This Week we have two recipients of the celebrated Wanker of the Week Award.
The first is the charity Alcohol Concern, who complained that the picture on the Wye Valley Brewery's "Dorothy Goodbody's Wholesome Stout" bottles was "sexually suggestive" because the lady didn't appear to be wearing any knickers.
Luckily common-sense has triumphed - the watchdog organisation that governs such things has rejected the complaint, saying that the brewery had "not crossed the line from acceptable to irresponsible marketing".
Wye Valley Brewery said it was "delighted" with the decision and that the Dorothy Goodbody brand was intended to be a light-hearted image capturing the "spirit of 1950s rural Herefordshire". Vernon Amor, managing director, said he was "surprised" that a complaint had been made about the 15-year-old brand. He added: "If you were to ban Dorothy Goodbody, where would it end? Next thing you know there would be a ban on all the Carry On films and the iconic British seaside postcards."
So, Alcohol Concern, for thinking that it's a worthwhile use of your time looking up the skirts of a picture on a beer bottle, you are our first Wankers of the Week. You sad little people, have you nothing better to do? Aren't there some middle-aged middle-class ladies you could go and victimise?
More details here.
Our second Wanker is a rather lovely bloke called Mark Boyle. We're sure he's a splendid fellow, but he has amused us this week by being … well, a bit of a sad plonker, really.
He had the daffy idea of walking to India with no money, to highlight … something or other. He hoped that the two-and-a-half year walk would show his faith in humanity. Equipped with only a few T-shirts, a bandage and spare sandals, he set off from Bristol to trek 9,000 miles to Ghandi's birthplace, crossing Europe and the Middle East including war-ravaged Afghanistan.
He said "I will be offering my skills to people. If I get food in return, it's a bonus". He is described as a "former dotcom businessman", so that'll be useful - there's a lot of call for dotcom business skills in Afghanistan.
The walk from Bristol to the Channel went well enough. He spent a couple of days at a school, and wrote on his website "The last two days have both inspired and grounded me. To start with, nothing could be better than spending your day around kids and that beautiful genuine energy they have in abundance. There were kids running around us all day, still with loads of questions, all wanting high fives and shouting 'peace to the middle east', a phrase they coined themselves ... wish I had thought of that one." Boy, this really is a man who knows how to get things done. High fives'll solve the world's problems all right, all right.
However, France proved a big disappointment. He wrote on his blog that he and his two companions immediately encountered problems after crossing the Channel. "Not only did no one . . . speak the language, they see us as just a bunch of freeloading backpackers, which is the complete opposite of what the pilgrimage was about."
He was advised by a few friendly French people to head for Belgium, where the people were "more likely to want to speak English". However, the trio gave up their quest "because the nearest decent-sized town in Belgium was 106 miles away and all we had was three tins of soup, a bag of trail mix and a chocolate bar".
So he just came home. How sad is that. He was going to show his trust in humanity, give the third world the benefit of his skills, save the planet/whales/polar bears or whatever, trudge his way through Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Middle East - just about the most dangerous place for a sandal-wearing weirdy at present, we would have thought, given all the heavily-armed American troops swarming around … and he never thought that it might be a good idea to rustle up a few words of schoolboy French, not to mention Czech, Hungarian, Serbian, Albanian, Turkish, Arabic, Urdu etc.
Oh boy. Wanker of the Week. Here you are, mate, take the award. Just so your trip wasn't a total waste of time and effort.
More details here.
either on this site or on the World Wide Web.
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