Days Without Alcohol - 96
I survived the erase and install procedure and managed to keep everything (I think), even iTunes. Though I am not convinced it has completely solved my problems. Don't trust Robert Webb. I was up until 4am fiddling away and so the day was a little unbalanced.
I have though set up a new
Just Giving Page for donations for the new Edinburgh programme fund. I've done the blurb once on the website, so here it is cut and pasted for you:
As usual I am giving you the chance to get your name in the new Richard Herring Edinburgh programme (probably a bumper double issue for both Headmaster's Son and Christ on a Bike) and to help a brilliant charity at the same time. You will also received a limited edition copy of the programme through the post (please email your home address to Herring1967@googlemail.com - if I have not received your address by the end of July you will not get your free programme) and there will be some spot prizes too.
This year due to inflation the minimum donation to ensure entry to the programme will be £12.50. Butl the more you donate the bigger your name will be and the person who donates the most money will win the "How Much is Too Much" T-shirt as worn during the entire run of "Oh F***, I'm 40"(it will be washed).
Deadline for final entry not yet decided, but please give sooner rather than later.
It would be terrific if you could be as supportive as you have been for the last couple of years. This money makes a massive difference and it's really a terrific cause. And imagine if I got actually successful and you could show your friends your name in a programme signed especially for you by me! I will let you know about the final deadline is as soon as I know. Don't all wait to the end though to donate your massive winning amounts! I might institute some kind of bonus for donating early. Who knows? My decision is final.
I am also looking for people to advertise in the programme, so if you are interested or know someone who would be (it's pretty cheap rates given that the programmes will be given directly to 10,000 comedy fans over the next year and all the money goes to charity, so it's win win. Get in touch to find out cost).
But it would be terrific if you all donated £12.50 to the fund. Then we wouldn't need any adverts at all and the programme will be full of even more content!
So that's all that out the way!
Had we recorded the Collings and Herrin podcast today (and sorry if you're having trouble downloading it, apparently demand is exceeding bandwidth, but keep trying and be patient and we should have it sorted by next week - how lovely to be popular) I think we might have talked about the alleged would be aeroplane bombers, apparently intent on taking down aircraft with Lucozade. Even though they didn't manage that, they have caused something much worse, which is to make our journey through security more arduous. God damn those Oasis drinking lunatics. But the detail that interested me in the papers today was that the diary that perhaps details the plan suggested that the bombers had porn mags and condoms in their carry on luggage as a distraction. It wasn't clear if the idea was to bamboozle the security men into thinking that the men could no way be extreme Muslims if they had porn mags and condoms, or whether they hoped that the security men might actually enamoured by the pictures of bare ladies that they wouldn't really bother looking through the bags too carefully, preferring just to ogle the naked women and perhaps nudging their colleagues and saying "Phwoar!"
I am guessing it was the former that the maybe-terrorists were aiming for. But what were they thinking? Surely it's quite unusual for people to carry porn mags in their hand luggage, partly because they know that the bags are going to be searched and also because it's quite unlikely that anyone would want to read a porn mag on a plane. It's a bit public surely. Even if you wanted to join the one man mile high club in the loo, it would be an annoyance to other passengers and still quite hard to smuggle your jazz mag in there without people knowing what you're doing. Surely having porn mags in your hand luggage is more likely to make you seem suspicious than distract attention away from you. I don't know. I don't work at airport security. Maybe you do. In which case please get in touch and let me know what proportion of passengers bring pornography on to planes. If it turns out to be 1 in 3 then I think maybe the plan had a point. But if it is closer to 1 in a million as I suspect, then all they are doing is drawing attention to themselves. They might as well be wearing big signs round their neck saying, "Don't worry, we're not fundamentalist terrorists. In fact we hate Islam. No bombs in here. Look the Lucozade is sealed at the top, so no need to look at it closely."
I think given that bombers are prepared to blow up planes and kill innocent people and children that it would be a gullible security guard who would think that the possession of pornography would preclude someone from suspicion.
I wonder if these fundamentalists think that the Western World is so corrupt that porn mags and condoms are in the hand luggage of all male travelers. What I like about it is that it suggests hope, plus a back up plan. I'm taking some condoms on to the plane in case I get lucky - you never know - but just in case I don't, at least I have a bongo mag to keep me occupied. I just hope I don't meet a woman who wants to have sex with me after I've popped into the loo with the porn.
I think without the porn mags and condoms that things could have been very different. And I am surprised that in the crack down after the discovery that porn mags weren't added on to the list of things that weren't allowed on board. But maybe the Western World is that corrupt and the powers that be realised that confiscating porn mags would just be too time consuming and no plane would ever leave the ground again.
