Vinylrichie’s Weblog

 I feel a bit left out. Everywhere else in town has rack after rack of splendid gift ideas for the festive season. As I peruse the racks in HMV, my senses are overwhelmed with the quality presents that you and your loved ones will be buying or receiving this year. If only I had the marvellous stock they had! I wish I had things like ‘Jeremy Clarkson’s Hilarious Badminton Mishaps’ or ‘Christopher Biggins’ Incredible Chess Bloopers’ DVDs to make the punters happy. I wish I had ‘Michael Palin’s Travels around Basildon’ DVD/Book tie in for only £35.99 for you to get your Mum so she can feign weary gratefulness on Christmas morn. Or there are those DVD games that you can get which promise fun for all the family (except the young children, teenagers who don’t like anything anyway, and the elderly. Oh, and your dad who fails to grasp the concept of anything new: ‘A DVD game? When I was a lad all we had was an orange and a stick to play with on Christmas day before being sent up the chimney….’)

Then there are the books. Piles of them which are £19.99 in the run up to Christmas but will be found for £3.99 in January. This is because they will be titled with such wonderous headings like ‘100 Most Amusing Hamsters’, ‘Nigella Lawson’s Cooking with Beetroot’ or ‘My Life’ by some 16 year old footballer who’s biggest acheivement is coming on for the last ten minutes at Barnsley in a reserve game and being looked at once or twice by Fulham. Still, seeing these books in the bestsellers charts makes a change from the plethora of child abuse stories that litter the ‘literary’ charts nowadays. Things like ‘Daddy, Please Nooooo’ and ‘My Childhood as a Human Pinata’ aren’t that festive I suppose. I’m surprised that the public fall for this cascade of utter shit every year. The golden rule is to consider: Would you want that oversized brick of a book cluttering up your tiny bookshelf? How would you feel if you were presented with such drivel? Yes, your grandfather might like golf but does he need another ‘Jimmy Tarbuck’s’ Golfing Tips’ book for the fifth consecutive year? He probably knows the rules by now. (If he likes golf he’s probably given up on life anyway so why bother buying him anything?)

But it is the music industry that really takes the piss at this time if year. I swear that the record label bigwigs put the names of the artists on their roster in a hat and pull one or two out. Bingo! Queue the release of the ‘Best of A Flock of Seagulls’ but with remixed extra track! Or yet another ‘Best of the Eagles’ to add to the collection. This one is vital though as the tracks are the same as last year’s but in a different order. The cover is also white this year instead of brown. Thanks for that. Then there’s the forgotten artists that make a desperate attempt at being noticed once again by reforming for one new song in the hope that it will top the festive chart of crap. On the back of this one new song, forlornly tagged onto the end of ‘The Very Best of…’ a tour will be born where everyone can go and realise that they’ve actually grown up and regret spending £45 on seeing a greying’Take That’ or ‘David Beckham’s Spice Girl Extravaganza Party’ and wished they’d stayed at home to watch ‘CSI Miami’ with a cup of peppermint tea. Still, at least ‘Take That’ Fans don’t have to put up with frog eyed yelper Robbie Williams gurning anymore. (Oh. That’s the one you really like. Sorry.)

 Calenders are also a great gift idea. Sometimes it’s such a good idea that everybody has it so everyone can end up with four calenders for the year. Band calenders are a popular choice but don’t trust the ones that don’t show you the pictures on the back first. My ‘Girls Aloud’ calender this year features pictures that look like they’ve been hastily snapped by a pervy man in a suit down the front of a gig on his two mega-pixel camera phone, shortly before being ejected by a burly security guard. December’s pic is quite bad as, not only does it heavily feature the robotic ginger one that doesn’t move, Nicola, it is also very grainy. Therefore I’ve done the sensible thing of going back to May so I can have the picture where you can see up Nadine’s skirt and glimpse her flowery knickers. I wonder if old ladies do a similar thing with their calenders if they have a particular favourite picture of a kitten peeping out of a boot? Do they go back to May too?

A shortage in gift ideas still? Vouchers are the answer, but not vouchers for ‘Boots’ please. Trying to spend £20 on deodorant and ibrubrofen is a little dull. No, people want vouchers for clothes or entertainment. I’m hoping to get some so I can extend my DVD collection. I have my eye on ‘Simon Cowell’s Fishing Howlers’ vol II. There’s even a chance it might be reduced after Christmas so I might even have enough for ‘Stephen Hawking’s Chair-robics Workout.’ I love Christmas, it’s so spiritual isn’t it?