Too Fat to Fight Fire!

I was just reading the BBC website about Kevin Ogilvie, the Scottish firefighter who has been sacked for being an enormous fatty:

"Talks are taking place in an attempt to find a breakthrough in the dispute over a Grampian firefighter who was sacked for being overweight. Kevin Ogilvie was dismissed after 22 years of service. Colleagues are balloting for strike action in support of his case. Grampian Fire and Rescue Service management decided he was overweight and not fit for duty."

Apparently he wants his job back, and although he holds his hands up to being rather too lardy to climb a ladder, he feels that he should be offered a more suitable post, presumably one which doesn't involve the use of a chin-strap.

The benevolent chink in my hardened soul actually feels a little sorry for the ruddy-faced fool, although my overriding (and commonsensical) instinct is that Grampian Fire and Rescue Service are probably right to ditch him. It's all very well feeling sorry for fat people because, after all, they are not only cumbersome and sweaty, they are also very very hungry ALL of the time... But you don't want to wake up in the middle of a terrifying inferno and realise that your chances of survival depend on an obese and out-of-breath firefighter negotiating a ladder built to hold half his weight in less than 60 seconds... I'm sure you'll agree that all political correctness would be overthrown in that particular eventuality.

Kevin Ogilvie's legal team argues that yes, perhaps it is madness to put him on the firefighting front line, but that he should be redeployed elsewhere in the service where he won't be required to teeter hopelessly on the protesting limb of a cherry-picker, with enormous globules of sweat clouding his vision as he swipes wildly and fruitlessly at individuals trapped on the latter floors of burning buildings. Instead, he could be assigned to making tea and polishing the fireman's pole... and perhaps also putting any half-finished meals in the oven to keep warm whenever his more slender colleagues are called to an emergency, leaving the firestation lounge in various states of disarray. No doubt someone has to pick up the scattered decks of cards and mop-up the spilled mugs of Bovril, and Kevin Ogilvie would appear to be just the right man for the job.

Things to do in Glasgow on a Tuesday

Last night, after being at a friend's house, we were driving home and noticed a massive plume of dark grey smoke drifting over the Glasgow skyline from somewhere down near the Clyde. Despite the fact that we had reached the front door to our flat, something made us decide to go and seek out the source of the fire as it looked like it was quite close by and, well, what else is there to do on a Tuesday night? Better to go rubberneck at a glorious inferno than watch Big Brother.

So we set off again, up into Jordanhill, looking at the ever increasing plume of angry-looking smoke towering across the twilight sky of Glasgow, trying to anticipate what, exactly, was burning that could make such an impressive and ominous black cloud. We drove for a good 10 minutes like this, expecting at every block to finally catch sight of orange flames and a building on fire... but it kept disappearing into the horizon until we were out as far as Yoker and then Clydebank. At this stage, it started to become apparent that it our jolly expedition had got a little out of hand and that we were totally sick for driving all this way just to see a fire and should turn back... but the smoke looked so close and it seemed to be calling us closer and closer! So we pressed on.

At this point, we'd been driving for about 15 mins and started to notice that we weren't the only car which appeared to be heading towards the fire, in fact there was a growing stream of them in front and behind us, flanked on either side by pedestrians, all of whom were wandering like wide-eyed zombies towards the source of excitement. Slowly, as we turned left into one of the docks, an enormous, leaping fire emerged, belching forth thick, black smoke and making terrifying cracking and creaking noises which sent up bright jolts of sparks into the night air. But what was most astonishing, was the sight of a huge crowd of people (mostly kids) in the distance, silhouetted against the fire, whooping and screeching with wild delight as the fire towered higher and higher across the river. It was like that scene from Dragnet where everyone is riding motorbikes and wearing fur trousers on their way to a devil-orgy.

So we stood there for 2 minutes and then got back in the car and went home to watch the end of Big Brother.

L'Enfer, C'est Les Autres

Here's a word of advice. If you want to spend your next holiday abroad becoming closely acquainted with your local council's list of ASBO recipients, then I heartily recommend that you book yourself a cheap deal to Marmaris in Turkey. Do it now before someone else gets out of jail and beats you to it.

I recently made the unfortunate blunder of booking a really cheap holiday to Turkey and believing that I wouldn't end up wishing I had asked for the pilot to land a little to the right in Iraq. Don't get me wrong - Marmaris is hot, cheap and is nestled in a pretty part of the Mediterranean. The locals are very nice (if a little cheesy and persistant in their habit of calling themselves Gino and attempting to breakdance to bad Turkish hiphop at the first possible opportunity) and the food (if you avoid the horrendous British slop that seems to follow us around holiday resorts like a bad case of genital herpes) is very good. You can get a delicious, traditional meal for a tenner if you know where to go.

The only problem is that the sort of people who seem to end up holidaying alongside you in Marmaris are from the same family tree as those who ruined Spain back in the 1980s/90s. Thinking about it, it's a natural progression that if you select holidays for less money than it takes to buy a decent handbag, you're not exactly going to end up bumping into the Prince of Monaco. What you actually get is a band of illiterate thugs who like to tattoo themselves with their children's names (usually anything beginning with a 'K': Kyle, Kayden, Kane, Kayleigh, Kanya, etc.), who shop exclusively in Primark and Farmfoods and who have no doubt done their bit for society by bellowing through the school gates that their foul kids be allowed to eat burgers and chips for school dinner. If you're lucky, your income tax will only have paid for three quarters of their holiday via the magnificent Welfare State.



I know I sound like a terrible snob but there's no mincing around this issue. I usually only get offended by this section of society when I come across them letting their flea-ridden dog shit all over the street (if it's not too busy mauling an infant) or letting their kids set fire to random public property while the parents demonstrate the vast range of ringtones offered by their mobile phone to their toothless cohorts. But when you have to share a plane and then a whole week's holiday with them it starts to make you want to reconsider your rash earlier decision to never ever go on holiday to Wales with your parents ever again - even if you have to pretend to be enjoying the pottery museum and the butterfly centre & gift shop and then sit in a tent with your dad every night doing a wet jigsaw in the dark.


I suppose I am the only one to blame for booking the damn thing in the first place, but in my defense, I spent considerable amounts of my company's valuable time researching Marmaris once I had been convinced by the travel agent to book it over the phone (I actually phoned up to book a holiday in Greece but they were all too expensive for a tight arse like me). I should have read the warning signs. I should have spent more money. The woman on the end of the phone was a woman called Zilla (probably dressed head-to-toe in pink velour with a framed photo of her semi-retarded son Dionne on her desk). She had one of those foul, barking East Yorkshire accents which makes the speaker sound like an elephant seal clearing its sinuses. Obviously, we quickly built up a rapport which culminated in her telling me she had been to Turkey on both honeymoons and only caught Hepititis C once, while simultaneously duping me into revealing my credit card details and desired travel dates. Before I knew it I had paid £500 for a holiday in Turkey for two and was frantically trawling internet review sites for assurance that I hadn't done something incredibly stupid - which I blatantly had.

So that is how, last week, I found myself on a plane crammed full of half-drunk scoundrels with bad hair extensions and the collective intellect of a cucumber, baying at full volume in pig-English about how much they were looking forward to getting plastered on the beach and shagging a Turkish breakdancer called Gino. And that is why, after a full week of hanging out with a bunch of people who have never read a book EVER and who think it's OK to yell at their their young children to 'shut the fuck up' whilst blowing cigarette smoke over them, I have decided that I shall not be recommending Marmaris to you, and why I have already urged my mother to unpack the tent, dust off the windbreak and start stockpiling tins of Heinz spaghetti bolognese in preparation for next year's holiday to Cardigan Bay...