Do something funny for money

Yesterday was world kidney day, today is Red Nose Day. It is the twelfth Red Nose day and I can recall the first back in February 1988. Being a Friday, I used to go out with my mates the Choir Boys to a country pub somewhere so I set my trusty V2000 on long play to capture the evening. When I got back from the Pub, I watched it in real time for a bit but the case documentaries in between the funny bits were a little dull so I turned the V2000 tape over, set it going and went to bed.

On the Saturday, I started to watch the show. Some bits of it were brilliant; the rest of it was mostly Ok but the appeal bits became rapidly tedious. Fortunately V2000 videos had excellent picture lock on fast forward so I was able to condense the show down considerably. This was to becomne my approach over the next 21 years- to record it then play it back at leisure, skipping the mockumentary bits.

No doubt there are people who ernestly watch all the poverty, hard luck stories and deprivation then pledge all they can. There will be the righteous who watch it so that they can tell others that they did and there will be little old ladies who give more than they can afford. Each to his own, but I am much more moved to action by a natural catastrophe than man made ones, particularly ones caused by fraud and corruption.

Anyway, it seems that there have been fourteen noses over the twelve events (three this year) and the first one was very simple, just a small sphere with a groove in the back to slide onto your schnoz. The following year, the nose was much bigger, had a face on it and was scented. The event became bi-annual in 1991 as an annual event just felt too frequent, or at least that was how I perceived it. Each event, there is a new nose design introduced and I’ve bought the majority of them although I’m sure there will be a website somewhere with the complete collection of red noses on it to ponder. (David’s first one was in 2001, where its tongue popped out when you squeezed it).

At work today, one of the younger lads agreed to lose his hair and now just has cranial stubble. He went through the transformation from normal, to Thompson Twin, to Mohican, to Tin Tin, to Al Murray in less than five minutes. Some others agreed to wear football tops of teams they hated for pledges. Otherwise it was business as usual, other than the semi-standard dress down Friday which happens more often than not.

(I rarely dress down, tending to dress down somewhat most of the time. At least we don’t have dress-down killjoy bullys who charge £2 if you don’t dress down rather than the £1 if you do, they would get extremely short shrift with me, I already pay out enough involuntary contributions to our incompetent Government).

Speaking of incompetent Governments, an email went around work late last year saying that some people had not been granted an entitlement correctly from a few years back for child allowance and it was worth writing to the Tax man. I did just that in January and heard nothing. The deadline was the end of Jan and it occurred to me that they would probably just send me a form to fill in then reject it as being outside the claim period. However, a week or two back, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a £600 cheque from the tax man. Not a bad return for a 27p stamp!