The Stayt of Play

Hello. I feel like a fucking zombie. Woke up at 3.30am this morning and couldn't get back to sleep, so I just fired up my PlayBook and spent the next few hours watching retro games reviews on YouTube and playing the really rather excellent port of Duke Nukem 3D. I knew this would happen though – as soon as I got to my desk at work I knew I’d feel like shit and want to close my eyes, if only for a second, and drift off. I've just had a cup of coffee and I feel no different. What is it with coffee? Don’t get me wrong – I fucking love the stuff – but why are we constantly told that it’s a stimulant? Every time I drink it because I need to stay awake...I just end up falling asleep. Same goes for energy drinks – I rarely drink them, but when I do, I don’t feel any different. They’re a scam. Actually, just while I’m thinking about this subject, I do recall watching a documentary on TV a few weeks ago (Panorama, BBC 1) that investigated the murky world of ‘sports’ and ‘energy’ drinks, and it found no conclusive evidence that they have any beneficial properties whatsoever. What the journalist conducting the study did find, however, was that the vast majority of them are full of sugar (shock!)...and the ones that claim to be ‘low calorie’ (like Powerade Zero et al) are actually paradoxical by design: they offer an energy boost but contain either low or zero calories. Interesting, and well worth a watch if you can find it on iPlayer.

Still on the subject of energy drinks, what is with those massive ‘Monster’ cans that people from a certain social strata always seem to be carrying around these days? Surely, life on the dole (c’mon, it’s usually chavs you spot drinking the foul-smelling shit) can’t be that physically demanding that you need to walk around Primark with a half-litre can of Monster Energy, just in case you collapse from over exertion? Saying that though, most of the females usually have huge hoop earrings weighing their heads down, massively over-laden prams and a gaggle of hyper-active, fatherless screaming brats to control, so maybe their reliance on Monster Energy is justified.

The same Panorama episode also investigated whether or not specialised running shoes actually had any bearing on the quality of a runner’s exercise...again, the answer was inconclusive...which I can kind of appreciate, as over the years I have spent an inordinate amount of money on various brands of running shoes. From extensive experience, I can confirm that in the main, they’re all pretty much the same and I’ve sustained injuries regardless of the particular brand I was wearing at the time. I currently own four pairs – a pair of Brooks, a pair of Adidas and two pairs of Saucony...and to be honest I can pick any pair at random and go for a run and not feel any benefit or disadvantage. Obviously, if I was a track runner then I suppose I’d get some benefit from wearing spikes, but just road running? I don’t think it really matters what you’ve got on your feet and this investigation by Panorama kind of laid bare the way in which sports companies dupe us out of our cash. Bastards.

When I eventually put the PlayBook down this morning and put the TV on, I was confronted by the usual glut of non-news on BBC Breakfast, but one item caught my attention: basically, so the story goes, Tesco has finally conceded to the other supermarkets and agreed to start putting those colour-coded ‘health meter’ things on its own-brand food packaging. To be honest, I didn’t even notice that they didn’t, but hey. BBC Breakfast thought that this was a big enough development in current affairs to devote a good 20 minute slot to it, and pulled out the full works for us news-hungry viewers: a load of vox pops of people giving their opinions on the food ‘traffic light’ system (filmed on Oxford Road in Manchester, I happened to notice (probably because they’re based at Salford now...sorry, just thinking out loud)), a special pre-recorded explanation of the colour-coding system, and finally a studio interview with some pencil neck from an irrelevant food-based government department and (I shit you not) a random woman who was simply described in her name caption as ‘a mother.'

It wasn’t all this over the top bollocks that bemused me though, oh no. It was Charlie Stayt (you know, the presenter who farted live on air a while back sending the guest into hysterics while he tried to pretend it hadn’t happened) struggling to get his ridiculously coiffed head around the notion of a ‘traffic light’ system on food packaging. Does he live in a parallel dimension or something? You can’t go into a shop without seeing these labels on food nowadays (unless it’s Tesco, obv), so how has Charlie Stayt not seen them? For fuck sake – there was a massive picture of the kind of labels I’m on about stuck on the monitor behind him! All he had to do was turn around and he’d have seen what everyone was talking about! For those of you who live on Charlie Stayt’s country estate (poetry!), here’s what I’m blathering about:

Yes? You see them on everything? Jesus Charlie – you should get out more. Stop sending the butler to Waitrose for your weekly shop, mate*. I’m clearly writing bollocks now, so I’m going to go for another coffee and a lie down. Zzzzzzzz.

*This is a polite little notice to those people (I know of at least one) who will go and Wikipedia Charlie Stayt and then come back here to comment about his less than glamorous lifestyle and numerous previous jobs. They'll inevitably state (!) that he's done well for himself and that I should leave him alone. I agree. He's done well for himself and is a damned good interviewer. All the stuff written up there is written off the cuff as I see it unfolding. So kindly take your Wikipedia-searching app and shove it up your arse.