelin star, it has, quite simply, gone off.

In today's Journal my fellow columnist Keith Hann, who has been the victim of quite a few of my posts in the past, decided to base his column on mine. Here's an extract:

Few things are better calculated to lift the heart on a Monday morning than the emergence of a new North East winner. Though in truth what grabbed my attention in yesterday’s paper was not so much the Government’s carefully stage-managed leak about the expansion at Nissan as the unveiling on this page of our very own Michael Winner, Tom Gutteridge.

First there was his remarkably acerbic restaurant review, closely mirroring Mr Winner’s weekly contributions to the Sunday Times. Part of this at least earned a smug nod of agreement since, not so long ago, when I was lamenting the demise of GNER’s excellent restaurant cars, Tom sent me a spirited defence of the maintained quality and superior convenience of the National Express at-seat service. I was glad to read that he now agrees with me.

Always a generous host, Tom was once kind enough to treat Mrs Hann and me to one of those South Indian meals about which he wrote so enthusiastically yesterday, and it was indeed delicious. However, it seems only fair to add a warning that this cuisine can have less than desirable after-effects for some of us. I struggle to think of a way of describing these without causing offence, but if the “save the planet” cash-in merchants had erected one of their turbines in our vicinity, the Hann family could probably have powered a reasonably sized village for the next 24 hours.

But all this pales into insignificance compared with the statement that Tom is soon to get married wearing a cream suit a size too small for him. Not so much Four Weddings and a Funeral, then, as a comedy remake of Saturday Night Fever with Mel Smith in the title role, in the regrettable absence of Benny Hill. Time to think again, surely. Let me put on record that I am more than willing to lend Tom the black morning coat I bought in John Blades’ retirement sale for my own wedding. This would at least have the virtues of being appropriate wear for an Englishman and just about fitting him.

Now I had hoped that my review have been closer to the style of A.A. Gill than the proudly pompous Mr Winner. Michael once invited me for lunch at his favourite restaurant: some steak and oyster place in a smart street. I'm glad he paid, because it's certainly not my kind of food.

Behind the bluster I find Winner quite a jolly chap. However, I wonder why he mentions his money all the time, which he does, even with other wealthy people, at every opportunity. What innate insecurity makes a man presumably perfectly comfortable in his own wealth boast incessantly about the size of his mansion? Presumably his inability to take himself any more seriously than his readers is a virtue - it probably equates to a kind of perverse modesty. Maybe deep down lies a lonely, vulnerable man. But the success (or perserverance) of Winner's Sunday Times column is at least something to aspire to.

Not Benny Hill's dress sense, though. How can I politely tell Mr Hann that I would no more wear his morning coat to a wedding in 90 degree heat in California than I would go naked to the Savoy? Even if Mr Winner joined me. In my cream suit I suspect I shall be somewhat overdressed. Besides, I could always have worn my own morning coat, complete with tails and gold lining, which I purchased for my last wedding. I suppose I should have dusted it down and joined the other penguins at Keith's own wedding, which I described in detail in one of my earlier posts. But I was afraid the suit might have brought him bad luck -- my own marriage ended after just a couple of months, making it a very expensive bit of schmutter indeed. Besides, the new and last Mrs Gutteridge knows I carry far too much baggage with me already than to add to the load with a piece of old-fashioned, fusty clothing I know she would utterly detest. Rightly.

A Tale of Failed Diets

Despite the fact that in five week’s time I’m due to get married in a sleek cream suit still a size too small for me, this week I broke my diet three times. I blame the rain: our summer of sun morphed into dismal October, so Jo and I decided to try out some local restaurants to warm ourselves up. First we went to Southern India: or at least to Newcastle’s quayside.

Now I know a bit about South Indian food. I cooked my first proper curry on a deserted beach in Goa, years before the place had been ruined by hotels and tourists. My girlfriend, shortly to become wife, and I parked up our VW camper van for a few weeks solitude and befriended a young man climbing a tree for coconuts. He introduced us to his family, and his mother taught me the secrets of the Goan fish curry: the dish that smiles at you with its coconut milk before its spices blow your head off.

The principal reason for heading South was to visit an army base. We couldn’t resist the polite invitation from the commander of the Marathas, India’s most famous light infantry regiment. Jilly’s father had served as a junior officer in India during the war and he’d written to his old regiment saying that as we were touring the country, could we please pop in for a cup of tea. The result was a two thousand mile detour.

Imagine the scene: battered old camper van arrives at the smart security gates; inside, two hippy Brits, one with a scraggy beard and torn jeans: neither had touched a bath for two months. The sentry snaps to attention; a bugle sounds. The base commander, resplendent in full dress uniform, marches up and ushers us into an open topped jeep. Jilly and I look at each other in amazement.

A military band leads out the entire regiment and, for a glorious moment, I find out what it’s like to be the Queen as we take the salute. It’s only when the commandant addresses the troops that the penny drops. “We are so honoured to have the daughter of Colonel Barber with us today”. “Colonel? I thought he was only a Captain”, I hiss beneath my breath. “He was”. Captain Cecil Carrington Barber was a delightful man, but colonel-in-chief he most certainly wasn't. Nevertheless the chap in charge droned on about the brave colonel's extraordinary leadership qualities.

I thought about halting the proceedings and to explain the mistaken identity. But I thought it would have been rather mean to let them down, particularly as they'd made such an effort. Particularly after they led us to a maginificent banquet in the officer’s mess. “Our chef is from Kerala”, they proudly tell us. Kerala: God’s own country, the lushest, most educated state in India. It also has the best food – fish cooked in tamarind, coconut and the freshest vegetables.

And, amazingly, we have our own Kerala in Newcastle. The Tyne doesn't have a great deal of culinary expertise to recommend it. Great ingredients, mediocre cooks. But if you're ever in town and you want to know what good curry really tastes like, go to Rasa and order their kingfish and tamarind curry with a side portion of black-eyed beans simmered in yoghurt. Rasa trains its chefs in its own cookery academy back in India and, so long as you order fish and vegetables, you won't be disappointed. It’s simply the best in town. Rasa, run by a delightful chap from Kerala called Das (who I believe had a hand in Jamie Oliver's wedding feast) has several branches in London. And, for some bizarre reason, Newcastle. Thank God.

By contrast, my two other diet-breaking diversions were less successful. I’d been warned about National Express and I can now confirm the catering on the East Coast line has been truly wrecked. Tough little steak sandwiches are no substitute for fresh meals in the restaurant car. I feel sorry for the catering staff, who used to be so proud of their culinary offerings at 125 miles per hour. The smoked fish used to come from Robsons of Craster, the beef and lamb was Northumbrian, and everything was cooked fresh and served with panache and good silver. Now there's no reason to go by train. It's usually twice the price of the plane, and you can't even enjoy a leisurely meal. The sooner National Express is stripped of its franchise the better. From now on it's Terminal 5 and Gordon Ramsay's Plane Food for me.

But Seaham Hall’s restaurant still has a Michelin star, so I was looking forward justifying the damage to my waistline by an evening of exquisite flavours and skilled cooking. I last went two years ago with a former Michelin inspector and we both reckoned it was on its way to its second star.

How have the mighty fallen. I don’t expect to pay £80 a head for a square of overcooked salmon the size of a thumbnail in a menu of bland, uninspired predictability. From the rubbish-strewn entrance to the over-familiar service, Seaham seems to have lost its way. What a letdown.

We went on Saturday for Joey's birthday. I was positively willing it to be great (not just because of the price: it was a rare baby-free evening and I really wanted Jo to enjoy it). We went for the tasting menu and course after course relentlessly arrived. Now I go to Michelin rated restaurants to be blown away by imagination and skill. I've flown to Rome to enjoy Heinz Beck's architectural creations; next month Joey and I are driving 8 hours to visit America's finest, The French Laundry in Napa. I'd go anywhere for a good meal. But not to Seaham. I don't think there was a thing on the menu I couldn't have rustled up at home without a recipe book. All beautifully presented, of course. But all somehow...dull.

It wasn't just the unmemorable food. As we drove in, there were plastic bags strewn over the drive (a fox had probably been in the bins the previous night and noone had bothered to pick them up); the place looks somehow tatty compared to when I last saw it: even the garden is lazily pruned rather than artistically pampered. Worst, the head waiter came up and interrogated every new arrival. "How has your day been?". The man couldn't be satisfied with "Fine, thanks": he had to ask us what we'd been doing. I felt like a six year old being forced to be polite to an annoying aunt. And if I he'd uttered one more "That will be no problem at all" in response to a request for something on the menu I think I'd have hit him with glass vase thing which substituted the need for fresh flowers (presumably because the gardener hadn't bothered to grow any). Seaham Hall changed hands since we last went. To the wrong hands, no doubt.

Ah well, vent over. Back to the diet.

Nice People Don't Have A Prayer

Reality television hit a new low this week. I’m not referring to Big Brother where its dismal ratings seem to be coinciding with the predicted victory of a housemate aptly named Halfwit. No, to view the ultimate in questionable taste you need to travel to Istanbul where they’ve just announced the latest Turkish take on celebrity gameshows. Forget Strictly Come Dancing or Dancing on Ice, the new must-have format has the catchy title Penitents Compete. It features a priest, a rabbi, an imam and a Buddhist monk competing against each other to convert ten atheists.

Hitherto Turkey has not been known for its innovative television concepts, but this latest idea has taken the art form to a new level. The prize for any convert is an all-expenses-paid pilgrimage to Mecca, Jerusalem or Tibet, depending on which religion they’ve chosen. Plus, as the broadcaster proudly points out, at stake is the greatest prize ever offered on a gameshow: belief in God.

In order to avoid cheating (and who wouldn’t be tempted to fake atheism to win a free holiday in a Tibetan monastery), all the contestants are vetted by a “commission of theologians”. Perhaps the producers of Big Brother could steal the idea to lift their flagging fortunes: though I doubt the level of debate could match the current erudite banter between those intellectual heavyweights Lesbian Lisa and glamourpuss Sophie “Dogface” Reade.

Sadly the producers of the Turkish show have missed the underlying point of reality shows: they mustn’t reflect reality at all, or they won’t work. We had no idea what we’d bitten off when a few years ago my development team dreamed up a show called Paradise Hotel and I sold it to a big American network. The idea was that eleven young people go into the most glamorous “hotel” in the world and get bored. That was about it. It was the number one hit on American television all summer long.

There was a twist, of course: all the “guests” hated each other. Now if you go on holiday, chances are you go with some friends you quite like and hope you’re sharing a resort with like-minded people. However the reality show works the other way round. Producers cast people whom they suspect will either detest or want to have sex with each other from the outset. That’s the entire premise of Big Brother, Wife Swap and all the others. The worse thing any would-be contestant can say at the audition is “I get on with people”. The right attitude is “I’m great – anyone who gets in my way will get trampled on”.

It’s all a conspiracy, of course. There is an unholy alliance between the participants and producers of reality shows, from game shows to castaways on desert islands. We need conflict, passion and drama to make ratings: they want to be famous. The rubbish singers on the X-Factor auditions know they’re rubbish, but they want to get on telly, even to have Cowell mock them. So, stick by the rules, play the part you’ve been chosen for and you’ll do well. And the more controversial you are, the more column inches you’ll get in The Sun.

Herein lies the fundamental flaw in the Turkish format. The show will only work if someone gets converted – that must be what the producers are praying for. But if the participants really are atheists, as the broadcaster insists, then the last thing they will want is God, and the lure of a pilgrimage to Mecca is scarcely an incentive. So the only good contestant for the producers will be exactly the sort of person the “commission of theologians” will be trying to weed out. It’ll be interesting to see the ratings.

Mind you, if it’s a hit, next year we’ll all be glued to “Britain’s Got God”. Starring Reverend Simon Cowell of course.

RIP King of Pop

OK, I admit it. I never met Michael Jackson. I don’t think I know anyone who’s ever met Michael Jackson. This appears to put me in a minority.

All weekend anybody who had ever been on the same planet as the infamous singer has been pontificating on “the Michael I knew”. From spoonbenders to bodyguards, nannies to speechwriters (“Well, I’m not actually his speechwriter”, said one interviewee on Radio Four, “but I did help him write one in 2001”): everyone has been wheeled out for a quote.

All the comments, articles and interviews from these “close friends” comprise a very confusing jigsaw. Try and put the pieces together, you’d suspect none of them knew him at all: was he genius or monster, abused or abuser, addict or prude, billionaire or bankrupt, loner or partygoer, creepy or friendly, genuine or plastic, homosexual or husband, black or white? It’s as if scores of different Michael Jacksons have emerged from the woodwork over the last three days: the public can now pick and mix their own version from the various options on offer.

I felt for the poor obituary producers on the 24-hour news channels, desperately trying to sum up the man in just 45 seconds. In fact, you had to feel sorry for all conventional journalists on Thursday night. If the death of Jackson spelt the end of the 1980s (as one correspondent described it yesterday), the nature of his passing was pure 2009. How very typical of the man to be so of the moment that the news came not from any conventional source, but posted on the web. For nearly two hours the celebrity gossip site TMZ doggedly insisted he was dead, while the combined weight of all the news organisations hedged its bets by having him in a coma, or just “in a very bad way”. Millions were twittering RIPs long before the television stations confirmed it, despite all their news helicopters humming over the hospital.

It’s done wonders for his career, of course. Shares in the Jackson brand have soared, and millions of dollars worth of his debts will be paid off over the next few weeks as we rush to buy his albums. The suddenness of his passing, the continuing suspicion surrounding the drugs and the doctors, has probably achieved more record sales than any number of concerts arranged for his ill-conceived comeback.

In many ways, his death was the least unexpected of any personality. Hounded to death by debts, drugs and the vampire-like cravings of his hangers-on, his destruction was bound to happen sooner or later. It was the only conceivable release from his sad, unavoidable decline. Even in the unlikely event that the London concerts would have taken place, they would almost certainly have exposed an old, sick, spent, fallen idol. Now, by dying in such appropriately mysterious circumstances, he joins the mythical legends of his own fantasies: Elvis, Marilyn, Princess Diana, James Dean. It’s exactly what he would have wanted: pure, distilled publicity.

In life, the world wasn’t sure how to read him: paedophile or pitiful, fragile or failure; now, in death, words like icon and legend are being thrown around. For me, I just loved the music. But it’s a tabloid newspaper’s dream, one that they’ve been rehearsing for years, as the world’s obsession with popular trash culture has grown. Forget Jade Goody, Katie and Peter’s marriage: this story is the real deal. It’s going to run and run – no need for Max Clifford this time.

It’s as if Jackson, through the grave, has finally taken control of his own publicity machine. As each interview and counterclaim adds to the enigma, Jackson is writing his own legend. It’s his final masterpiece and we’re all obsessed with it.

Decision Time

My life turned full circle last week when I found myself sleeping on an inflatable mattress on the floor of my empty London house.

Before any friends or family fear the worst, let me reassure them that Jo and I have had no falling out. I’d gone to inspect the house after my tenant, a high-earning American banker, became the latest victim of the credit crunch. Over the three years of his tenancy my life has been transformed. New house, new wife, new child, and, thanks to Northumberland, a whole new world. Now the house is empty, there’s an opportunity to move back south again. Decision time.

The last time I’d rolled out the mattress it was in very different circumstances. Jo was still living in Los Angeles and I had arrived in London alone, with only my dog for company. There wasn’t a stick of furniture in the house. Tess and I sat on the floor and looked at each other. We clearly had to make a decision about the future. So we did what anyone would do in a moment of crisis: we headed for the pub.

There was a terrible old boozer down the road called the Wells Tavern, which I remembered for its warm beer and curled up sandwiches of dubious provenance. But at least it was local. As we turned the corner I blinked. It had become a gastropub. The sister of London’s leading food critic Fay Maschler had bought the place and transformed it. Mercifully, despite its comfy sofas and smart décor, it was also dog friendly. Tess wagged her way onto one of the sofas and I ordered fillet steak, a glass of good red wine and a bowl of water. Things were looking up.

I borrowed the manager’s pen and, on the back of the menu, began a list of all the things I’d wanted to do in my life but which thirty years of ambition had postponed. Spend more time with my children, write a novel, revisit my old haunts on Tyneside, see Cuba, lose weight – the list took two large glasses to complete. Right at the top was something I’d been promising myself for more than twenty years: a cookery course in Italy. Sadly my ex-wives had never been into cooking, but I really wanted to make my own pasta and learn the secrets of those powerful authentic sauces.

I left the pub determined to research some Italian cookery schools. Outside, Tess headed for the nearest tree. As I waited for her, I spotted a small handwritten notice pinned to the wall outside the pub. “Arte Culinaria”, it read: Italian Cookery School near Venice. The serendipity was the trigger I needed and it changed my life.

When I rang the number, the owner Antonella sounded more surprised than I was. Yes, there were vacancies. In fact I could come whenever I liked: the notice had only gone up that morning. How many people are you? I paused. “I’ll call you back.”

There was only one person I knew that enjoyed cooking as much as I did. It took two days to persuade Jo to fly from California to join me in Venice and we’ve been together ever since.

Back at the Wells Tavern last Friday, I read in the local paper about the latest spate of muggings in the neighbourhood. Fashion designer Nicole Farhi, who lives close by, had been nearly strangled by two men high on drugs; 18 other women had been attacked in just 2 months. There were stories of murders and gridlocked roads, poor air quality and an acute shortage of places in local schools. I thought of where we now live – clear roads, clean skies and pretty much crime-free. Decision time? We wouldn’t move back south for all the gastropubs in the world.

Challenging Anneka

Despite the hype, it seems that all that twitters is not gold. Last week researchers from Harvard Business School reported that most people who sign up to the social networking site Twitter tweet once and never again.

For those unfamiliar with the jargon, Twitter is a way of communicating with other people by sending little messages (called “tweets”) via mobile phone or internet. Theoretically it enables you to tell your friends what you’re doing at any moment, seek advice and generally stay in touch. However it turns out that 90% of all tweets are made by just 10% of the users. Which suggests that most tweets are either exchanges between twitter geeks (presumably called tweeks) or are one-way messages sent out by publicity seekers like Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross: missives to the masses.

It’s a shame, as someone suggested to me the other day that I should use Twitter to reinvent the old Challenge Anneka format. Just tweet the need, and thousands of volunteers would turn up with hammers and nails and do the job for you. If only life were so simple.

It’s exactly 20 years ago since I first produced that iconic series. “Making the impossible possible using the power of television”, I wrote in the publicity blurb for Radio Times. You may remember the concept: a charity or community gives a challenge to a blonde lady in a tight jumpsuit. Armed with just a mobile phone, a truck and a buggy, she has to complete the challenge with no money but loads of public goodwill (or so the blurb went on).

Our first task was set by the Mayor of Weymouth. The town’s most famous landmark was carved into the limestone hillside: a 300-foot tall white horse with King George III sitting on its back. However two centuries of Dorset rain had reduced it to a dull shade of grey. Our challenge was to restore it by sunset. Easy, we thought: just send out a call and hundreds of good citizens will show up with shovels.

We went first to BBC Radio Weymouth, and Anneka made an impassioned appeal. Researchers manned the phone lines, waiting for the deluge. The deluge came alright: torrential rain greeted us as we left the radio station with just seven names on the back of a BBC envelope, including the phone number of the local scout troupe. We hoped that a few more listeners were secretly putting on their wellies and overalls.

On top of Osmington Hill, we couldn’t see the horse through the driving sleet. Standing on the king’s head, you could just about make out his horse’s ears in the mist below. We decided to head for Portland to cadge some fresh limestone from the quarry; Anneka’s buggy roared out of the back of her truck, and promptly got stuck in the mud.

Two hours later the production team, 11 boy scouts and a few helpers from the local Lions Club were trying to shovel 200 tons of Portland Stone down the side of the hill. As if to taunt us, minutes before our deadline the skies cleared and a glorious sunset revealed a shiny white king sitting on a dirty brown horse – as if the animal, like us, was swimming in mud.

Our abject failure made the series a huge hit, of course: viewers assumed that every challenge was similarly vulnerable. But for every subsequent episode over the next six years we took no chances. Weeks before each “challenge” we lined up materials and workforces, helpfully donated by companies in exchange for a shot of their logo on a sweat-laden T-shirt during the show.

So, even if Twitter transforms itself into the social communications site it aims to be, I still doubt it could ever make the impossible possible. Unless, maybe, we Challenge Stephen Fry.

The Finger of Fate

My heart goes out to those who loved the victims of flight AF 447. The passing of someone close is always painful; but sudden and unexplained death hits you with a blow so severe, the scars can last for years. Nothing demonstrates the fragility and transience of life more than the unexpected severance of the link between two close human beings. It’s so unfair: why now, and why us?

I was 20 when I received a note from the university porter asking me to call home. It was 9pm, just a few days before Christmas. My mother was calm on the phone. “I have some bad news. Your father…”, then the voice breaking into anguished fragments: “Bertie’s dead: Oh Tom, please come home.”

It was already snowing as I crank-started my 1955 Ford Popular. Only two of its three gears worked: it popped out of third when it went over a bump, giving the car a top speed of 28 miles per hour. There was no heater and just a single vacuum powered windscreen wiper that had wheezed its final wipe months before. The two little eyeball headlights mounted over the front wheels glowed in proportion to the speed of the car, and so made no impression on the freezing fog that enveloped us as we struggled over the moors. With one frozen hand stuck through the window to wipe ice from the windscreen, the other holding the gearstick in place, I gripped the steering wheel between my knees. It took five hours to make the 90 miles to Tynemouth.

I arrived at 3am. It was home, but somehow unfamiliar: my mother white with fatigue and tears, the door to the family bedroom firmly closed. I can still recall the next few days as images from a half-remembered film: my half-brother, 17 years my senior, arriving from London absolutely distraught; Mum bravely cooking Christmas lunch for us all as if nothing had happened – we ate, but tasted nothing; the black suits at the funeral, with me shaking hands and thanking but unable to cry, even when the earth began to cover the brass label on the coffin lid. The shock of sudden separation was such that I couldn’t mourn my father’s passing until 12 years later when I returned to North Shields cemetery and without a guide walked through the sea of thousands of similar headstones directly to his name. And there I finally dissolved with heaving sobs.

In contrast to Dad’s departure, Mum has been confidently predicting her own imminent demise for the last 20 years. Her first scheduled death was on February 16th 1995. We rang her the following morning to ask her how it went. She brushed it off as a miscalculation by a gypsy. Since then I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to go over to her house to be cheerfully shown where her will is kept, just in case. One year my children and I, together with my son’s embarrassed new girlfriend, were taken to Hampstead Heath, where Mum first courted my father, to help her choose the specific oak sapling under which her ashes were to be scattered. My youngest daughter looked up at her with a confused face. "Granny, how will your big body get under that little tree?"

12 years later Mum, at 88, is looking fitter and happier than ever. A gifted portrait painter, with a brain sharper than Jeremy Paxman’s, she undoubtedly will outlive all her subjects, and probably me too.

Mum, the great survivor, has often witnessed the arbitrary finger of Fate. Many of her friends perished in the London Blitz and elsewhere during the War. Watching the D-Day commemoration, I thought of the thousands selected to lose their lives, and of those who survived to tell their heroic tale. Gratitude for life is a hard thing to express. But living every day as if it’s your last is probably one way to say thank you.

Cowell's Got Talent

Lunching on some deliciously authentic Italian pizza in Ago, Robert de Niro’s restaurant in West Hollywood, Simon Cowell was telling me his latest idea. “Tom”, he said, “there are so many talented people we can’t put on American Idol because they’re not young singers. I’d like to do a talent show, and find people who can do amazing things. Fat, weird, old: most of them will be rubbish, but we might find some really outstanding acts.”

That was in 2004. It’s nice to be in at the start of something big, even though I can claim not a jot of credit for what became Britain’s Got Talent. I told Simon his concept sounded a bit like The Gong Show, a 1970s American comedy series in which very bad acts tried to survive the gongs of three celebrity judges. After lunch I stupidly forgot about the idea, but Simon is relentlessly focused, particularly if he spots a gap in the market.

The gestation took quite a time. The following year he registered the name “Paul O’Grady’s Got Talent”, which was to be a new ITV vehicle for the comedian until he fell out with the network and the project was shelved. Eventually Simon sold America’s Got Talent to NBC, and it wasn’t until 2007 that it came back across the Atlantic. Thank goodness it did, for otherwise there’d have been nothing to talk about at dinner parties for the past two months.

You’ve got to hand it to Cowell: he certainly has his finger on the pulse of popular taste. It’s not always tasteful, but it sure is popular, and on Saturday night at least 15 million viewers saw the downfall of Susan Boyle. No longer dressed in drab curtain material, she stood scowling in a shiny silver backcloth stolen from a Glasgow nightclub and repeated her reedy rendition of the wretched “I Dreamed A Dream”. I told you she was just an average singer when I wrote about her first performance and on Saturday night the viewers confirmed it with their votes.

During the show I must have heard the phrase “tonight someone’s life will be changed forever” a dozen times. I do hope that’s the case for Ms Boyle. Once her inevitable album has been remaindered, I trust her life as a celebrity will be transformed back into a calmer, more appropriate existence. She should never have been uprooted from her Scottish village: she has neither voice, personality nor stability to face a career in showbiz.

Meanwhile I hope we’ll be seeing a lot more of the two real stars of the show, the winning act Diversity’s gifted choreographer who rejoices in the name of Ashley Banjo, and the wonderful singer Shaheen Jafargholi, whom I predict will emerge as the true winner once puberty and a few years have matured him. It’s a shame the producers put Shaheen on so early in the proceedings. The number of viewers always increases dramatically through a final, so it’s not surprising he was pipped to the winner’s podium (the last three acts got the most votes).

But then, that’s just my opinion. I’m pleased the judges got it spectacularly wrong. Piers Morgan told Diversity that “I thought Flawless (the other street dance act) just edged you”, and Amanda Holden, dressed as Jessica Rabbit, condescendingly told them there might be “room for you” in the world of showbusiness. In fact I predict they’ll bring the house down at the Royal Variety Performance. Nevertheless, is it just me, but isn’t it time we saw some real professional talent back on British television? I’m getting a bit fed up with all these amateurs. It’s a bit like the programme’s sponsors, Domino’s Pizza: OK for a takeaway, but not nearly as delicious as the real thing.

BBC Old-News

Enough is enough. If I see one more headline about MPs using my money to clear moats or buy duck islands or dog food I think I’ll scream.

Sure, I’ve been as hooked on this comedy as anyone. I must have played Anthony Steen’s hilariously inappropriate “my very, very large house looks like Balmoral” interview a dozen times; it beats any stand-up routine. And I’m thrilled that supercilious twits like him have been forced out. But I really think we’ve exhausted this drama now. Everyone knows that the system is screwed; we all agree that there needs to be an election to clear these jokers out and start again; we also agree that the election mustn’t be too soon, otherwise we’ll have a hung parliament stacked with BNP fascists and Esther Rantzen. Or Susan Boyle might end up prime minister.

But we knew all this a week ago. So why is the BBC still following the Telegraph’s agenda, rather than creating its own? I’ve not seen a proper piece of investigative journalism about the expenses story. Like, what exactly is the House of Commons Fees Office? Who are these people who encouraged our hapless representatives to claim for curtains and champagne flutes? Let’s name the real culprits. Or let’s have a proper debate about how parliamentary democracy should be restructured once all this nonsense is over.

Am I the only one concerned about the BBC’s editorial priorities? We’ve grown used to their laziness with local news: how often does ‘Look North’ lead with stories broken by that morning’s The Journal? But we expect better skills from the huge team at TV Centre. Yesterday morning, for example, BBC bulletins led on a News of the World “exclusive” about a bribed chauffeur who showed reporters around the royal garage. I agree it’s a story worth covering, but don’t aren’t there more pressing things going on in the world to lead your bulletin?

Like in Pakistan, for instance. Right now, nearly 2 million human beings are desperately trying to find shelter in 45°C heat. They’ve have been displaced by the Pakistani army’s belated battle with the Taliban in Swat province, a humanitarian catastrophe of momentous proportions that’s been unfolding over the last three weeks – precisely the period where we’ve been preoccupied with revelations about MPs’ expenses. Yet there’s been scant coverage either in BBC News bulletins or on the Today programme.

The cosmopolitanism of BBC News was what used to make it so special. Now I fear it’s veering towards the American model. Tune into any American television news bulletin and I guarantee you will be given only local stories (or, occasionally, one about an American who’s been killed overseas). The country with the greatest influence outside its own borders has the most parochial journalism. I suspect it’s one of the reasons why some Americans sound so utterly self-obsessed when they’re abroad: the world outside their 50 states is, quite simply, foreign.

Why do I believe the situation in Pakistan is marginally more important than lax security at Buckingham Palace? Precisely 18 months ago in this blog I listed the ten biggest hypothetical threats facing the West. Top of the list was: "In Pakistan President Musharraf is replaced by a weak civilian government unable to contain the Taliban. That regime is quickly overthrown by religious extremists who immediately turn round the nuclear missiles currently pointing at Delhi and Mumbai and aim them straight at Tel Aviv."

That apocalyptic scenario is getting closer by the day. There’s no evidence that the Pakistani army is actually winning their war, and Taliban fighters are now within 100 miles of the nuclear red button in Islamabad. Yet our most influential news organisation leads on a tabloid newspaper stunt.

How Not to Look After a Baby

What could be simpler than looking after a baby? Mothers have it so easy: they take six months off work and all they have to do is stick a bottle into an open mouth every few hours, change the occasional nappy, and devour all the fashion magazines as baby sleeps. So why does Jo keep saying she’s exhausted and never has time for herself? I think I now know the answer.

It was her Mother's Day present. Now I know that we in Britain have ours in March, but Jo is American, and perversely the U.S. honored (sic!) its mothers last week. So I took Jo and Izzy for a short break to my favourite hotel, which has just been proclaimed Britain’s Best Spa by Tatler magazine.

Babington House in Somerset is not only the most comfortable hotel I know, it’s also the most child friendly. We booked a family room, which in most hotels spells a bunk bed in the corner. Our suite had a large bedroom with a giant four poster, a sunken bath big enough for a football team, a luxurious sitting room with an enormous flatscreen TV and a separate room for baby with full changing facilities. As soon as we arrived, Jo headed to the spa for some pampering. Meanwhile I looked forward to a cold beer from the fridge, a good laugh at the latest MPs’ expense claims on the BBC News, and some quality time with my daughter. That was the plan, anyway.

As the door closed, Izzy looked at me and beamed. I stuck out my tongue and she giggled. This will be a piece of cake, I thought; time for a quick drink before the six o’clock bottle. As I opened the minibar, the smile inverted to a pout. A wail reverberated round the room. "Sshh...", I went. "Hang on a minute Izzy". Sadly there’s no reasoning with a four-month-old. Her face turned purple and a piercing scream shook the hotel’s foundations. "OK, you win".

The process of decanting a carton of Cow & Gate baby milk seems simple enough. Nestling on my elbow, Izzy chewed impatiently on a dummy as she watched me attempt to perform it one-handed. When the dummy fell on the floor as I tried to read the instructions for the bottle warmer, the screams rang out with such desperation I feared staff would suspect a murder.

Eight ounces later, an uneasy calm resumed. I switched on the TV and began the burping process. Suddenly she exploded. A cascade of warm milk flowed down my cashmere jumper onto my new loafers. As we rushed, too late, for the bib, another dollop landed on the sofa.

Then, just as some TV pundit was discussing the rank smell of corruption emanating from the House of Commons, Izzy’s body arched and the air turned foul. "Oh no, not now; please wait till Mummy gets back", I pleaded. Izzy giggled as a volcano erupted inside her. The entire room stank of rotting baby. As we rushed to the changing table, her smiling end projected a white trail of curdled milk onto the plush grey carpet.

No cotton pad invented could cope with what lay beneath her designer outfit. The Pampers had leaked. Casting her clothes into two piles on the floor – one for the barely salvageable, the other for those beyond redemption – I did my best with an entire packet of wet wipes, then headed for the bathroom. There was a big showerhead in the middle of the ceiling and a Victorian hipbath in the corner; I couldn't work out how to turn either into a baby bath so we made do with the sink. Then I realised I’d forgotten the baby shampoo. I squeezed some hotel shower gel into the water and hoped her skin wouldn’t wrinkle up. The foam went everywhere; Izzy excitedly splashed it round the room.

On the television they were showing the aftermath of some Iraqi car bomb. The scene resembled our hotel suite. I was still clearing up an hour later as Jo walked through the door. “How was it?” she asked. I slumped onto the sofa to hide the damp patch. “Fine – no problems.”

So I’m converted. Jo can have as many luxury breaks as she likes. Working’s easier than babies any day.

Passing the Parcel

I doubt Les Dennis expected to be performing inside a refrigerator.

The Liverpudlian entertainer and actor very generously agreed to come up to Newcastle to help us with a pilot we were making for a new game show. I don’t think the man who presented Family Fortunes on ITV for 15 years anticipated he would get all the trappings of star status: champagne in the dressing room, autograph hunters and paparazzi at the door. But at the very least I guess he expected a studio. Sadly, as regular visitors to this blog will know, Newcastle doesn’t have a television studio anymore. So we built our own out of hardboard and bits of cloth.

Fred Hoult kindly lent us one of his spare buildings in Hoults Yard. It was the old railway station where materials used to be brought in for the Maling Pottery. Paddy, Jess and I put up bits of green curtain and bought some hardboard and green paint from Jewsons. The result: an instant “green screen” studio (even if Paddy walked round in green socks for the entire day). Unfortunately it was a barn of a place and there was no heating or dressing room; it was unbearably cold. And some people think television is a glamorous industry.

The whole exercise was a study in north east ingenuity and goodwill. The show, called Pass the Parcel, was a collaboration between ourselves and three other north east media companies: advertising agency Different, post-production facility Dene Films and animation house Qurios. Local cameraman Chris Sutcliffe generously donated his talents to light and film it. The final product was an extraordinary transformation, which shows what can be done when local businesses get together and pool their talents. It had music, laughter, applause, an enormous colourful set, really funny cartoon “parcels”, and a fantastic network presenter.

It was great to see Les Dennis in action again. Although he’s spent the last few years as a straight actor, it took him just three minutes to switch back into gameshow mode. He’s still one of the best in the business. As everything was on green screen (that is, added in post-production) he had to imagine the scenery, the cartoons, even the contestants. We also put in a big enthusiastic studio audience behind him with which he seemed to have an uncanny rapport. Sadly we had no means of warming them, or him, up, so Les’s performance was all the more impressive as he stood for hours frozen to the concrete floor.

Last week I took the end result to show the BBC in London. The controller of entertainment said it was one of the cleverest showreels he’d seen: deserved praise for a great collaborative effort. Whether he commissions a series or not remains to be seen. And even if he does, we’d need a proper studio to shoot it in, otherwise, sadly, we’ll all be working outside the region again.
Les arrived with giant Edwardian sideburns and a moustache, the products of J.B. Priestley’s comedy When We Are Married, which he’s currently touring round the country. Getting married is just one of the things Les and I have in common, as we discovered when we swapped notes over an excellent lunch at the Hotel du Vin. We’re the same age, have both been through the tabloid mangle, and now each of us has a wonderful real, grounded partner and a new baby daughter. We’re both tying the knot later this year. I last met Les ten years ago, when the tabloids were having their fill of Amanda Holden’s infidelity. Then he looked a haunted man, and I felt desperately sorry for him. Now he’s confident and happy, and, like me, relishing the new life that true love and a baby guarantees. Thanks Les, and fingers crossed we’ll be working together again soon.

Tying the Knot

The tickets for our wedding arrived this morning. Not for the event itself – it’s a strictly invitation-only affair – but for the flights taking my entire family, including my 88 year old Mother and baby Izzy, to Los Angeles for the ceremony in August.

To be honest, Joanna and I weren’t planning to risk the stability of our relationship by tying the knot. Having lived together in loved-up harmony for the past five or so years, neither of us wanted to break the equilibrium by exchanging vows. We are already very good at ‘love’ and ‘honour’ and I’ve long resigned myself to ‘obey’; but our friends convinced us that, apart from the arrival of Izzy, there was the “till death do us part” issue: namely, inheritance tax. Apparently wives are exempt from this final grasp of the taxman, whereas live-in partners bear the full burden.

So the invitations are at the printers and the caterer booked. This is the first of my four weddings that I won’t be paying for, thanks to the very kind generosity of my wonderful future in-laws, who are throwing it at their house in Laguna Beach. We’re both looking forward to what will be a joyous informal celebration with friends and family.

It’ll be a sharp contrast to my previous three ceremonies. Last week I found a photograph of my first wife and me at our Tibetan wedding on top of a mountain in the Himalayas with white silk scarves round our necks sitting tanked up with rice beer next to a picture of the Dalai Lama. Exactly one year later we legalized the event in Wandsworth Registry Office. The registrar sounded exactly like Alan Whicker, with a slow nasal drawl, pausing portentously between each syllable: “Do you soh-lem-ly sweeaar?” he whined, reducing us and our half dozen witnesses to helpless giggles.

Then there was the state occasion. Greg Dyke wrote about it in his autobiography. It started out as a quiet country wedding. 350 guests and a quarter of a million pounds later, the firework display nearly set fire to the village. We even had a bishop. The congregation was full of soap stars and celebrity chefs. One well-known actress sat down in her pew next to her agent. “How many photographs did they take of you?” he whispered. “Two or three”, she said. “Get back outside and go round again,” he hissed. And she did. Marco Pierre White cooked the wedding breakfast as a present.

My final wedding will be at sunset overlooking the sea in Jo’s parents’ back garden, with only family and friends, including my divorce lawyer. In fact he and his wife are joining us on our honeymoon. Not because he’s anticipating starting work straight after the wedding (which he pretty much did last time), but because my last divorce was drawn out over so many years, he and I have become very good friends. Maybe his wedding gift will be a pre-nuptial agreement.

Knowing that Jo wouldn’t receive her protection against tax until after the ceremony, last week I decided to protect her position by redrafting my Will. My lawyer gave me a nasty shock. Apparently in the almost certain event I die before her, the new Mrs Gutteridge won’t be entitled to the inheritance tax waiver. Despite forsaking the Californian sunshine forever for the interminable Northumbrian winters and bearing a British child, the taxman insists her legal domicile will always be America. That means that when I go, Izzy’s family home might have to be sold to pay the tax. For the first time in my life I have found a reason to vote Tory: that is, unless Mr Cameron reneges on his promise to increase the IHT allowance.

Mind you, we’re still getting married anyway – we’ve already got the plane tickets.

The End of New Labour

For once in my life, I wish I could see the future.

Watching Izzy opening her eyes this morning at the start of her 17th week of breathing, first smiling and then giggling as she focuses on my face (the source of her amusement may possibly be down to the absurd way my hair stands on end after a night on the pillow – her Dad currently bears a remarkable resemblance to Ken Dodd), I asked myself what sort of world she faces. Yesterday her grandmother, now a sprightly 88, told me she was extremely worried about the baby’s future; 11 years ago, when my last child was born, she had no such qualms. In those days the world was somehow so certain; now, nothing looks safe.

The other day some students asked me what would be the best part of the television industry for them to join when they leave university. I replied honestly that I hadn’t the slightest clue; already my industry resembles nothing I’m familiar with. The perfect storm of digital television, the internet and the recession has wiped the slate clean; what happens next is anyone’s guess.

So it is with politics. This week New Labour was finally buried by Alistair Darling. In fact, as a political construct, New Labour physically died some while ago, killed not by Brown or Blair or any individual human act, but by the demise of the very circumstances which brought it into life: the opportunities for low taxation and raised public expenditure offered by a strong, growing economy. The recession has washed away the soil in which the New Labour harvest was happily growing and which allowed it to survive scandal and sleaze through three consecutive seasons.

In politics the death of one ideology normally coincides with the rise of another. Not this time. The funeral of New Labour coincided with the cremation of the Tories’ own response to it. Cameron’s policies were based on the very same assumptions as Labour’s and so they too have gone up in smoke. Continuous growth was assured, boom and bust was over; the only argument between the parties was how to divide the spoils. Now politicians, economists, bankers and the electorate are gazing at the same blank sheet of paper. Where do we go from here?

Labour is probably back where it started, in the unelectable doldrums. You can already see the Tory posters for the next election: Labour is the party of higher taxes. But what is the alternative? Whichever government comes into power will be forced to make such savage spending cuts, such difficult decisions about taxation, the world in which Izzy learns to read and write, cut her teeth and sing her first song will be so different from her brother’s that I can’t begin to imagine it.

So how worried should I be about this new world? Well, in one sense I like the blank sheet. Anything is possible if we grasp the future and I do believe the door has opened for a new kind of politics and a new conviction. America already has Obama: this Wednesday sees the end of his first 100 days in power and I swear the air wafting across the Atlantic is now smelling sweeter. In the UK, we too need our messiah, and I doubt very much that someone as out of touch with the real world as David Cameron is going to fill those shoes.

I certainly hope, for Izzy’s sake, that we find that leader. I also hope my innocent wide-eyed daughter doesn’t grow up to see the tired old order, in which the politicians’ policies are based not on conviction but on whatever they think is needed to win over the voters. Or am I, like Ken Dodd, looking at things just a little too optimistically?

I Dreamed A Dream

By this morning the video of Susan Boyle singing I Dreamed A Dream will have been viewed over 40 million times.

You’ve got to hand it to the Britain’s Got Talent team: this was great television, edited like a romantic film, with quirky “comedy” music as she ate her sandwiches and confessed she’d never been kissed and then a huge instrumental climax from the real Les Miserables for her standing ovation. But even without the manipulative editing it was still genuinely touching.

Susan’s voice is nothing special: there are thousands of amateur singers out there with similar renditions of that tired old standard. What Susan Boyle was all about was little to do with talent and everything to do with the audience itself. Close your eyes and think of a beautiful 25 year old and you’ll notice wavering and strained notes. Open them again and see Susan Boyle’s innocent, overweight squashed face and terrible gold lace dress, and the contrast overwhelms your judgment.

This isn’t about her; it’s about us. It’s about the ironic wolf whistles as she comes on stage, and Cowell’s rude eye-rolling when she says she’s 47, and the embarrassed giggling as she rolls her hips and says she wants to be Elaine Paige: Yeah, right, we all say, and wait for her to be shot down. Then she sings, and it’s a wonderful moment, a Paul Potts moment, when the fat man sings and wins. It’s moving because, as Amanda Holden said, “everybody was against you”. The audience had already damned Susan for being ugly and overweight and for presumptuously coming onto its stage. But wow, the circus freak can actually sing, so we’ll layer the soundtrack, cut to a standing ovation, and make the viewers cry. Pure Hollywood schmaltz, and it worked.

The problem is, what should the producers do next? Allow her to carry on wearing those ghastly dresses and no makeup for the rest of the series? Or do they engineer a “swan” moment, and reveal her, eyebrows plucked, straight from the plastic surgeon? If they do, presumably the joke won’t work anymore, so will her voice then be any more special than the others? I guess they’ll keep her as she is until the Final. But won’t that be just as cynical and manipulative?

I encountered a similar problem with my own Susan Boyle moment. A few years ago, I produced a series called Star for a Night. On the first audition day my researchers came rushing in: I had to hear this girl. Hannah Morris was about fifteen, with buckteeth and glasses, nervously clutching the sheet music of My Heart Will Go On from 'Titanic'. She was so tiny; I looked at her in disbelief. Her voice brought the house down and she won the show. But when we came to the final “Best of...” programme at the end of the final series, Hannah had got herself contact lenses and a proper hairstyle. She had a recording contract and was no longer the geeky schoolgirl. Trouble was, she was now nothing special at all.

Sometimes preconceptions work in reverse. We were auditioning in Bristol when, amongst the I Dreamed a Dream wannabes (God, how we grew to hate that track) was a sweet little 14-year-old from Devon with cascading blonde curls.

“I’d like to sing You Make me Feel like a Natural Woman by Aretha Franklin”, she whispered. Our jaws dropped open. If ever there were a mismatch it was this pretty child and that adult song. Then the music started and out came the deep voice of a blues singer. We all cried. The girl was called Joss Stoker, a name she later changed to Joss Stone.

I wish Susan Boyle the best of luck for her future, but exactly whom the producers decide she should turn into for that future, now that’s a huge dilemma.

Generation Gap

“The crying’s not right yet”, warns Hayley, as she presses “Play”. On the video screen, a young girl is sitting hunched up in the corner of a room. The shadow of a man appears through the window. The girl shakes and starts to cry. It’s an animation; not terribly sophisticated, but it works, and the work is all Hayley’s.

I’m in a classroom in an inner-city college where a group of students are showing me their course projects. This is a group of “unteachables”: kids of around 16 who’ve virtually dropped out of conventional education, the product of urban decay, family upheaval, in some cases addiction and abuse. Many are still illiterate and innumerate. The GCSE system has passed them by, but I’m astonished by what they’ve achieved. In just a few weeks they’ve learnt how to make proper “Flash” animations, with music, sound effects and neat little title sequences with their names proudly emblazoned on the front; they’ve planned, storyboarded, designed, filmed and edited – techniques which in the professional world would take scores of trained experts.

The results are pretty dark. One boy shows me a gang of skeletons catching and mugging a little old lady. The film is half finished. “So, does the old lady win in the end, then?”, I ask naively, expecting her to turn into Supergran. “No, she dies”, comes the response. “Perhaps she could turn into a skeleton as well and then get her own back?” I suggest. “No, she just dies”. Not exactly a Hollywood ending. There’s no artifice with these children; a psychologist would have a field day. Unequipped with the filters that sophisticated artists employ to process their feelings, these trampled lives come straight through the screen. Using the power of film to look straight into the soul.

Over the past few months I’ve been travelling round the North’s universities and colleges looking at how we teach our media students. What’s really amazes me is not how good these kids are, but how little I’ve been taught myself. When I joined the television industry, you needed a degree at a top university before you could be considered for a training course. Producers were the ideas people and, although some of us were directors as well, we relied on other people trained in craft skills to operate our cameras, edit our films, produce our animations and so on. Nowadays we’re in the world of what we call “user generated content” (or, YouTube). Our teenagers do the work of whole movie studios and put them straight on the web. Most of us over the age of 30 are left completely in the dark.

Back at Teesside University, where occasionally I appear under the grand title of Visiting Professor of Media, I recount this story to one of my colleagues. How can I have spent a lifetime getting to the top of my profession and not learnt any of the basic media techniques that a group of deprived 16 year olds have perfected? We’ll teach you, he says. Immediately I snap up the offer and list the skills I never learned that are now standard issue to all media students: editing, graphic design, website building, computer game design and, of course, Flash animation. He sets about organising some training for me and any other dinosaurs I care to invite.

Last Friday in Newcastle I had lunch with some of the North East’s top television producers. When I told them about my proposed re-education plan everyone round the table jumped at the chance. The fightback has begun; old grey dogs are learning new tricks; keeping up with the children is our new watchword. Next we’ll be learning how to use the remote control on our televisions. On second thoughts, that might be a step too far.

Saving The Children

[Madonna's application to adopt a second child from Malawi has been turned down]

It was the rocking that disturbed us most. Until she was almost a teenager Anya rocked herself to sleep, just as she had always done in the orphanage. Anya was one of 150,000 victims of the Ceausescu regime. The Romanian dictator tried to spread communism by artificially increasing the population. He banned abortion and the use of contraceptives and gave financial incentives to anyone with more than four children. The compliant but impoverished population could not cope and dispatched their extra offspring to state-built orphanages. There the children received little education and no love; the healthy were prepared for Ceausescu’s special police; the remainder were left to rot.

These weren’t orphanages at all: most of the children had parents or close relatives who simply couldn’t provide for their huge families. When the dictator was overthrown in 1989, it left the country with a huge problem.

In 1990 I took our programme Challenge Anneka to Romania. I will never forget the sights and sounds of the “orphanage” we chose to help. Or the smell. An intense stench of faeces, urine and decay, which overpowered you at the door. Three stories high, with a dank rat-infested basement, this was home to 650 of Ceausescu’s children. About a dozen staff tried to care for them without resources or training. There were no toys, playrooms, lights or heating, no working toilets and just one shower room with cold water. The kitchen reeked of rotting food and damp.

Each room contained twenty tiny rusting cots, and in each cot lay two children. Some were just skeletal babies, lying in urine-soaked filthy grey bedding; others were much older. Most of the children were too weak to cry; the older ones just sat and rocked. Rats ran around freely. In ten days we transformed its facilities, but the children remained.

Anya’s orphanage wasn’t as bad as the one we converted for the programme. It had toilets and heating. There was a swing in the yard outside. But there was no disguising the rocking. All the children did it.

Our motive for adopting wasn’t altruistic. My wife had discovered we couldn’t have more children, but we still wanted a larger family. Too old to adopt in the UK, we tried Columbia, but found we didn’t qualify. Romania matched our desire for a child with a child’s desperate need for love.

Madonna will almost certainly win her appeal to adopt baby “Mercy” later this week. She probably has the necessary resources and influence to sway the appeals procedure. However I admire Malawi’s concern for protocol. For in Romania, as a result of our television programme and others about the situation, the floodgates opened and thousands of British and American families tried to adopt, not because they genuinely wanted more children, but because of sympathy for the children they’d seen on television. As a result greed and corruption created a commercial international adoption industry, and that is one reason why Malawi is keen to set hurdles even for someone as altruistic as Madonna.

Adoption is the last, not best solution; communities should be helped to look after and integrate their own. But in our case, in a country riddled with debt and corruption, it was the only way forward for Anya and for us. It was difficult: four years without education, comfort or hugs took their toll on her, emotionally and intellectually. But eventually she grew into a beautiful and confident young woman. She is now 21, and last week started her first paid job.

“Mercy” is lucky – she is young, and, assuming she finds a home quickly, the effects of the institution will be short-lived. It’s a shame her experience of family life will be through nannies and an itinerant lifestyle. The poor child really needs a family, not a rock entourage. But almost anything is better than life in an orphanage.