Let’s play Lockdown... show with no winners
Lighthouse puzzle has me in dark TV DISH HAS GONE OFF, CHEF
I spent a day in Blyth, north of Newcastle, this week, as I’m making an In Town radio show there.
My favourite building is a lighthouse that’s inland, in the middle of a street.
It suggests someone hadn’t quite grasped the purpose of a lighthouse.
So I put a picture I took of the lighthouse on Twitter, and 10 people replied: “Ah, but it’s worked. There hasn’t been a single shipwreck in that street since the lighthouse was built.”
The new rules are simple. You can’t visit a neighbour in their house, but you can sit near them in a pub. So if you want to see their house they have to call it The Grape and Flamingo and charge you £9 for a bowl of chilli. Then you can sit in there with a pile of strangers, which is much safer.
The lockdown announcements are like the instructions for a 1970s game show: “You can only mix with six people in your bubble, who can only be in one other bubble or a ‘bubblette’ of five people you’ve never heard of, who must live in your kitchen unless you play the Joker.
“Then you can shout, ‘I’m getting me eyes tested’ and ignore all the rules for 30 seconds until you hear this noise: WAAAWAAKERCHINGLE. Then you must climb the ladder to the self-isolation unit and shout ‘Coronavirus’ to win this magnificent set of carving knives.”
In designated towns deemed high-risk, such as Oldham, you will still be allowed into pubs, but must wear a mask at all times. So you will be permitted to buy alcohol, but you must pour it down your front, at no time removing the mask to put any drink in your mouth.
If you are in a lockdown area you have to comply with extra restrictions – unless you leave the lockdown area illegally to go to a non-lockdown area, which is perfectly legal.
This follows clear guidelines from the Government all along, that it’s fine to shake hands with infected people as long as you don’t touch them in any way.
Then we were told masks make no difference, which must be why it’s now
I know Celebrity MasterChef, which reached its climax this week with broadcaster Riyadh Khalaf lifting the trophy, is massively popular. But I can’t watch cookery shows involving the public.
Cooking is supposed to be relaxing. Instead these poor sods fight back tears because their asparagus has exploded, or the raspberry juice intended to slide down a braised stick insect has turned black.
These programmes also set a terrible example. Someone has gone to the trouble of making a meal and the judges moan: “Oh dear, the cherries are a bit uneven. Tut the law to wear them, as the only way we can defeat the virus is by making no difference.
So maybe the reason they changed their mind is it’s a fetish of Dominic Raab’s. His next statement will be: “Our scientists advise we must all wear kneehigh boots and nipple clamps.”
There are rules for pubs and cafés about music and talking too loudly.
There’s probably one that you can’t use words starting with P as that makes you spit out virus germs, but you can say “pharmacy as it’s a silent P”.
It’s best to check with the police first, but you mustn’t call them “police” as that starts with P so you must refer to them as “constabulary” or “filth” but not “pigs”.
To make sure everyone understood the new rules for Manchester, they were announced at 9pm on Twitter. That’s how to ensure everything is followed clearly. The only people who didn’t get tut, I’d rather eat a bucket of radioactive waste than this.”
Any children watching must think this behaviour is normal.
When their grandma says, “Here you are dear, I’ve made a lemon drizzle cake for you”, the kid will taste it, scowl and say: “For God’s sake Gran, this isn’t nearly moist enough. Did you use lead piping instead of eggs? Do it properly next time, you stupid cow.”
I think you should be polite. So if I were a judge I’d say to every contestant: “Oh lovely, you shouldn’t have gone to all this effort. Mmm, pickled weasel droppings on a bed of broken glass... how delightful.” that message were the small section of the population who weren’t watching Twitter at 9pm, or don’t use Twitter to follow statements made by Matt Hancock or Greater Manchester Police. The next rules will be announced by Matt
Hancock at 5.30am during a programme about farming, in a language made up by a man in a secure unit.
And yet somehow, there are still people out there who don’t understand what we’re supposed to be doing... the idiots.