This week I give pizza chance, board HMS Hoffydaft and hang out with a very naughty boy
Pizza nonsense
HAVING once spent the longest month of my life in New Zealand – I think it was summer, but it was hard to tell through the rain – there’s nothing about the country that would surprise me.
Or so I thought until I saw what New Zealand prime minister Bill English cooked for his family last week. And not only cooked, but photographed and posted to Facebook. Hold on to your breakfast: it was tinned spaghetti and pineapple pizza.
English says he tries to cook for his family at least twice a week, though I think “try” is the operative word here. He has six kids and they all live at home. It may not be the case for much longer if that’s the sort of grub he serves.
For the uninitiated, a tinned spaghetti and pineapple pizza is a pizza topped with tinned spaghetti and tinned pineapple. But if the New Zealand PM English thought that was all he was whipping up in the kitchen he was wrong. Pretty soon everyone had an opinion on his culinary horror.
“Sorry Bill, any man who puts spaghetti on a pizza is not fit to run my country, you cannot count on my vote come election time,” tweeted one outraged Kiwi. Some even called for his impeachment, or impineapplement or whatever.
But others were right behind him. “Totally agree that spaghetti on pizza is yum but who else has noticed how runny canned spaghetti is nowadays?” wrote one supporter. English, bless him, replied to that. “I drained off some of the liquid but not quite enough since the pizza was a bit soggy in the middle,” he admitted, an additional piece of information the world could have done without.
Other correspondents didn’t mind the tinned spaghetti (what!?) but took issue with the pineapple. “I fully support your policies, and I am behind tinned spaghetti on pizza, however pineapple on pizza is a policy I cannot support,” said one.
In that, they were in accord with the president of Iceland, Guðni Jóhannesson, who said last month that he would like to ban pineapple on pizzas. This in turn brought a stinging rebuke from Canadian president Justin Trudeau. The Canadians, you see, reckon they came up with the pineapple-onpizza idea, and with no other cultural capital to trade besides Justin Bieber, they’re clearly going to defend it to the hilt. It was invented in Ontario in 1962, by one Sam Panopoulos. He christened it The Hawaiian. We’ve yet to hear from the elegantly-named Brian Schatz, senator for that US state, but the word around the pizzerias of Honolulu is that it’s only a matter of time.
What a cross-patch
ODDLY, a man in Manchester who was offering to crucify people in public for a suggested donation of £750 has had no takers and has been told to desist immediately. Alex Stewart-Clark, a fundraiser for a Passion Play to be held in the city, posted an offer for “the full crucifixion experience” on a crowdfunding website. The event was £8,000 short of its £50,000 target and he thought his crucifixion wheeze would make up the shortfall. He probably thought he’d nailed it (sorry) until a Canon at Manchester Cathedral stepped in, calling the idea “disgraceful” and a “blasphemy”. So, to paraphrase Brian’s mum in the famous Monty Python film, Mr StewartClark is not Pontius Pilate, he’s a very naughty boy. OK, maybe not naughty exactly. Just a little misguided and overenthusiastic. Still, like a New Zealand premier defending his right to put tinned spaghetti on pizza, he has come out fighting. “You have to think of constructive ideas, and you can either play it safe and be square and not raise money or you can be constructive and try to be imaginative,” he told the Manchester Evening News. “If you have to sail close to the wind then so bit it.”
Crowd-pleasing wheezes
THAT’S not the only bonkers idea seeking crowdfunding at the moment and, happily, quite a few are pizzarelated. Somebody on one British crowdfunder website wants £20 to create a breakfast pizza. “The other day I woke up and thought to myself, I want breakfast and lunch together,” goes the pitch. “So why not make a breakfast pizza!!”.
Someone else is looking for £1,500 to develop a credit card-sized pizza cutter which you carry in your pocket and there’s a bid from an entrepreneurial-minded sort trying to roll out a series of pizza vending machines. These will deliver a (presumably) hot pizza to you within three minutes and will offer a choice of four toppings. Not sure if pineapple is one of them. Here’s hoping.
Unsurprisingly, none of these has received a single penny in pledges, a fact which should trouble no-one and please everyone.
But I do feel a bit sorry for the student in Leeds who posted this heartbreaking request: “Basically, Im [sic] really high, and I can’t afford a takeout pizza. The pizza in question would be a 12” thin meat feast. I have no other option.”
Hoff his trolley
IF your idea of a floating hell is being stuck on a boat in the middle of the ocean while someone blasts David Hasselhoff songs at you, look away now. Still reading? Then chew on this: the scenario is not only possible, it’s happening. And the person doing the blasting is none other than The Hoff himself. The man who holds the Guinness World Record for the most-watched actor on TV thanks to his roles in Baywatch and that show with the talking car has commandeered a boat and will host an Official World Fan Cruise in November.
Husslehaff, you may recall, was also a huge pop star in Germany in the late 1980s due mainly to his zeitgeist-capturing hit Looking For Freedom, which he once performed standing in a bucket crane at the Berlin Wall while wearing a piano-keyboard scarf (no really, there’s photographic evidence). So as well as being encouraged to “party, Hoff-style”, cruisers will be treated to a live performance of it and other hits.
There’s also a movie night. In his big screen appearances these days, Hellsahoff mostly plays the role he’s best at – himself – and recent outings in that guise include The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, Ted 2 (though his scene was deleted) and something called Piranha 3DD. Expect to see some, if not all of those as well as choice pre-Baywatch and Knight Rider appearances. I’m told his role as Boner in 1976 film Revenge Of The Cheerleaders is something to behold.
This cornucopia of delights is yours for a reasonable 799 euros per person, based on an inside cabin double-occupancy. And if the idea of four nights on the high sea with Tasselhoof floats your boat, he sails from Savona in Italy on November 4.