According to the Daily Mail (so it must be true) Ant
Mcpartlin is out of rehab. They know this because just the other day they stalked
him while he was out walking his dog.
Britney (Not her real name) was delighted by this news as
hearing about a shitfaced Ant McPartlin careering around London
After a few days for her to digest the news that the Geordie
lad who she looked forward to seeing on television every Saturday night had
completely and utterly fecked things up both with his life and his fans, she
became very angry with Newsround.
“I thought Newsround told the truth!” she roared in the
kitchen one morning as we got ready for school.
“It does.” I said soothingly, “And that is why you watch it
at school to encourage your development of current affairs awareness.”
“No.” Replied Britney, “Newsround said that Ant had been
arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol but you told me he was
addicted to prescription drugs.”
I made a mental note for future discussions regarding
celebrities and narcotics and hastily packed Britney and her bags into the
Licence Taker.
We discussed Ant’s misdemeanour as we travelled the 3 miles
to school. I told Britney that all people regardless of who they are, make
errors and that the important thing in life is how quickly you put things
right.
“But I looked up to hiiiimmmmmmmm.” she wailed.
I reassured her that we all make mistakes, even celebrities
(I mean there’s Big Brother and Strictly for a start) and again reinforced the
point that correcting mistakes is the essential thing. Apologise, put it right
and move on.
The people of Facetube clearly did not agree with this point.
And if you were brave enough to make any comment about Ant McPartlin’s attempt
at driving home after drinking enough beer to remove his coordination to the
point that he couldn’t have ridden a bicycle and make his vision diplopic, you
will know exactly where I’m coming from.
If you said he was a d**khead; people trolled you and if you
said he had issues that he needed to address; people trolled you. If you said
his Mum should have stopped him; people trolled you and if you said he was a
total ar**hole with no regard for the law; people trolled you. If you said you felt
sorry for him; people trolled you and if you said he was a rich lad who knew
nothing about real life and could afford a driver; people trolled you. If you
said he was an idiot; people trolled you, if you said his Mini was nice; people
trolled you and if you said you didn’t give a damn about Ant McPartlin being
the top news story; people trolled you.
I actually saw a comment on one of my friend’s completely
innocent “Oh no Ant, what have you done?” posts where someone had said that
people who are taking antidepressants shouldn’t drive. To enforce the truth in
this observation the poster also reported that members of her family had taken
antidepressants and would NEVER have dreamt of getting behind the wheel.
I was curious as to how many people this mad bitch wanted
off the road with this brainless yet sweeping statement, but could only find
data from the NHS relating to 2016. Apparently, the National Health Service
dispensed 64.7 million antidepressant items that year, forcing me to wonder if
the female who made the comment was either an Uber driver or a trolley pusher
for Virgin Trains East Coast.
Personally, I was just glad that even though Saturday Night
Chinese Takeaway is (was) sponsored by Suzuki, Ant had the sense not to own
one. Surely the only thing more shameful than getting hammered, leaving your
mate in the shit, disappointing an army of fans and almost killing someone; is
to be seen driving an Ignis.
Anyway, during the last week of the Easter Holidays I discovered
something on the internet that helped me to relate to Britney’s feelings of
disillusionment regarding Ant McPartlin.
It’s called LinkedIn.
Firstly, I must say that I genuinely have never laughed so
hard in years. I cried with laughter for many minutes and felt remarkably good
once I managed to stop. Britney came running at one point and enquired if I was
alright as all she could hear a strange howling noise followed by seconds of
silence when I couldn’t breathe. She was alarmed at first when she saw me
wiping my eyes and rolling on the floor completely unable to speak until I
explained that this was called hysterical
laughter and it was going to continue for quite some time while I read all
the fictitious job titles that some of my acquaintances had generated in an
attempt to make themselves appear much, much, much more important that they
actually are.
For those of you who have a life and don’t resort to wasting
4 hours of each day on social media, LinkedIn is a platform where you can find
a job, a training course and share inspirational messages with your fellow
professionals. It’s a bit like Facebook; but for posh people with jobs.
But there are no ordinary people on LinkedIn, there are no
cleaners, joiners or grooms. Although if there were, they would probably be called
“Sanitation Development and Control Managers”, “Coppice Enterprise Maturity
Executives” and “Equine Clientele Regulators” so perhaps I just missed them.
I had literally hours of fun working out the real job titles
behind the counterfeit ones like some mad game of Risk with a stoned and drunk
derivatives trader. I discovered that Head of Leisure and Tourism translates as
“cleans holiday cottage on a Friday and uses Booking.com”, Transport Manager
means Bus Driver, Flooring Specialist means Carpet Fitter and a Digital
Accounts Executive is someone who spends all day playing on Facetube, Twatter,
Instaphoto and Pinboard.
I particularly enjoyed viewing the profiles of the Entrepreneurs
in my network, especially when their company name ended with the words “Enterprises
Limited”. And I was further amused that my own profile had been viewed a number
of times anonymously. I do hope they enjoyed reading the information that I
submitted to LinkedIn, which roughly translates as “Dear god, some of these
profiles are about as convincing as Doctor Crippen’s defence case”.
LinkedIn tells me that some users prefer to browse
anonymously because Many private viewers
are recruiters looking for candidates. Others tend to be professionals who
browse privately to find sales leads, potential clients or business partners.
This statement is an absolute load of bollocks and on
Facetube, this kind of behaviour is called Stalking. If you want to look at
someone’s profile, for heaven’s sake just view it. There’s really no need to
hide unless you feel the need to conceal yourself for fear of being ridiculed
for your own fictitious job title.
There are endless possibilities should you wish to generate
your own occupation identify and it’s very simple too. Simply pick a word that
vaguely relates to your employment activity, pop it in to Google and add the
word Synonym after it. If you want to make sure that your new job title is not
American, I would recommend that you use the online Collins Thesaurus.
Unfortunately if you use the latter method, the word Bookkeeper
(which is what I am), returns no results and suggests a Shopkeeper, Innkeeper
or a Boozer. To be fair, it could be worse and I think I will update my
Linkedin profile forthwith. I just need to upload a photo of one of my shoes and
an empty Special Brew can as my profile picture.
