Monster Munch

One week ago I posed a question that's been troubling me for some time. Of all the crisps available in an average newsagent, which one is the people's favourite?

Well, wonder no more....or should I say Golden Wonder no more!! ;0)

The Global Village has spoken. After seven days one crisp type and one crisp type alone stands head and shoulders above the rest. I'm not sure why I'm building up tension, readers, you'll have put two and two together by now I'm sure.

That's right. The World's Most Favourite crisp type is the Monster Munch.

And what a worthy winner. These MSG coated crazily crunchy reconstituted corn chips date back to the late 1970s. Arguably the greatest decade of them all. The Sex Pistols had shot to fame and Notts Forest won the football league. Maybe a certain amount of nostalgia played a part in the voting?

The last week hasn't exactly been plain sailing. For starters my excellent follower from the Emerald Isle Molly pointed out that Mini-Cheddars aren't actually crisps. Well, that didn't stop one person voting for the cheesey comestible. And, it didn't stop another one saying they prefer nuts!!!!

Amazingly, someone even voted against crisps altogether.

I would have thought my American followers would have voted for the Lays. But the Stateside potato chip received nil points.

Originally, I was going to write up my findings and send them into the Metro. But to be honest, I don't really think seven votes is enough of a sample.

Maybe people visiting the blog were bamboozled by the sheer volume of options. Maybe people don't really have a favourite crisp.

I'll pop up a new poll readers, this time I think I'll make it a bit more near the knuckle. I watched Panarama this evening, on the show they posed the question: should there be an amnesty on immigration?

The TV show didn't really come up with any answers, perhaps if a few more people vote in my poll I can send my findings into Panarama and we can finally put the issue to rest.

What do you think readers, should there be an amnesty on immigration? - don't answer me in the comments box, just vote in the poll on the left (unless you're reading this after next week, when the poll will have closed - if you are, then please feel free to answer the question in the comments box).

Stars in their eyes

Last Sunday I waxed lyrical about one of the world's newest, fastest growing religions, Scientology. This week, I propose to turn back the wheels of time and take a dip into the distant past, lifting the lid on one of the oldest religions on planet Earth. Or rather, the galaxy...this week, you see, I shall spend a Spritual Sunday moment or two with my eyes turned to the heavens themselves. This week, Matthew, I'll be writing about Astrology.

It's probably not as old as Voodoo, which was the first religion that I described in detail. But Astrology easily dates back to a time when Man had yet to even make up believing in God.

Astrology is pretty simple to grasp at first, but takes a lifetime to master. Not unlike the classic strategy board game Othello.

The belief system tells its followers that their lives are predetermined according to the time of year that they were born.

The calendar year is split into 12 star signs or 'Zodiacs', as they're sometimes known. Though the star signs straddle the traditional months, making the Astrological Calendar a little bit trickier to keep tabs on. I've listed the 12 signs of the Zodiac below:

Aquarious (Jan 20 - Feb 18)
Pisces (Feb 19 - Mar 20)
Aries (Mar 21 - Apr 19)
Taurus (Apr 20 - May 20)
Gemini (May 21 - Jun 20)
Cancer (Jun 21 - Jul 21)
Leo (Jul 22 - Aug 21)
Virgo (Aug 22 - Sep 22)
Libra (Sep 23 - Oct 22)
Scorpio (Oct 23 - Nov 22)
Sagittarious (Nov 23 - Dec 22)
Capricorn (Dec 23 - Jan 19)

But how does that tell you anything? I hear you call.

Well, Astrology is run by Astrologers. These guys are basically the witch doctors and vicars of Astrology. Using complex systems that have been made up and refined over thousands of years, the Astrologers examine the position of the stars and planets in the night sky, in relation to the known position of the stars and planets at the time of your birth. From this scientific observation, Astrologers are able to tell you what will happen to you on any given day.

Once again, and like pretty much all the other religions going, this sounds absolutely ludicrous.

I was born on July 20th, which makes me a Cancer. That doesn't sound very nice. But on the contrary, according to one leading online Astrology website:

"Cancers are cute. They pretend to be tough but it's all an act. They have great memories and lots of them are good at history. They love anything old, like museums, antiques and your grandmother. They are fairly secretive and hide things - food in their drawers and cupboards for instance. They stay pretty close to home, are extremely psychic, have a great sense of humour and are the world's best cooks. They collect things. Other people call this garbage but to them it's gold...you'd never find a Cancerian throwing a garage sale."

OMG!!!

At first, I will admit that I was pretty sceptical about the power of Astrology. However, now I've done some digging around, it's pretty amazing really. Almost everything above applies to me.

Another great advantage that Astrology has over other vague religions, like Christianity and Islam, is that it can help its followers determine who they will get on with. Some of the world's greatest leaders, such as Napoleon, used Astrology to pick who they would trust.

Here are the compatibility charts for Cancer:

Perfect Partners: Scorpio, Pisces
Nearly Perfect Partners: Taurus, Virgo
Like Minded Souls: Cancer
Opposites You're Attracted To: Sagittarius, Aquarius
Learn From Your Differences: Gemini, Leo
Not Your Destiny: Aries, Libra
Astrological Hell: Capricorn

It didn't surprise me one bit to discover that Amber is a Pisces, while Gill is a Librarian. Furthermore, Richard at Blockbusters, is a CAPRICORN. Now that makes a lot of sense. And, if proof be need be that Astrology has some genuine clout, Mum, like me, is also a Cancer.

You can get plenty of books about Astrology and you can even contstruct your own charts and make stuff up using a telescope. But as with most of these things it is far better to leave it to the professionals. Most newspapers and women's magazine feature daily or monthly star sign prediction pages, these are made up by the Astrologers themseleves. In Britain, the two most famous Astrologers are Russell Grant and Patrick Moore.

The next time I look up into the sky and wonder what the fickle Mistress of Fate has in store for me, I'll head inside and log on to the Internet to find out.

Here's what I've got to look forward next week to according to one leading online Astrologer:

"Business relationships will require solid definition this week. Beginning early Tuesday expect office managers and officials to publicly demand results or announce key policy changes. Much of this may be simple dramatics; don't expect authority figures to actually implement long term changes. The next 11 days will determine the outcome of difficult office dynamics or business power struggles. Wait for concrete signs of change before making public statements. After Wednesday romance and social obligations will be complex. Expect loved ones to compete for your attention or make unusual statements concerning family relationships. Emotions are unpredictable at present: watch for minor outbursts and criticism. Friday calm attitudes return: pace yourself and avoid quick judgements. "

Fingers crossed readers, this Wednesday could be something special!!!

As Oscar Wilde famously said, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

Mind you, they locked him up in Wandsworth Prison. He might have been witty, but that didn't stop him breaking the law.

Oscar Wilde was a Sagittarious.

Fallen angels

They say that you should never meet your heroes. I always thought, 'what a load of tosh, when I met Brian Clough, he was every inch the gent'. However, the close encounter that I had with another one of my heroes last night seemed to back up the old adage.

I was minding my own business sitting in a pub in London's fashionable Chelsea waiting for my friend Dave the roofer (he's a season ticket holder at 'the Bridge') and in stormed none other than former world featherweight boxing legend, and my namesake, Barry McGuigan.

He looked to be in an advanced state of concern (Barry, not Dave - Dave was yet to arrive). I was going to say "hello", but I thought 'no Barry, this is London's fashionable Chelsea, the stars all hang out here to avoid that kind of thing', so I turned back around and kept reading my copy of the Metro.

I finished my pint and thought I'd nip to the gents before Dave arrived, he gets very impatient sometimes if I interupt his football stories by going to the loo.

So I walked into the loo and came face to face with Barry!!!

Not me, I wasn't looking in the mirror ;-) it was Barry McGuigan. the Clones Cyclone. I tell you what readers, he's tiny.

He might be tiny, but he's still menacing KK?! We looked at one another, eye-to-eye, mano i mano, and I made my way over the urinal. He was wearing the kind of expression that just says "DON'T!". Suffice to say, I didn't.

He turned around to face the solitary toilet cubicle. I have to say I was quite relieved, with a former champion pugilist staring at me I would almost certainly have suffered from a certain degree of 'stage fright'.

Anyway, I precided with my business, and heard some mumblings from within the toilet trap. Barry was clearly waiting for someone inside. Now, I've heard about this sort of thing, I'm not naive. I've had a toot on the old jazz salt trumpet, I've been a weekend rockstar practising my lines, I've snorted the dragons.

Like Eric Clapton before me, I'm talking about COCAINE!!!!!!!

Anyway, I tried not to think about it, then I heard another voice, clearer this time, coming out of the toilet cubicle. "Did mum see?" asked the voice.
"I'll tell you later," said Barry.

Well, jeesh, now I didn't know what to make of the situation. I just finished up and scarpered, no sign of Dave in the bar, so I headed for the door as quick as I could!!

I had to call Dave to tell him I'd been called away by Gill. "You're under the fum mate," he said. Maybe he's right.

When I got home, I popped the TV on, and there, smiling back at me across the living room, was....yep, you guessed it, BARRY MCGUIGAN.

He was on Family Fortunes, with Vernon Kay. Amazing.

I was too stunned to blog about it at the time, but I've had a chance to think about it. This would make for an interesting piece for the Metro probably.

I wonder if any of you have had an embarassing interlude with a former famous namesake? I'll love to read your stories, I'm sure they would add a touch of 'colour'* to my piece for the Metro.

As a Citizen Journalist you've got to keep your wits about you. There are famous people EVERYWHERE.

l8ers!

*colour is a journalistic euphemism. It means, interesting yet not directly relevant.

"Allegedly"

I don't know if you remember readers, but when I was starting out on my quest to become a journalist, I penned an article that said representatives of the media giant Sky had sexually harassed Gill?

My lawyers stepped in at that point and saved my bacon. But it was an expensive lesson. It effectively cost me my redundancy package!

As you can well imagine, I've been pretty careful ever since. Making sure that I check all my facts on Wikipedia.

More recently, though, when I gained my new follower David Coleman, I foolishly suggested it was the same one as the famous one. I was wrong. I can't be right about EVERYTHING!

Even so, I still found the following post on a web forum extremely hurtful. After I posted my review of Scientology, this site, made some seriously slanderous comments.

If you can't be bothered to click the link, basically, someone posted part of my Scientology blog and then someone else, calling themselves LronIsgonE_Snap in the West Coast of America, said (and I quote): "This blogger subscribes to the belief that you should never let the facts get in the way of a good story."

OUTRAGEOUS!!

I always check my facts. The thing is, as Steve pointed out when I discovered Wikipedia, not everything on the Internet is true!!!

It's for this reason that I am being forced to add a disclaimer to the bottom of my blog.

Disclaimers are used by organisations to effectively give them a Get Out of Trouble Free card if they say stuff that they shouldn't. It's a bit like when Private Eye's Ian Hislop used to say "alledgedly" on Have I Got News For You, after he'd just accused Sky's Rupert Murdoch of being a power-hungry manipulator, hell-bent on world domination, allegedly.

Crisps

Today has been a bit of slow news day. That's what us journalists call the days when there's not much to write about.

Do not despair though. I have employed an old trick of the journalism trade. If you look over to the left of this post, you'll see that I have introduced a NEW feature to the blog. It's a poll. (Not the same sort of poll as my excellent follower Marek Lenarcik.)

Journalists often fall back on research carried out by analysts and pollsters, especially on slow news days like today.

I was inspired to create today's poll by one of the burning questions gripping the nation. I nipped into the newsagent to pick up a four pack of Cobra and grabbed a packet of the new Walkers Builder's Breakfast flavour crisp.

For those of you not familiar with this new flavour of crisp, Leicester-based Walkers Crisps are running a nationwide poll to decide what their new flavour should be. "For the first time ever the nation are being asked to decide," says Leicester's own squeaky clean Gary Lineker on the firm's website.

Walkers are real movers and shakers in the world of crisp technology. Though this time the new flavours were suggested by the people of Britain and the firm has declared that it will put one of them on their roster permanently once the votes have been cast.

There's the aformentioned Builder's Breakfast, there's Cajun Squirrel, there's Onion Baji (my fav), there's Fish & Chips, there's Chocolate & Chilli (urgh!!) and Crispy Hoisin Duck.

It got me thinking, the people of Britain really do love their crisps (or potato chips as our American cousins say). So I thought I would see which type of crisp, as oppose to which flavour of crisp, the people of the world enjoy most.

There are all the usual suspects that you might see in your average newsagent, and some extras. I've left no stone unturned. I've even included the rather amusingly named American crisp, Lays..;-)

I didn't include Bum though, I saw Bum crisps in Spain some years ago, I'm not sure whether they're still available.

CAST YOUR VOTE NOW!!!!!!!!

CORRECTION!!!

Two days ago I welcomed on board the good ship Newsdesk an eigth follower.

David Coleman.

I'm afraid to say that I failed to do one of the most important things in journalism. I failed to check up my facts. It's schoolboy stuff, readers. Journalists should never take things at face value.

My David Coleman is not the same David Coleman made infamous for saying ridiculous things while commentating. My David Coleman is a retired school master.

The good news is, he's a reasonable chap and appears to have let yours truly off the hook.

He dropped by and left a really uplifting comment, commending me upon my improved use of the Queen's English - if you can't be bothered to click on the link, here's what he said:

A pleasing blog. As a retired teacher - and NOT a former TV sports presenter - I am happy to comment that your spelling and punctuation are both making great progress. My appearance in your latest article prompted me to recall the following soundbites :-

“Looking at the proliferation of personal web pages on the net, it looks like very soon everyone on earth will have 15 Megabytes of fame.”
M. G. Siriam

“Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks”

Keep on blogging!

I certainly will keep on blogging Dave (may I call you Dave or as a retired teacher would you prefer Mr Coleman?)

Asta la vista Davey!

Scientology

It’s Sunday today and naturally my thoughts are tending towards all matters spiritual. As part of my on-going quest to decide whether or not there is a God, I’ve covered some of the classic religions: Voodoo, Islam and Christianity. Today though, I’d like to share with you the fruits of my labours regarding an avant garde new religion that you might not have heard of.

Scientology.

Wtf? It doesn’t even sound like a religion. It sounds like one of the options you get at schools these days. In my day, you did chemistry, physics and biology. From what Amber was telling me these days they all get lumped together, if I had to guess at a decent name for this lumping together of all the sciences, I’d guess at Scientology. But I’d be wrong. You’d be much more likely to stumble across Scientology as part of your religious education.

Then again, when I did RE at school we tended to focus mainly on Christianity. No one mentioned Scientology – not once. Which is bit odd, because it’s been around since 1953 when the religion’s founder L Ron Hubbard made it all up. That said, the religion only gained its tax-free status in the 1990s. This was an important breakthrough for the Church of Scientology, which basically rewards its followers with something called ‘Tech’ according to their levels of financial contributions.

In short, Tech is knowledge. The more Tech you acquire, the more you understand the religion and the more in tune with God you become. Unlike pretty much every other religion in the world, the followers of Scientology aren’t given the full low down from the word go. They have to invest in Tech. Some people are critical of this religious business model, but I think it makes a lot of sense, particularly in today’s non-stop hectic world. Sometimes you haven’t got time to sit around reading about theology. If you do it by stages, you’ve got a better chance of understanding it all. Like the Open University.

There’s lots of stuff on the internet about Scientology. Lots of people are openly critical of Scientology because, frankly, it promotes some fairly ‘out there’ view points. Do you remember the TV show V? Well, that’s basically Scientology in a nutshell. Man is immortal, and his soul is called a Thetan. Thetans have lived on other planets before coming to live on Earth. They’re just using our bodies as soul storage facilities.

It sounds totally mental, right? Well, yeah, I suppose it does a little bit, but if you think about the tall tales you're expected to swallow with all the other religions, then maybe it's not so mental afterall. I suppose there's just as much chance of us all being Immportal Lizard Men as there is of the whole world being created in just seven days 6000 years ago by some all-seeing, all-powerful dude who lives in a place called Heaven where we all go when we die.

I’d better be careful about just how much information I present here readers. The Scientologists are pretty touchy when it comes to copyright infringements and they’ve been known to use some fairly strong-arm techniques when it comes to getting their message across.

That said, you might well see Scientologists on your local High Street. They sometimes set up shop offering Free Stress Tests. Which sounds pretty nice to me. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, as Mum always says.

Scientology is probably the sexiest religion going at the moment, and as such it attracts famous actors from Hollywood. Tom Cruise, John Travolta and David Beckham are all famous Scientologists. You're much more likely to see those guys in the Metro than you are the Pope. And if you're looking to attract youngsters to your religion you stand a much better chance if its followers are in the Metro.

You can certainly see why Scientology is so popular at the moment. It attracts genuine Hollywood followers, it offers up the belief that we’re all immortal Lizard Gods from Outer Space, and you can buy your way in. So it offers up a level of exclusivity that you just don’t seem to find with all the boring old fashioned religions.

If you’ve got the cash, you can be a Scientologist pretty much anywhere in the world. One place you can’t be a Scientologist though is Germany. Those guys have banned it. I’m disappointed in the Germans' lack of religious tolerance. Disappointed, but not that surprised!

Gotta go now readers, I’m starving. If I was back in Lincoln Mum’d be cooking me a lovely roast dinner. As it is, all I’ve got are beans and broccoli. Think I’ll have that on toast, washed down with a can of Cobra. Natch*.

*naturally.