Fags, fame and photoshop

So poor old Kerry Katona has been dropped as the ‘face’ of supermarket chain Iceland has she. Poor love, how’s she going to fuel her drug habit now? I feel another stint in The Priory is on the cards for her any day now.

Having had just 2 run-ins with the police this week, and ‘on the verge of being sectioned’ amid fears over her mental health, the surprise isn’t really that Iceland has finally kicked her to the curb, but that they ever paid her to help sell their frozen pies and chips in the first place.

It says a lot about the power of celebrity endorsement, that a company would ever feel she would actually appeal to the average customer and inspire them to flock to their aisles and fill up their freezers.

I suppose when Kerry was first signed up, she was, on paper at least, the perfect candidate for the job. Riding high on the D list celebrity train, she was cheap and cheerful and had more column inches than the PM and Posh Spice put together. A few years on however, and she’s proved to the world a 1000 times over that she is just the perfect example of the bolshy white trash that now gets paid to scream and swear on TV, and roll around drunk in the gutter. Never mind the fact she must surely have sniffed more Coke up her snout since being signed to Iceland, than all of their customers have managed to buy and drink in a year.

So who is this lovely specimen of trashy tabloid fodder? Nobody really. She’s famous for doing precisely bugger all. Or to put it another way, famous for doing nothing of any real value or importance.

She originally climbed up into the public eye as a member of Atomic Kitten – a girl band that really only made it big once she had left, and her speaking vocals (she never actually sang a note) were taken off the music they released. Not wanting to lose the fading limelight, she quickly married into boy band ‘royalty’, and then of course got divorced. Before the marital sheets could even be washed, she milked her misery for all it was worth, bleating on in a heart-wrenching autobiography about her downtrodden upbringing, broken heart and terribly tragic existence. Well she didn’t actually write it herself – anyone who ever heard her speak would soon realise that – but her picture was on the front cover.

Appearing in as many reality shows as possible, she helped to take TV to an all new level of low, as she smoked and drunk her way through 4 pregnancies, screamed at her husband, neglected her kids and appeared as high as a kite on countless TV shows.

Did I forget to mention she was also given her own column in ‘OK’ magazine – a chance for her to air her views and opinions on her fellow celebrities. Seriously what on earth was the editor thinking? Did they really believe that any reader would really give a sh*t what this woman had to say in her 2 syllable or less weekly drivel?

I think it’s fairly obvious to say that these sort of pointless people really irritate me, but I can’t be the only person fed up with the rich and pandered getting away with bloody murder, just because they live out their life in the press and have Max Clifford on speed dial. Take the once great supermodel Kate Moss. When she is seen out with her child, she’s constantly flapping a cigarette in her face or rolling joints. And when photographed doing drugs a few years back, she merely said she was sorry, and then promptly landed new contracts and went on to double her income for the year.

I don’t think it would be so grating that some people get paid so much to do so little, if they really earned the money they got. But they don’t. With Kate Moss, it’s plain to see that it’s the guys with the airbrush who deserve the big bucks. The retouching must take longer than the original shoot.

The one thing I will say for Kate Moss is that at least she makes me feel pretty good about myself. We’re the same age, give or take a few extra months on her side, yet I don’t have a fraction of the wrinkles she does. So I guess I’m the lucky one really, not having been exposed to 20 years of partying through the night and a diet of lettuce, nicotine and narcotics.

Drunk Aussie booted out of UK

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So Andrew Symonds, the Australian cricketer best known (aside from his skills with a bat and ball) for sporting rather dirty looking dreads and white lipstick, has been sent home from the UK in disgrace.

You have to wonder, when you look at this picture, whether he would have even made it through British customs without a full cavity search, without his cricketing credentials to back him up. He looks to me just the sort of shifty and somewhat arrogant person customs officials would be tripping over each other to inflict some of their ‘I’m having a bad day’ power on.

So anyway. He was banished from Australia’s Twenty20 World Cup squad for an ‘alcohol-related incident’, or, if you take the back-peddling spin doctors eloquent phrasing out of the equation, for turning up for practise half cut.

Apparently he is ‘disappointed and understandably upset’ by what has happened. So he bloody well should be. Here’s a man who is paid large sums of money to play cricket and represent his country. If he can’t do either, because he chooses to drown his cornflakes in Jack Daniels, then he doesn’t deserve a place on the team in the first place.

After all the other stunts he has pulled in recent years, being sent packing with his tail between his legs couldn’t have come a moment to soon for Australian cricket.

During the 2005 Ashes tour he showed up drunk for a one-day game, and was threatened with the sack – an incident that obviously didn’t teach him the error of his ways. He has had to receive counseling after ‘a string of behavioural incidents’, which also led to him being banned from selection for the tour of South Africa. He called New Zealander Brendon McCullum a “lump of s***” on radio, and was fined $4,000 for his troubles.

Last year he was expelled from the team because he went off on a fishing jolly instead of attending a compulsory team meeting, and in November he got into an ‘altercation’ with a patron at a Brisbane hotel.

For crying out loud, he already gets to play a game everyday that he obviously loves, and is paid incredibly well to do so. How many more chances should he get? He can hardly use his job as an excuse for the drinking and bad behaviour. Yes, cricket at this level must be stressful, but this isn’t a reason to act like a complete and utter w*nker. Shouldn’t he be grateful to have the talent to do what he does in the first place, instead of insisting on peeing it up against the nearest wall.

Why are so many sports ‘stars’ allowed to become so much more important than the game itself? Why do they think they can act this way without facing any consequences? He should be permanently booted off the team to make room for someone else who really cares about the game they play.

If a politician started using public money to fund their housing…  oh hang on a minute, that might not be the best example to give… If a doctor kept turning up to work drunk, and beat up every patient he didn’t like the look of, he’d be kicked out of the hopsital before his stethoscope had time to even hit the ground. Now granted a doctors job description may he slightly different to Symonds, but only so far as a doctor saves lives and actually makes a real difference in the world.

When BIG really isn’t beautiful

Some people might have thought that my previous post about parents murdering their kids was a little extreme. And then a story popped up on the world news that backed up everything I had said.

It’s about Leanne Salt. A 24 year old girl who is happily feeding her 8 month old triplets towards a life full of medical problems, and all but giving them a helping hand into an early grave. A girl who should be locked up for the great big helpings of child abuse that she is dishing out to her kids, along side the junk food she’s filling them up on.

Despite the fact that only a moron wouldn’t know better, this 30-stone lump sees nothing wrong with how she is bringing up her triplets. Far from it. She is actually proud of the fact that her babies became card carrying members of the Happy Meal club at just 6 months old.

Refusing to acknowledge that she is doing anything wrong, she believes that because she takes the batter off their fish and chips, she is giving them a healthy diet.

And after all,  as she says, she does feed her babies vegetables every Sunday. Perhaps she believes that an onion ring and a pickled gherkin count towards their 5 a day? Or should that be their 5 (at a push) a month.

Now 8 months old, these poor babies are being fed around 1,249 calories a day, with a diet consisting mainly of junk food, fish and chips, crisps and microwave meals.

Seriously? Is this woman for real?

It goes without saying that such an eating machine has zero respect for her own body, or her diminishing life expectancy, but how can she be so incredibly selfish when it comes to her kids?

And there in lies the problem. As well as being selfish, the girl is obviously plain stupid. Certifiably dumb actually. Devoid of brain cells and missing any sort of solid matter between her ears. After all, anyone who seriously believes that watching what you eat and consuming healthy foods leads to anorexia is one stitch short of a lobotomy.

Her line of reasoning? “I do worry my kids could get picked on if they get fat, but I’d tell them that big is beautiful.“

Yes, that will make them feel so much better when their mother is harpooned in the school car park by Greenpeace. Or when they get diagnosed with diabetes. Or when they drop down from a fatal heart attack as they turn 21.

Of course beauty is very much in eye of the beholder, and big can be beautiful. But there are always exceptions the rule, and this has to be one of them. I don’t know when Miss Salt last looked in a mirror, I suspect it’s been a while, but beautiful is not one of the words that immediately springs to mind.

And that brings me to the question that everyone who has heard about this girl is surely asking themselves. How in God’s name did she even snare anyone mad, brave or drunk enough to impregnate her in the first place? And when she did, presumably with the aid of chloroform, how did the the deed itself (I shudder as I write that) even take place.

Now I’m certainly no physicist, but aren’t there some laws regarding mass, volume, weight and proximity that would have made this nigh on impossible? It would be like trying to mate Dumbo with Mickey Mouse.

So taking the fact that some poor bugger did somehow manage to put 3 buns in her cavernous oven, and then wake up with a hangover from hell and run screaming from the house, how did she even know she was pregnant? Did she wake up one morning and think, that’s odd, my stomach looks slightly swollen today?

Let’s face it, she could have gestated an elephant without attracting any attention. Well apart from the fact by the 9th month she had gained a further 10 stone.

And now for the bit of the story that really makes you believe that the world has gone mad. Being that she was the fattest mother of triplets that medical science had ever clamped eyes on, it took a team of 68 people to deliver her babies, at a cost of £200,000 to the NHS. This included the operating table that had to be specially-built for her Caesarean section.

Well come on, you didn’t think that she was going to have a natural birth did you? All the crow bars in the world and a forklift truck wouldn’t make that a possibility.

Now that she is back at home with her brood and securely wedged into her 5 seater sofa, she is happy to live off benefits with no future plans to ever lift a 20 kg finger and do any work again. After all the poor girl is apparently already too busy to clean, tidy up or prepare proper meals for her children. The family only get dressed to leave the house once a week – so that they can collect her benefits.

And let’s not forget that if the governments latest  hair brained scheme takes off, then one day she’ll also he paid to walk (roll) her kids to school as well.

On the upside, Miss Salt is making some plans for their future. She has decided that she now deserves to be given her own council house, and is completely ready to face the world alone.“I know how to microwave a meal and make up instant mash, so I think we’d all manage.” Stand aside Jamie, the girl’s got your job in the bag.

And what is the shocking truth about this tale of chips and child abuse? This girl is not alone.

A recent survey by the Infant and Toddler Forum found that 29 per cent of children under the age of three ate a takeaway at least once a week, while 23 per cent eat crisps and 16 per cent drink fizzy drinks almost every day.

mindtripping pictures

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I was sent these 2 pictures recently, both of which I have to say were enough to make me do a double take.

The 1st picture makes you wonder what you would do if you opened this bathroom door while drunk, completely hung over or suffering from a bout of vertigo.

The 2nd picture makes you wonder why this image isn’t used as part of every governments anti-smoking campaign..

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Reaching dizzy new heights

For the last three months I have been swimming around underwater, drunk as a skunk and battling a severe case of morning sickness. OK so that’s not strictly true, but I may as well have been as this pretty much sums up how I have been feeling. Everyday I have had to battle with a complete lack of balance and contend with a blinding headache. And these are just two of the perks that you get to experience when suffering (and I don’t use this word lightly) from vertigo.

Vertigo is one of those medical conditions that you probably haven’t even heard of before you get it and have absolutely no idea how horrible it can be to live with until you do. I know that I had always been under the illusion that vertigo was something people only suffered from when they peered down from a tall building, descended down a steep set of stairs or threw themselves off a bridge attached to an elastic band. For the record, that last one does come with it’s own medical condition. It’s called insanity.

It is actually a symptom of a balance disorder, which gives a constant sensation of spinning or whirling and the illusion of movement, when no movement is actually present. An example of this would have been when I sat at the traffic lights the other day and the road in front of me looked as if it were moving towards me at considerable speed. It was quiet a surreal experience and had I not known better I would have sworn that someone had laced my green tea with a hallucinogenic mushroom or two. Throw in some dancing trees and a talking dashboard and the ‘trip’ would have been complete.

This sensation of constant movement is apparently classed as ‘subjective vertigo’. The perception of movement in surrounding objects is called ‘objective vertigo’. What do you know, it’s my lucky day. I seem to have been blessed with both types.

Now I have never had a good sense of balance at the best of times. I am likely to pass out on any fairground ride faster than the ‘Tea Cups’, I feel sick if I towel dry my hair upside and I couldn’t walk in a straight line even if it were 2 feet wide and came with a built in hand rail. So no, having a medical condition that affects balance is never going to be a good thing.

It came on out of the blue, just a week after my husband came out of hospital with his own clot to worry about. After a 3 day imploding headache, the loss of my peripheral vision and no sense of feeling in my hands I decided that I had reached dizzy new heights that I couldn’t deal with anymore. I checked myself into Emergency. One night and 5 different doctors later and the world was still spinning. I was told I was suffering from a migraine and was sent home the next day. 2 days later in a state of desperation I threw myself into my doctor’s chair and begged him to fix me.

30 seconds later he told me what was wrong, handed me a box of tissues and then told me there was nothing he could do. Funny how he knew to give me the tissues first.

Not knowing what had brought it on made it seem even more bizarre. It could have been stress (husband with blood clot – check), some sort of virus, a problem of the inner ear balance mechanisms or even something wrong with my brain. I heard that thought, I do have one. They did an MRI and double checked.

When living in a time where antibiotics are dispensed like Strepsils, it’s rather unsettling to be told that the prescribed remedy for what you have is, wait for it… ‘waiting’. Especially when it can take up to 3 months to go away. Worse still is being told not to get stressed.  Not being able to locate the butter in fridge can make me stressed, what hope did I have of staying calm when I couldn’t even cross a room without drifting off sideways or pick my son up without wanting to throw up all over him.

I left the doctors armed with a boxes of tablets to try and combat the dizziness and nausea. Ironically one of the side effects of the tablet was dizziness. I then went home to lay down and feel incredibly sorry for myself. Had I known back then how long it would last I think I might just have crawled into a hole and lost all will to live.

There are of course lots of suggested alternative cures on the Internet and plenty of books written about how to deal with Vertigo. Somewhere I read that using energy saving light bulbs can make it worse and strawberries can make it better. So I ate several punnets to compensate for all the bulbs that we use in the house and hoped they would cancel each other out.

I found vertigo exercises to try, limited myself to how much I worked everyday and tried to keep as calm and stress free as possible. I found someone to help treat the tight knots in my neck and back and made myself start going to Pilates again. I ruled out the Body Balance and Yoga class as I thought that trying to achieve a ‘Downward Dog’, ‘Tree’ or ‘One legged King Pigeon’ pose probably result in last night’s dinner coming right back out to greet me.

Then last week the whole family came came down with a virus, something that, unpleasant as it was may just have proved to be that proverbial cloud with a silver lining.

If you are eating, please don’t keep reading:

The force with which my Sunday Roast left my stomach, coupled with the piece of chicken that shot out as I blew my nose afterward (disgusting I know, but medically relevant) seemed to unblock my ear and reduce the severity of the vertigo. It has now been 3 days since I stopped popping my pills and (touch wood) I am finally feeling a bit better. Obviously if you find yourself suffering from vertigo, intentionally making yourself sick isn’t a route I would recommend, but on this occasion it seems to have done the trick for me.

So to cut a long story short, if you ever find yourself unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of a bout of vertigo be reassured by the knowledge that as horrible as it is, it will eventually go. Until then, try not to get too stressed, it only makes it worse.

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Sloths, skunks and boozy buses

Here

Here in sunny old WA they have a zero tolerance for both speeding and drink driving. Apparently some of the hoons on the roads haven’t yet been told about this, but for everyone else it’s pretty common knowledge.

When used to nipping down the M4 at 110mph and still have some w****r in a BMW overtake you on the outside lane, when you first arrive in Perth, you will need to keep your foot off the accelerator and and one eye focused on the speedometer at all times.

Speed limits here can seem incredibly slow, particularly when you are late for work, stuck in school run traffic or missing your favourite TV show. When the roads are twice as wide and devoid of any other motorists, it’s even more frustrating. Top speeds on the freeway are set at 100kph. And yes, that would be kilometres and not miles per hour. For those, who like me never mastered beyond their 5 times table, that is only 62mph. Most suburban roads are set at 50kph (31mph) and around “School Zones” at drop off and pick up times it goes down to 40kph (23mph). I personally didn’t know that it was possible to go that slow without actually reversing, but there you go, I’ve tried it and it can be done.

After you’ve been here a while you do stop worrying quite so much about speeding, though perhaps those 2 tickets that I have already accumulated are testament to why that’s probably not wise. Unlike the UK, where by law they have to put out those ever so helpful warning signs before they catch you, here, the police just seem to loiter behind bushes on their ‘I have a shiny blue badge’ power trip with their hand held zappers in tow.

The other thing to be wary of when hitting the road are the infamous Booze Buses. Now here’s a sight to make your heart sink down to the clutch and your hives start breaking out, and that’s just when you’re stone cold sober. A single policeman pulling your car over to the side of the road can make you feel as guilty as sin, the sight of 20 cars laying in wait is enough to make even a tee total nun reach for her rosary.

These booze buses can be laid on for your entertainment anywhere and at any time, be it 7pm on a Monday night or 9am on a Sunday morning. Red and blue flashing lights will bring you round from your driving induced stupor (the one where you can travel for an hour and still not recall any part of the journey). The outside lane will be cordoned off and every car will be squeezed through the inside lane and into the holding zone. As you puff into their magic little ‘DRUNK as a skunk / Has no social life SOBER’ box, you will try and recall every drop of alcohol that has touched your lips in the past week, while desperately trying to look both nonchalant and innocent. If you’re unlucky enough to be so much as 0.05 over the limit you will be kept there and retested later. The real alcoho’s will be taken onto the bus to wait it out. Whether they have comfy seats and Fox Tel on board I neither know or particularly wish to find out.

Most people do tend to drink at home here, as pubs don’t outnumber houses, as they do in some parts of the UK. But if you’re out and about, keep an ear open for speed camera sitings on the radio, or to be safer still, it’s probably better to just drive like a sloth and give up your Becks and Bacardi Breezers all together…

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