The Toxic Math Christmas Special

We had a lovely Christmas in York; its old cobbled streets looking positively Dickensian. The only thing lacking was a rabble of street orphans. The York Minster is having its east wing stained glass window restored in painstaking detail. We did sheepishly take some photos but I'm never too sure on the etiquette in churches. I have seen people asked to take their hats off. In Vatican City you can't even talk. In some holy places, women have to cover their hair. (Perhaps they can borrow something from the hat racks?) In some Russian Orthodox churches, you can even go to prison for impromptu punk gigs. It's all very confusing.

Trying to get out of York was interesting, as the station descended into the sort of deranged madness you find in disaster films. Trains - the ones that actually existed in a recognisable, tangible sort of way - were running chaotically late. Shoppers laden with bottles and bargains were left staring at digital billboards as their limited holiday time drifted away. I got on the 1357 to Manchester Airport about 20 minutes after it was due to depart. The reason for the hold up: "We apologise for the late running of this First TransPennine Express service to Manchester Airport," a stoic voice declared, "but our driver hasn't had his break yet." During the season of goodwill one has to be charitable.

Another year, another cunning attempt to disguise the taste of sprouts. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is a firm traditionalist who steams his sprouts with whole garlic. We whipped a spoon of Boursin cheese into ours, but people do all sorts: whipped and sliced and blended beyond all recognition. Of course if you don't like sprouts to begin with then I suggest simply replace the sprouts with something you do actually like. On Christmas Day, we had a French feast including foie gras, champagne, saucisson and anchovies, duck legs and ratatouille. I had never eaten foie gras before - the tins had been secured by our French friend via Saint-Tropez. The taste wasn't too dissimilar from most liver patés and not overwhelming enough to warrant the cruelty involved in its production. But try telling that to the French.

At the start of the month, Brits spent £19m an hour over a 24 hour period on December 5th, or 'Cyber Monday' according to the Mail. This was the day the UK bought most of their Apple iPod Touch's and iPad 2's, Harry Potter DVDs and Lego. As a child, the only thing I ever desperately wanted was a replica of the Cats' Lair - the formidable fortress home of the Thundercats, complete with laser light, hidden jail and movable paws. I would have fought tooth and nail for one of those; killed if I had to. Perhaps this is how children feel about the iPod Touch nowadays? The want hasn't changed, although the technology clearly has. I never did get a Cats' Lair, by the way. I see this now as a valuable lesson on how to prepare children for dealing with life's many disappointments. Not that this has left me in any way cynical about Christmas. Did I mention Santa Claus isn't real? Happy holidays everyone.

Top 5 List of Lists of 2012

Everyone likes a neatly compiled end-of-year list at this time of year – the end of it. But how can you possibly decipher the best lists from so many other lists out there? Well, TM has the answer: you need a list, of course.

5. The Top-Earning Dead Celebrities of 2012
Forbes had the foresight to compile this list back in October, presumably hoping that Donald Trump wouldn’t keel over in the interim. This puts big-spending silver screen luvvie Liz Taylor on top of the list for 2012's wealthiest dead celebrities. She earned US $210 million this year. An auction of her extravagant belongings by Christie’s brought in $180 million of that. A staggering sum, but then she did own pearl necklaces from the 16th century and an original Van Gogh. Death has certainly proved to be a wise investment for Michael Jackson. He was promptly signed to a new album deal by his old record company, Sony, which is quite an achievement, especially after he called them all racists. My sympathies go out to any aspiring young bands who would have loved an album deal only to have lost out to a dead guy. Jacko stacked up $140 million in 2012. Jackson’s former father-in-law Elvis Presley is third on the list, earning $55 million. Just think how many cheeseburgers you could buy with that? 

4. The 140 Best Twitter Feeds of 2012
Time’s tech team took time out, it seems, to compile a list of the Twitter feeds which are “shaping the online conversation”. I’m not too sure how you go about shaping a conversation. My guess is that it has something to do with thinking outside the box. In order to compile a list like this you clearly need to be wrestling with an alarming Twitter addiction. This was the year microbloggers seemingly lost the connection between their brains and their finger tips. I’m looking mostly at professional footballers and Sally Burcow here (pictured), but quite a few big organisations have needed to brush up on their social media skills this year. Like the NRA, who tweeted “Good morning, shooters. Happy Friday!” the day after the Colorado cinema shootings. Inc. have put together the 7 Worst Tweets of 2012 which is another great list full of more abhorrent tweeting, corporate cock-ups and #epicfails. 

3. 10 New Words of 2012
The Telegraph have fun compiling 10 new words which have really got up their nose in 2012. Without sounding like too much of a pedant, most of these aren’t technically new words but portmanteaus and acronyms. “Amazeballs” isn’t mentioned here, before you go looking for it. Although a derivative it deserves to be a new word on the basis of making absolutely no sense. Instead, The Telegraph hate “shamazing”, coined by X Factor judge Nicole Scherzinger and then repeated by David Cameron, but then she could have said “shamazeballs” which would have been truly awful. I would still like to see David Cameron say that one. “Mr Osbourne, your Budget reform speech was totes amazeballs,” adding, “I am well jell.” According to Fiona McPherson, senior editor at the Oxford English Dictionary: “In a decade’s time, some will still be around, while others are year-specific. We’ll look back and ask, 'What was that all about?’” We can then put all of this down to one giant omnishambles.

2. Pitchfork: Best Albums of 2012
Ah, Pitchfork. Where would we be without your literary, lefty, trendsetting ways? Still listening to Steps, presumably. Pitchfork is the only music website where you can read a review on ambient glitch hop and know even less after reading it. Their opinions set the playlist for most iPod’s these days, which means Kendrick Lamar (number one and pictured) can expect a big bump in his Spotify ratings. But sorry, have you actually heard the Swans album (number five)? It’s really hard work. It sounds like a hellish ambulance ride sludging its way to the Jim Morrison Funny Farm. Stuart Berman writes that after hearing the album, “you’ll feel physically and emotionally exhausted.” That’s how Pitchfork recommend things. While I’m offering unsolicited opinions, my favourite song of the year is Lone Wolf’s The Swan of Meander. It’s a gorgeous, enveloping and textured swoon which imparts some new hidden delight every time I hear it. He’s touring soon, too.

1. Top 10 Celebrity Mysteries of the Year
I thought I would have a stab at solving some of E!’s celebrity mysteries of 2012. I glanced over a copy of Now! at the hairdressers the other day, so I think this makes me uniquely qualified. “Why can’t Lindsay Lohan stay away from clubs?” Because they are great places to relax and have fun. “When will Brangelina marry?” Next year in a very private ceremony which will not be widely reported by unctuous gossip hounds. “What did we really find on Mars?” A Starbucks. “Why does Taylor Swift keep dating high school boys?” Because she needs their coursework, hair products and skinny jeans to create a highly potent substance which gives her special singing powers. “What is inside the royal womb of Kate Middleton right this very second?” A baby.

Telly Ache

When you’re unemployed, simple daily tasks take a lot longer. Breakfast lasts for three courses. A shower becomes Homer’s Odyssey. And daytime television is the procrastinator’s sworn nemesis, because the demoralising truth is nobody has ever achieved greatness by watching four back to back episodes of Come Dine with Me.

I had this epiphany during an episode of Homes Under the Hammer. It’s not even a bad show, but it has this hypnotic, repetitive, anaesthetic appeal that numbs your synapses, mushing your brain into a property pulp, washing over you like some innocuous fart. It’s the television equivalent of staring into a coal fire or a washing machine. It’s just there.

The show fits perfectly into UK TV’s daily dump of daytime discharge. The only reason you would voluntarily sit and watch Homes Under the Hammer is if you were infirmed, being kidnapped, trapped under a coffee table or hopelessly unemployed. There are currently 2.51 million people unemployed in Britain. The ratings must be huge.

I wouldn’t have thought the TV map could change so much in my two and a half year absence from these British Isles, but who could have guessed the current godlike deity status of Gary Barlow – an ex-Take That singer - or the fact a comedian like John Bishop could sell out the O2 Arena. To my ears, he still sounds like a darts player.

Speaking of The X Factor, there now seems to be an Essex version of Cheryl Cole sitting in Cheryl Cole’s seat. I actually thought it was Cheryl Cole for a minute, probably miming. Not that she would do that, of course.

Sardonic Apprentice underling Nick Hewer was an inspired choice for Countdown. He gives the droll impression that the show is constantly distracting him from a horse race at Cheltenham. I like it when he has to interview his guests and forgets to stop talking after he’s asked a question. Out of all the pseudo-celebrities enjoying partial acclaim when I left the country, Nick Hewer’s ascendance to daytime stardom is particularly puzzling. What’s next? Bargain Hunt with Duncan Bannatyne? Loose Women with Ann Widdecombe? Daybreak with Aled Jones? Hold on, that last one appears to have actually happened.

When I left the country condescending bear-baiter Jeremy Kyle was being hauled over the coals for exploiting the vulnerability of his guests. His reward: an American version of his TV show and seemingly 24 hour rotation on ITV2 (now to renamed Irritating TwatVision 2, or something). He has probably been given a pay rise and made Head of Pernicious Programming. Give it a year and he’ll be running for London Mayor.

I always wonder whether anything good comes from these programmes. Do you think the guests leave saying, “Thank you Jeremy for that insightful and at times physical debate. Following the lessons we have learnt today and under your insightful guidance we hope to go on with our lives in a more positive and compassionate manner. Particularly now the DNA test proves the baby is Darren’s. Thanks.”

Noel Edmonds’ new fuller beard is fascinating. With his floral shirts and tumbling locks he looks like a seventies version of Aslan. Deal or No Deal still deserves some credit for making the opening of a box look like a courtroom drama. It has been on nearly every day for seven years now. Seven years, for Christ’s sake. Richard Osman, of Pointless fame (more on that in a minute), said in this article that Deal Or No Deal is not about luck, but rather knowing when to quit. “It is essentially ‘stick or twist’ in the same way as any job or relationship you’ve ever had is,” he writes. “What man, when his mind turns to marriage, hasn't thought: ‘It's a lovely offer, but perhaps I should just open three more boxes?’”

Breakaway is a particularly lumbering, drawn-out quiz show where conceited one-upmanship is rewarded over coalition. Individual contestants can ‘breakaway’ from their team to answer questions on their own and therefore gobble up all the prize money themselves. There is a political and social metaphor in this. Host Nick Hancock is tolerable but a little patronising. “Now are you sure you want to do that?... They were really tough questions weren’t they?”

My favourite daytime quiz show is now BBC1’s Pointless, hosted by the always-affable Alexander Armstrong and the aforementioned Osman. The format is a loose appropriation of Family Fortunes, where contestants find the least likely answers based on the most common responses to audience surveys. So, for example, you probably know that Australia is a country beginning with A, but then a country like Antigua and Barbuda, which also begins with the letter A, may have slipped your mind. Pointless answers are ones that are both correct and so obscure that nobody in the survey thought to mention them.

It’s a quite cynical concept, really, having to second guest the ignorance of the general public. I always wonder where they find the time and the people to question for these surveys. But with so many out of work it’s obvious. You can probably do it by pressing The Red Button. During Homes Under the Hammer, no doubt.

We saw Singin’ in the Rain at the Palace Theatre in London's West End last week and what a jolly thing it was, heightened somewhat by exceptional seats within splashing distance of the stage. The gags are 60 years old but still great, and actress Katherine Kingsley has a ball playing verbally-challenged silent screen diva Lina Lamont, elaborating on Jean Hagen’s screechy drawl with ear-splitting aplomb. Director Jonathan Church gives both Lina and Kathy more stage time than Gene Kelly ever did in the movie. Here they even get their own songs. I never quite bought Kathy’s sudden infatuation with the enigmatic yet egomaniac Don Lockwood. Here she is given pivotal breathing space to assess the merits of dating a megastar with a licentious reputation.

Singin’ in the Rain works because of its celebration of movement (a universal language) and the basic premise celebrating the magic of cinema, something everyone can share. It may be the most damn near perfect film about films ever made, but it was conceived as a comedic throwaway to string together the hits of MGM songwriters Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed. Gene Kelly considered his greatest work to be An American in Paris, filmed the year before. The extended all-dancing Broadway finale which concludes SITR was a formula copied from Kelly’s mammoth ballet sequence at the end of An American in Paris. The film also just about killed the musical as a viable money-spinner in mainstream cinemas, as rock and roll rebels and the rise of independent film all but killed off the studio system and the big budget musicals they championed.

But watch the show, it’s a triumph. However, a word of caution; expect to get a bit wet in the first five rows. The cast use the final 10 minutes for a vengeful, stomping splash-around as the stage is flooded and the audience duck for cover. Some people actually brought umbrellas, which was a nice touch.

Sun, Sea, Sex and Sangria: A Weekend in Benidorm

Sticky Vicky's reputation precedes her. The things she can do with a ping pong ball will make your eyes water. I won’t go into too much detail on a family website like TM, only to say her routine is not restricted solely to ping pong. According to this, unfeasibly larger items like glass bottles, giant candles, light bulbs and, more disturbingly, razor blades. For her festive show she produces a Christmas tree. I wonder what she does for an encore?

Now approaching 70 (yes, 70), Sticky Vicky has been performing her act to shell-shocked tourists for over 30 years. She continues her seven-day-a-week grind to his day. She has now enlisted the help of her daughter who opens the show with an acrobatic magic act before her mother takes to the stage and takes her clothes off. And this is only one of the “attractions” on offer amongst all the seedy nightclubs touting “lesbian shows”, the free-entry all night “disco-pubs” and reams of tribute acts (Peatloaf, Michael Bauble, and so on), all centered along the notoriously chaotic confines of the so-called Yellow Brick Road. But we are a long way from Kansas. Welcome, then, to Benidorm.

To be fair, the Spanish coastal town has always been sex obsessed. In May this year Benidorm celebrated the 60th anniversary of then-mayor Pedros Zaragoza’s decision to legalise the wearing of bikinis. The decision was reached after a British woman was fined 40,000 pesetas for wearing one at a beach bar. In fear of losing the town’s appeal as a frisky tourist cash cow - especially at a time when the local fishing industry was fractured - Franco’s fascists turned a blind eye. Which is more than can be said about the tourists. Benidorm welcomes five million of them every year, all in search of sun, sea, sex and sangria.

But now in 2012, is Benidorm finally suffering the hangover from 60 years of hedonistic overkill? The east coast of Spain has suffered dramatically from the fallout of the noughties Spanish property boom and the subsequent Eurozone crisis. This is evident from the number of derelict bars you can see, and the building projects abandoned mid-construction. Now there is a genuine fear the cranes might collapse, like they did a couple of days ago near Sotogrande on the Costa del Sol. According to an engineer questioned on the Olive Press website: “Because they are so close to the sea, the salt in the air is eroding the cranes much quicker than would be the case with structures further inland.” A disconcerting thought.

And do I denote a touch of chippiness from the harassed, overworked bar staff? One cafe refused to put onions in their cheeseburgers because it “stinks the place out”. It’s hard to argue against something like that. Another sounded her frustration at the thought of replacing specific elements of the “large breakfast” option. Her reaction seemed to suggest I had asked her to solve the Spanish debt crisis rather than put a spoonful of baked beans on a plate. I sensed she was clearly someone in desperate need of an escape.

The tourists are older here, too. Following the packaged tours of the 1980s and the subsequent violence that ensued, younger revelers decided to forgo the hen and stag parties of Benidorm for the burgeoning bedlam found in Ibiza and Malaga. There's a running joke in the ITV comedy series Benidorm about this, where the elderly cantankerous Madge barges her way through the busy streets on a mobility scooter without actually needing to use one. Wheelchairs and scooters rent from 20 euros a week. The flyers are everywhere.

But coming to visit for a long weekend outside the July-August peak season, everything seems business-as-usual. The popular TV show has no doubt helped to further promote the town in the minds of overseas travelers, and I found the beaches friendly and well maintained. Surprisingly, there are actually some very pretty aspects to Benidorm. I loved the views from the church of San Jaime and the charismatic side-streets and market stalls of the Old Town, like a scene straight out of Granada, and the epic, seemingly endless mountainous surrounds to the west which so define the landscape in this part of Spain. The joy in overlooking a vast ocean vista with caffe con leche and tapas on a glorious day is surely one of the world’s greatest pleasures. No wonder the Spanish don’t get any work done.

The old town is also the best place to take in the full scale of Benidorm’s 6km radius of revelry. Since the 1960s, the playa has become a breeding ground for hotels to rise indiscriminately into the sky - the tallest at 186 metres. But now there is just no escaping the colonising British, as they liberate their minds - and most of their stomach contents - from the cold, workaday routine of life back home. As a result, Benidorm has taken on the puzzling moniker of a “home away from home” for the Brit – the kind of place they can relax without having to concern themselves too much with any of that foreign stuff.

I can’t say I understand a lot of this; particularly those creature comforts that supposedly define "Britishness". Here, "Britishness" is aggressively advertised on every street corner: Guinness and Tetley’s, all day breakfast, the Daily Mail, Sunday carvery, Sky Sports, "Tracey and Tony from Wales welcomes you" and English spoken everywhere. The conditioning is so complete after two nights that a couple conversing in Spanish at the bar sounds particularly alien. “Maybe they’re tourists?” a friend asks. Hold on, I thought we were the tourists?

This manufactured paradise comes at a cost: the ugly flipside of our drinking culture is not a British trait which serves us well, particularly abroad. Benidorm takes every rebellious, binge-drinking, kebab-chewing Saturday night you’ve seen in Leeds, or Bristol, or Blackpool or just about anywhere and spits it right back at you on a regular basis. No wonder the locals have scarpered to the hills.

Now there is talk of a 5am curfew to give the authorities time to “clean up the empty bottles, the rubbish, the vomit”, according to an article in the free Round Town paper. But 5am seems pointless, like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. Another tactic may be fining promoters up to 60,000 euros for organising bar crawls. “It’s an unforgivable image,” says Paco Carrasco, owner of a chain of nine pubs. “Nobody wants to be heading into work, or down for an early morning walk on the beach to be confronted by… a group of loud drunks.” I would agree, but then is there anything more British than complaining?

Beached As

I think I should explain this photo. A full body spandex wet suit – costing all of seven dollars – may cause you to resemble a gimp on spring break, but it can also stop you from becoming fish food; struck immobile by any number of stray stingers proven to inflict prompt, swift, grievous bodily death. This is something our lifeguard Zack “can’t stress enough”. Two weeks ago a man was hospitalised within an hour after meeting the acquaintance of a bluebottle jellyfish. A Lycra wetsuit is therefore the easiest seven dollars Zack will make all day.

During our pre-snorkelling debrief (and I can’t stress the word brief enough, particularly for someone whose closest memory to deep sea diving was picking up a brick from the bottom of a swimming pool about 15 years ago), there is a lot of information that Zack “can’t stress enough” – an overwhelming list of catastrophes to put the willies up any Great Barrier novice. It may be one of Earth’s most beautiful sites (the world’s largest coral reef system stretching to some 1600 miles) but the challenge makes us fearful like gladiators at the Coliseum.

Coral may be beautiful to look at, but don’t for heaven's sake stand on it, even if you panic. Hard coral can cut, leading to possible infection upon which your leg will be summarily donated to marine science for research purposes. Because of May’s Super Moon, the tide is so low the coral lingers close to the surface. This makes the likelihood of entrapment very high. “Snorkel around the coral,” Zack says. “I can’t stress that enough.”

Leave only with photographs, we are told, and don’t remove any of the coral. Swim within the buoys. Don’t wave to friends while in the water. Don’t graffiti your initials on the shell of a green turtle. Don’t chase a giant trevally into the baying path of a nearby reef shark. He may not have said those last two, but fear had taken hold by this point and creating its own imagery. The Aussie adage of “no worries” did not seem to apply here on the reef. There seemed to be plenty to worry about.

I got the hang of breathing without asphyxiating quite quickly, although much of the experience was bewildering. Humans may make passing impressions of marine life but we paint quite a pathetic picture, really, and betray our aquatic ancestry. You can’t help but get the impression any passing turtles are having a tremendous time observing the flailing spectacle from the ocean’s murky depths. I bet they gather on the coral in groups and piss themselves laughing.

The tide pushes me over a particularly dense section of coral and for a moment I’m awestruck – a mass of gently pulsating, bleak tentacles seemingly drawing me in, closer. Quite frightening, really. As for observing the sea life, the glass bottom boat was more successful. “How did you not see a turtle?” says one of the crew. I think I was trying not to swallow my own body weight in salt water. Sorry, sir.

The Low Isles – where we are – are a coral cay on the outer reef encompassing hard coral, which means we won’t see the more colourful stuff they show on the adverts. That’s fine with me. Low Island is a paradise which will take a child two minutes to run around (I overheard this fact). It is an hour boat ride from the Australian mainland. It has a lighthouse and a cabin for the island’s only inhabitant – a caretaker – which is obviously a job which comes with its own perks. Day trippers anchor yachts near the giant catamarans which shuttle tourists into the reef on a daily basis. Queensland University has a base here for its marine biologists and it’s clear to see why. The reef contains 1500 species of fish, 5000 species of mollusc, 2195 known plant species. Nine different species of seahorses live here. Nine.

They can also keep a close eye on how quickly the whole thing is disappearing. The reef is pretty high on the Things to See Before You Die list, or rather, Things to See Before They Die, followed closely by watching the Rolling Stones. Since the 1920s, rising sea levels have seen Low Isle shrink by 20 per cent. Then there is coral bleaching caused by an imbalance of algae in the warmer waters. At this rate, the Great Barrier Reef could be extinct within a hundred years.

Evelyn, a superior sea faring intellect, takes our bushy tailed troupe around the exposed coral. She’s a master of the Australian understatement. She spots a tourist trampling over the bay in the faraway distance and spares no sympathy; he’s exposing himself to injury from conefish, stingrays, jellies and other nasties. “People don’t listen to me,” she sighs. She tells an American tourist not to touch a sea cucumber (pictured opposite) – a spectacularly inert object from the starfish family which can eject a harmful toxin from its phallic like body – to which the man responds by running his fingers across it. Her frustration is palpable.

Someone spots a sea snail – an unassuming shelled creature about the size of an old 50 pence coin. Evelyn explains the creature can render a human quite redundant in less than 60 minutes. My thoughts go back to the lone traveller in the distance and I wonder what’s worse: the fear of instant paralysis or an almost certain bollocking from Evelyn. Given her current state of mind, I’d take my chances with the conefish.

You shouldn’t joke, really. This is, after all, the part of the country where Steve Irwin was killed, struck in the heart by a stingray. Appropriately, we were told this fact after our snorkelling session. Evelyn said, with more than a hint of pride, that tropical North Queensland “has them all” in terms of flying, crawling, biting, stinging, killing things. This is where, only last week in the Daintree rainforest, a golden orb spider was filmed eating a tree snake. I should probably repeat that. A spider eating a snake. You don’t need to try and picture the ghastly scene, because you can see it here on YouTube.

A park ranger in the Daintree casually stands by the biggest spider I have ever seen, relishing in the story of how the males are devoured by the females after mating. Woody Allen would have now made a joke here about how much this reminds him of an ex-girlfriend. A ranger at the Daintree says she loves her job in the forest and how it’s better than an office job, although you do have to put up with snakes. Not too dissimilar from journalism, then. Ba-doom.

From the Skyrail you can see the vast expanse of rainforest which meets the sea and the sky beyond, and the views are breathtaking. Stomach churning, too, if you’re no keen lover of heights. The Skyrail reaches 1788ft at its highest point. Packed into a cart no larger than a fridge-freezer, the cable car actually sways in the wind. Sitting on the floor of the car won’t help you either, because you can still see the tops of the trees through the flooring; designed, seemingly, to give all the vomit a chance to escape.

But the views are insane, and just about the only place in Australia where you can see anything like it, including the township of Cairns and the reef islands beyond. We had already fallen in love with the place by this point – the cheese selection in the Port Douglas Coles had put paid to that.

Port Douglas is sea village with an easy, Byron Bay attitude with some of the best restaurants I have ever visited and absolutely no pretensions, because the environment speaks for itself. Bill and Hillary Clinton spent their wedding anniversary here, and Bill must just love the place. He was eating in the sublime Salsa restaurant on September 11, 2001, and just had time to sign a dinner plate before a plane hit the north tower and he was promptly evacuated from of Australia.

But the ranger was right. I would choose the snakes, too.