Indiana Moans

The High Commission of India (HCI) have complained to the BBC about the Top Gear India Special which was broadcast over Christmas (or Winterval if Christmas offends you).

I don’t usually watch Top Gear as cars don’t interest me and I am lucky enough to be blessed with a cracking penis. However, the furore forced me to have a look, like Lady Chatterley's Lover did to the closet horndogs in 1960.

The show began in Downing Street with David Cameron telling them to “stay away from India” and “you do the cars and we do the diplomacy”, after they offered to go on a trade mission jolly. Apparently Belgium does more trade with India than England which is pretty surprising. Maybe they just pay more to the sweatshops. We must get quite a good deal.

The HCI complains that sensitivities have been offended due to a toilet seat built into the boot of a Jaguar as “everyone gets the trots when they come to India”. Is carrying a stockpile of Imodium offensive too? I'd prefer privacy if I was shooting off an explosive one in the mountains rather than being mounted on a plopping plinth. Diarrhoea is a really rather humiliating occurrence - especially annoying.

A senior diplomat at the HCI says “India is a developing nation with lots of issues to address”, sense of humour hopefully high up on that list.

I don't understand why India feels the need to deny that when tourists visit they may have to dash in a real rush, hurry or else accident. Why are Indians worried about a toilet in a car when so many of them use the street?

To Indians, the left hand is unclean as it's the hand used to wipe the arse so you should not use that one to handle food. Why they don't use toilet paper is a mystery. Keep an eye out for Indian McDonald's employees to see if they extend the same courtesy over here.

I once worked with a lovely bubbly chubby Indian guy in an English call centre. I won't mention his name to spare his blushes. Anyway, Bush was hopeless with women, a virgin at 30. I was delighted when he told me they had arranged for him to get married, even if it was to a cousin in India.

She was a pretty girl over in India and would normally have been well out of his league. They were going to get to know each other over the telephone. This was in the pre-Skype days. Every day he would come into work and regale me with stories about their lengthy chats the previous evening. Some went on a bit (like this story), but it was genuinely warming hearing him be so passionate and happy.

They had arranged to meet and marry in India in a couple of months. I knew when he returned there would be so many stories to hear. There was a mammoth amount of morbid curiosity in the office to hear how he prospered on honeymoon night. It was a few days before his best story surfaced though...

He had to formally ask her family for her hand in marriage so the first time they met was in front of them all. He had a long and tiring journey there so he met everyone at her family house on his second day in India. They had exchanged gifts and greetings and had just sat down to dinner when Bush suddenly felt a gurgly rumbling heading down his Passage to India. He excused himself from the dinner table and went up to the 'toilet', a hole in the ground in the bathroom. I have researched why these exist and apparently one of the advantages is “Squatting might help to build the required exhaust pressure more comfortably and quickly”. I shit you not.

Anyway, needless to say Bush had no such problems with pressure. In fact it was a high pressure situation, so much so that the pressure forced things out in more of a horizontal jet-pack fashion than the desired vertical drop. When he steadied himself and turned around to see the damage he realised that not only had he missed the hole, he had avoided much of the floor like a jewel thief in the movies. What he had created was a dirty protest of Bugsy Malonesque proportions all over the wall.

Bush had made the mother of all messes, like he often did in work. At least he was consistent, although this time it had the consistency of slurry. He did his best to clean it all up, but he was smearly rubbing it in.

Bush returned to the dinner table and sat next to his fiancée, who took one sniff and raised eyebrows, like a mother catching a nappy breeze - his tragic trajectory had splattered all over his shirt tail. She casually excused them from the table and her first duty was to scrape the shit from his shirt. Her second was redecorating the new bathroom as best she could. It never rains but it pours - all over the wall. They were both in deep shit (sounds like an Indian name).

As he told me this story, smiling like a simpleton, I was wondering what that poor girl must have thought when she saw the gift he had splurged. She must have been dreading the wedding night cock. Although I guess he could even the score by making her bleed all over the new bedsheets.

Back to Top Gear - the BBC initially received just 23 complaints out of an audience of 5m after the show. i.e. nearly 0.0005% felt incensed enough to call up. I imagine that number will have increased exponentially when the hysterical paper-readers express their mock outrage despite never having watched the programme.

The Indians were supposedly also offended by a banner prank Top Gear cleverly engineered on the sides of a train. When the carriages separated, the banner ripped and converted 'Eat English Muffins' into 'Eat English Muff' on one side and 'The UK promotes English IT for your company' into 'The UK promotes sh IT for your company'. A clever, albeit puerile prank. However, for some reason it is being treated almost like an act of war on Indian soil.

Clearly they are unfamiliar with the supercilious humour but it was not really an attack on the Indian people or culture. Indeed many Indians have risen up and appealed to the rest not to be so stuffy. These Indians should learn to laugh at themselves like the rest of us do.

Stewart Lee once said “Clarkson has outrageous politically incorrect opinions for money” (watch his rant at Top Gear here). Jeremy Clarkson is the Derek to Richard 'The Rodent' Hammond's Clive. They like causing a fuss then revelling in the commotion that unnecessarily follows.

If Clarkson was sacked what would people have to complain about? Everything else is so politically correct, nobody takes risks any more. As an example, I recently watched the filming of the Matt Lucas Awards, a show in which they hand out awards for left field categories. They were comedically discussing China as a nomination for 'Smuggest Country'. They had been jokingly piling into them for nonsensical reasons when filming was halted with instructions from the production team for Matt Lucas to introduce some positive aspects of China to appease the BBC impartiality execs. It was completely unnecessary as it was clearly comedy of which nobody would have taken seriously.

Incidentally the other nominations were Sweden and England. The roguish Jason Manford, when asked for his nomination, said 'Pakistan' and then paused while we all laughed before saying “I can hear the BBC lawyers having heart attacks from here!”, knowing that the BBC would never allow a joke about Pakistan, as jokes are not allowed about that country just in case.

There is nothing wrong with criticising stereotypes, we have all laughed at it for generations. Eurovision was always an opportune time for each country to take swipes at each other in a good-natured spirit, but of course Europe is a different beast to Asia. In recent years there seems so much worry that we will offend someone that it has become a taboo subject. Banter about different nationalities is no different from teasing someone about having a big nose, being fat or having a slag for a mum.

India are trying to force the BBC into backtracking over the antics, hopefully without the threat of sanctions. The situation may well be similar to what is happening in the cricket with the Board of Control for Cricket in India holding far more sway in the game than they should, due to the huge amount of revenue advertising brings in.

The BBC will investigate and will conclude that Indians have no sense of humour, Top Gear is a cash cow, and the team are free to continue making publicity-grabbing headlines with schoolboy antics. Although I am sure the official diplomatic release will read slightly differently. There will be a grovelling apology from the BBC and a thinly-veiled (shouldn't have used chiffon) apology from the presenters. It is all political correctness gone mental health issues. It is arguable that being on before the watershed it could have done without the use of 'shit' and 'muff', but kids nowadays are familiar with these words and hairstyles anyway, and choose not to copy their mother's pubic perm.

It has been said many times that what I write is a load of shit and today is no exception. Today you will also have to settle for a bog standard ending.

Who Wants To Live Forever?

My grandad once said to me “Don’t grow old. It's a pain in the arse.” That advice has stuck in my head and I've practised the “live fast, die young” mentality accordingly ever since (although admittedly I have only successfully fulfilled half of that at the time of writing).

The thought of being surrounded by other dribbling old folks staring vacantly into space just does not appeal to me. However I do quite like the idea of moving doolally residents' bookmarks back a couple of chapters every day. Hopefully I will have an evil beneficiary to finish me off with a pillow when I get decrepit anyway.

It is estimated that 1 in 6 of us will live to be a centenarian. Woody Allen once said, “we can all live to be a hundred if we give up the things that make us want to live to be a hundred”. While I have my quoting boots on, Dennis Wolfberg quipped that “There's one advantage to being 102. There's no peer pressure.” (What do you do when one of your friends tells you not to give into peer pressure though?). We might look back on that quote when we are all in our hundreds and laugh one day. He won't though as he died at less than half that age.

Medicine is advanced enough that we can do what we want when we are young and take a pill to correct many of the problems when we are older. My dad has a pillbox that would make Charlie Sheen envious. Quite often oldies have their medication categorised into a massive 7 x 4 compartmental pillbox - breakfast, lunch, dinner, bedtime pills. It is good fun moving the laxative 'morning' pill alongside the 'bedtime' sleeping pill. Not such good fun clearing that up though as they are not natural bedfellows.

The UK population will be galloping up towards an overstretched 100 million in 50 years. Who knows how many millions will be in need of a care home then? The numbers may be alarmist but perhaps they don't take into account that many are not financially prepared for a lengthy old age. Stress caused by poverty, combined with a poorer and cheaper diet will account for many. A massive war or killer epidemic would certainly be a boon in thinning numbers, creating more Zimmer parking spaces.

Many care homes will be privately funded but the government will have to chip in heavily too. People will be taxed more and have less money stashed under their soiled mattress for their old age. There is no doubt that the retirement age will gradually increase and be in the 70s by the time many of us are allowed to retire. This means many more of us will die while we are still at work. Anything to make the day more interesting.

It is estimated the world's first person to live until 150 is already alive, although chances are they are probably not English. Considering that only one person has ever lived to 120, that's quite a progression but we do potentially have 149 years and 364 days to find out.

We are relatively early in the technological age, and advancement in stem cell therapy, genetic engineering, advanced bionics, nanotechnology and rejuvenation therapy will mean the boundaries of human existence could be pushed well beyond 150 years, just hopefully not heads in a jar like in Futurama. Old folk's homes are gonna be chocka. How will we cope? Bunk beds don’t seem feasible and there are only so many angry Nigerian nurses to go around.

Life expectancies of well into the hundreds may be pretty commonplace by the second half of the century. When so many are living so long, it is going to be expensive retiring half way through your life. Slow and steady wins the race but is the prize of a tortoise-like age worth having? I'm going to stick my neck out and say no.

It's going to be a pretty depressing existence to live-slow-die-old especially if surrounded by other like-minded grumpy individuals who haven't budgeted for their longevity. Assisted killing will be legal by then so people will be able to purchase 'speedy boarding' to check in with their maker. Euthanasia is not a continent I have visited but I'm sure Saga would do great deals there.

It would be a radical move but a cap on living until 100 could be very beneficial to a country's finances. Using a cricketing analogy it would be a bit like reaching your maiden century, waving your bat to the pavilion and being bowled next ball. I'm not sure of the best way to put old people down but I probably wouldn't put Jeremy Clarkson in charge. Can't have them being executed in front of their families.

So how will life be when we are old and knackered? We currently have a cosy impression of pensioners - carpet slippers, dressing gowns, crocheted blankets over their laps in a rocking chair. But many of those images are bound to die out way before we will. I wonder whether the comfy slacks and cardigan of today will be replaced by hoodie and jeans hanging off the arse? Aptly enough, the latter is a style which they stole from old people.

Internet rooms aren't particularly heaving hubs of action in OAP homes. Perhaps in the future when our hearing is gone we will be chatting online to the person in the next chair. That's assuming our eyes aren’t shot and the RSI from 90 years of texting and typing hasn’t crippled our fingers.

The telegram for century-makers from the Queen may well have stopped before she reaches her landmark. It's doubtful she would send herself a birthday card though. She has been known to send herself Valentine's cards, but Prince Philip isn't the jealous type anyway.

The Centenarian Clerk at Buckingham Place may develop printing cramp as more and more people reach their centenary. A little known fact is once 105 is reached, an extra telegram is sent every birthday, although less than ten percent of centenerarians reach 105. It will be interesting to see when and if they change the congratulatory telegram to an e-card, Facebook message or Tweet. A telegram for today’s youngsters is a very outdated sentiment. STOP.

I used to work for an alternative telecoms company and when customers hadn’t used the service for a few months they would be sent a marketing letter saying “We miss you and we want you back!”. Funnily, from the point of view of this anecdote (not so much from the point of view of his wife), this letter inevitably went to an old fella who had died. His hysterical wife rang up, wanting to know how we could be so heartless in our Lazarushian invitation.

The oldest living person is 115 years old now although it is common for the record to swap around a couple of times a year as they keep dying off. It seems no one wants the title. Emma Tillman in 2007 held the title of oldest living person for just 4 days before the pressure finally got to her. Perhaps she partied a bit too hard in celebration.

In Ireland, centenarians not only receive a letter from the president but €2540 'Centenarian Bounty'. Perhaps the government hedges their bets when people are edging into their late nineties and nip down to Paddy Power to get some crappy odds on the nonagenarian ticking over into a centenarian.

The generosity of the Irish government probably won't last too much longer as the country already gives money away like a paedo does sweeties. Ireland currently pays over thrice what is paid to the unemployed in England. When the Icelandic volcanic eruption in 2010 disrupted air travel, benefit claimants nosedived as the out-of-towners were unable to get back into Ireland to bleed it dry. This served as a huge wake-up call to the country but everyone had already fecked off cos the country was already on it's arse.

Alec Holden is a man who deserves a mention with regard to a longevity bet. In 1997, when he was 90 years old he was offered odds of 250-1 by dopey bookmakers William Hill that he would reach 100. He claimed £25000 in 2007 and probably the job of the odds compiler who massively miscalculated the odds. The true odds would have been closer to 5/1. An unbelievably perky Mr. Holden was quoted as saying, "I've been very careful about what I've been doing in recent months. If I saw any hooded groups from William Hill standing in the street, I avoided them." and even claimed that the Queen delivered his telegram personally on a bicycle. I am surprised his heart survived the journey home with 25k stuffed into his pants.

According to the Department for Work and Pensions, I have a 13.6% chance of reaching 100, whilst someone born today would be twice as likely to blow out 100 candles (or die trying). As a natural born worrier I am sure I will not make it. I know the stress of reaching 92 and knowing that my odds of waking up the next day are the same as my odds of not waking up will certainly cause me not to wake up sooner rather than later. So I am quite happy to disappear anonymously in the night sometime. Or a blaze of glory if the opportunity arises. Whatever.