Jeremy Clarkson v Simon Cowell and my great age -
Isle of Thanet Gazette 1st February 2008
In these days of surgery and lasers, high-powered wrinkle removal and dental whitening it's not always easy to spot who's getting on a bit. If you're rich enough you can be totally transformed, although not always - in my opinion - for the better. Anyone else see Simon Cowell on Top Gear telling Jeremy Clarkson how he, Jeremy, needed Botox and a facelift and comparing the craggy presenter unfavourably with his shiny-faced self? "I think I'm looking good," said Mr Cowell smugly. And indeed he is, if you like the plastic-perma-tan and-improbable-teeth look. I know which one of them I'd rather go out to dinner with. No, never mind appearances, the only true way to gauge the age of others is to wait till they open their mouths - and I'm not talking about whether they've had their crowns done. For example, as I made clear to my son, of course children should be taught to cook at school. Why ever it was stopped in the first place, I really don't know. I never thought I'd see the day when I said this (and if my oldest, dearest school friend Karen Smith nee Robertson is reading this she will be choking on her cornflakes) but our Domestic Science teacher knew a thing or two. We may, at the time, have made honking-up noises as she explained how to recycle left-overs and took us through the rudiments of a basic white sauce (I can still make a perfect roux to this day) but I see now how very valuable those lessons were. We scrubbed up, tied our hair back and learned how cold hands made better rough puff, just as soon as we'd mastered shortcrust. Compare and contrast with today's "Food technology" GCSE that I have pushed my son into. The one where he goes to school with packets of frozen pastry and I - shuddering at the thought of what probably lurks on the door handles of an all-boys' school - always remind him to wash his hands before he starts manhandling it because - allegedly - his teacher never has. And from where he recently returned with a jar of marmalade they'd made from a make-your-own-conserve kit from Asda! The boy looks pityingly at me while I hold forth on this and also when I wonder aloud how young girls can go out in February with their stomachs showing, why teenagers have to stand in the middle of the road when there's a perfectly good pavement and enquire as to the logic of wearing jeans so low that one displays one's underpants. But it was over the advertisement for Sudafed Congestion Relief Tablets that I really gave myself away. Coming into the room as my son was having a hard afternoon in front of the TV, I caught one of the lines extolling the product's virtues. Snot? I cried outraged. Did that man say S-N-O-T? On daytime television? In an ad for pharmaceuticals ? What is the world coming to? "I hate that word", I explained loudly, yanking out Tom's iPod headphones so he could hear me better. "I have always hated it. It is disgusting and crass. Why," I demanded, "can't they say mucus?" My son shook his head sadly and all was revealed.
"Mum", he said, "you're getting really OLD...."