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(Getranscribeerd door TurboScribe. Upgrade naar Onbeperkt om dit bericht te verwijderen.) The 35 to 54 year old age group

is the grumpiest of any in Britain today.

They're grumpier than their parents, who survived the

war and were just grateful to be alive.

Grumpier than their children, who don't seem to

care very much about anything. Wherever they look,

they find something that makes them grumpy. I'd

like to smash up modern technology. There has

been some kind of genetic leap. Am I

computer literate? You've got to be out of

your mind. What is Acrobat Reader? Do I

really have to be on a note? Why

must I be on a note? Shut up!

Shut up! Turn it off before I cut

your head off and use it as a

bowling ball! It's not just about modern technology.

It's about almost everything. Mobile phones, packaging you

can't get into, traffic calming, automated call centres,

designer labels, fast food, public transport, traffic and

cars. People love their cars more than they

love human beings. Nobody needs an off-road

vehicle unless they're off-road. Why we put

up with it, I simply don't know. At

school, they were told that the white heat

of technology would deliver leisure and pleasure. Robots

would take care of daily chores. Computers would

take the nasty, hard part out of thinking.

But it didn't work out that way. Once

so simple, life now seems so complicated. They've

just got used to one thing, and it's

another. Instead of leisure and pleasure, technology has

just made everything go faster and faster. Oh,

sure, our grumpy old men can keep up

with it if they want to. It's just

that they're not sure that they want to.

We're assaulted by technology wherever you go. There

seems to be never a moment when there's

not someone at you with their technology, which

is why lots of grumpy men just go

off and walk up mountains and are never

seen again. It all started 30 years ago

with a video recorder. Watch a programme whenever

you want to. What a great piece of

kit, we all thought. At first, it was

so simple. Press record to record and play

to play. Then came the remote control, automatic

tuning, timers, tracking, seven-day planning, and those

eight-digit number codes you had to programme

in. For our grumpy old men, it was

like asking a monkey to paint a Rembrandt.

And to add insult to injury, the only

people who understand it are the kids. My

wife and I really look forward to their

coming home so they can do it for

us. But then, of course, they know too

much, you know what I mean? So they

fix it for their own purposes, you know?

So you go to watch a video and

you find that they've sort of reprogrammed it

so that it'll bottle black currents or something,

do you know what I mean? It'll do

something other than what you expect it to

do. I'd like to smash up modern technology

to preserve my personal traditional craft of sitting

around doing bugger all. We've got stacks of

videos that we've never seen because we can't

make the video player play them. And DVDs?

Do me a favour. There's hardly a workplace

in the land that has not been transformed

by the computer revolution, which has now put

paid to those innocent pleasures afforded by the

shorthand typist, the typing pool and the copying

department. You can hardly function without being what's

known as multi-skilled, and our grumpies are

appalled. I don't know what it means. I

have, I suppose, made a conscious decision. I

haven't mastered pen and paper yet. I mean,

I try and make myself write letters. I

like to read books. I like to hold

it in my hand a lot, you know

what I mean? But I can't do no

lack computer lack shit, because lack, I just

don't know how that goes on, and I

don't really believe that it has anything to

offer me. I was eventually persuaded to buy

a computer. I actually was not having any

social life at all. I was being utterly,

I was a complete pariah until I bought

a computer. Our grumpy old men hate taking

the machine they bought just 18 months ago

back into the shop for a spare part,

only to have a small crowd of spotty

youths gather round to have a good laugh

at someone using the technology equivalent of the

flintlock musket. They're not quite ready to be

patronised by snot-nosed kids. There has been

some kind of genetic leap, and children are

born understanding... I think it's because they're not

frightened of it. You know, they'll just... I

bet this is what you do. And then

if it doesn't... Oh, well, OK, we'll try...

And they'll try something else. Whereas I'm very...

expecting somebody to go terrifically wrong. When the

instruction booklet is bigger than the piece of

kit, and it's unintelligible, that does drive you

absolutely crazy, yes. I have a little man,

and the little man comes round to work

on the computer. In fact, I've stepped back

technologically to deal with the advanced technology, and

the little man's always saying to me, Why

don't you upgrade? Why don't you get this?

Why don't you get that? Why don't you

get this peripheral? Why don't you do that?

It came out of the pyramid of Cheops.

You can't do anything on that. And I

just can't be arsed. This building obsolescence of

this technology is phenomenal. When we were lads,

our idea of multi-skilling was reading the

paper and shaving at the same time. If

your chain came off your bike, it was

your dad you turned to for help. Even

if his other job was running the country,

he always had time to get out the

oil can and sort you out. Today, technology

has denied Dad even these simple pleasures. You

spill tea on top of your laptop. And

if you don't back up, and if your

tea's got sugar in it... You know this,

don't you? But if your tea's got sugar

in it, that's it. If you do it

on a laptop, it's smashed. This is what

the guy at the computer... Well, if your

tea's got sugar in it, of course, you're

not going to get anything back, are you?

Do you take sugar? The biggest lie that

the technology manufacturers sell you is plug and

go. It's plug and... I don't know what's

going on here. What are you doing in

there from the kitchen? I've just bought this

new bit of kit, darling, and I'm just

sorting it out. And that goes on for

weeks, plug and go. It's a joke. Of

course, once you have the computer, the word

processor, the office manager, the calendar, the graphics

pack, the accounting software and the printer, you

need to get online. It's all so simple.

You can go narrowband or broadband, ADSL or

cable, pay-as-you-go or all-you

-can-eat. You programme in your credit card

so that someone in Las Vegas can use

it to fund their drugs habit, choose your

search engine and then discover that WWW stands

for World Wide Wait. Oh, but you get

anything on the Internet. Oh, yeah, the solution

to the Northern Ireland Peace Problem, it's on

the Internet. You know, cure for cancer, type

in cancer, cure, and then there's 3,000

documents about some boy in Milwaukee whose favourite

band is The Cure and whose star sign

is cancer, and you've read about ten pages

of it before you've worked out it's absolutely

no relevance at all to what you want.

Who wants to surf on the net? Who

wants to surf on the net? You know,

you've got to be brain-dead. This is

the point at which I recede to being

of the analogue, you know, ink-and-paper

generation. I can see the advantage of it,

but as a professional working journalist, I hardly

ever use it. I'll do it to access

Eclipse Library, but I won't read offscreen. It

drives your brain into an omelette-style mush.

You do not want to do that. As

for the rest of it, it's wank fodder.

Who hits sites? You know, it's sad guys

tossing themselves off. It should be called The

Tosser Net, because that is 99% of

the traffic. And speaking of traffic, when our

grumpies were at school, they were promised that

they would commute into bright and air-conditioned

offices in hands-free bright and shiny vehicles,

running smoothly over maintenance-free roads with magic

eyes which would prevent them colliding, while a

robotic assistant would update them with the latest

news. Instead, they sit in small tin boxes

with overheated engines, travelling slower than the horse

and cart of 100 years ago, polluting the

atmosphere, burning fossil fuels. They're paying 75%

tax in petrol, congestion charges and £40 a

day to park. Despite all that, all the

expense and frustration, driving is a modern love

affair. Cars. People love their cars more than

they love human beings. All that money you

turn on the telly and there's adverts. They're

marvellous adverts in a way. Creative people have

spent hours, years working it out. They've spent

a fortune to advertise a bloody car. And

they're just cars. They're tin boxes that get

you about. And it would be better if

we were all on public transport and there

were more people in the tin boxes, rather

than one person just loves his car and

he prefers his car to any human being.

Amongst friends or family or in a crowd,

our grumpy old men can temporarily be distracted

from all the many things that rattle their

cages. They may even appear to function like

everyone else. But when they're on their own,

in the car, with nothing else to think

about, their minds just wander over life's many

bloody irritations. I think there's a dangerous number

of options in a car. In the car

that I've got, there's a kind of stick

of controls and I have no idea what

it's for at all. Absolutely no idea. But

the car seems to go all right without

it, without my knowing what it means. And

there's just too much, too many gadgets. There's

something which has been engaged at some stage

that interrupts the radio session that you're listening

to with traffic advice. And I don't know

how to switch it off. And so I'm

driving on and I'll be listening to some

record that I really like and singing along

with it, possibly if there's nobody else in

the car, and suddenly somebody will come on

and tell me what's going on in the

M25. Now, I know a lot of people

drive on the M25, but frankly, I don't

give a **** what's happening on the M25.

And I don't want my records to be

interrupted by people telling me. No, what I

really hang on the road are bull bars

and four WDs. They could have used them

to invade Iraq, couldn't they? I mean, they're

semi-military vehicles, aren't they? All they're saying

is, I have lots of money. That's all

they're doing. Oh, but we need it to

go up hills. No, you don't. You need

it to make your penis look bigger. Nobody

needs an off-road vehicle unless they're off

-road. Go and live in a field if

you want to drive a four WD. Don't

tool up and down the Fulham Road, taking

little Chloe and Tarquin back and forth to

private school in your bloody four WD with

your bull bars, which will kill a child

if you're going at two bars an hour.

That is insane. Go on the Pamplona Bull

Run. With

plenty of time to look out of the

window in their slow-moving vehicles, our grumpy

old men cast their eyes over the environment

around them. They sit back and take in

the streets in towns and cities, which look

as though the nursery class have been given

custody over the paint gun and run amok.

There are two yellow lines down the side

of the road telling you not to park.

And just in case you can't see them,

there are two yellow flashes on the pavement

three yards apart telling you again that you

can't park. There are two red lines where

there aren't two yellow lines telling you that

you can't park, and you can't stop either.

So that's don't even think about parking. There

are chevrons marking out the area leading up

to a bollard telling you that you might

be getting near the bollard. There are wide

white lines marking out bus lanes and writing

on the bus lane telling you it's a

bus lane. And just in case you can't

see the lines or the writing, the whole

bus lane has been coloured red. One of

the appalling things is not just the amount

of street furniture, the observation cameras, the warnings,

the notices. It's not so much the sinister

evidence of a controlling force which seeks to

limit the liberty of individuals, which is uncomfortable

and unpleasant enough, but it's the actual visual

mess. Cable

Street Few streets illustrate the point better than

Cable Street in the east end of London.

Sir Oswald Moseley's volunteers were kept at bay

at the famous Battle of Cable Street in

the mid-thirties. But were the anti-fascists

succeeded against Moseley, they would have been no

match for the Highways Department. This street is

part of our London heritage. Now look at

it. What is it now? Council estates on

each side and poles sprouting all the way

down Cable Street. There must be about 1

,000 tonnes of steel and concrete with poles

and signs indicating which way it's one way

this way, which way it's one way that

way, which way it's two ways both ways,

which side is the cycle track, which way

is the track for pedestrians, which way is

the track for motorists, signs warning us of

a roundabout ahead, signs warning us of a

traffic light ahead, signs telling us this, that

and the other. Endless street lights, far more

street lights than are necessary. Vice can't thrive

where there are street lights. It was more

interesting when everything was dark. And the street

furniture, the landscape, is now just a forest

of metal poles, concrete lumps and big blank

metal signs all over the place. It's absolutely

horrible. The worst of it all are the

pedestrian barriers to try and make pedestrians cross

the street here and stop pedestrians from crossing

the street somewhere else. There are thousands of

tonnes of metal have gone into all these

ghastly barriers which look horrible and don't stop

me, because when I see a pedestrian barrier,

I just climb straight over it, even if

I wasn't going that way, just to show

that I will not be stopped. I'm always

having accidents, I'm trying to cross with shopping

and I fall off, but even if the

pedestrian barrier wants to make me go two

yards a little way round, I won't, I

won't be told what place to choose. And

watching Matthew carrying out his private and slightly

deranged one-man revolution, his big brother. God

only knows why he's watching, unless he's just

having a laugh at the mess he's created.

So our grumpy old men go about their

daily business. For much of the time, if

you didn't know better, they'd seem just like

anyone else, getting the shopping, going to work,

going to the football, going to the cinema.

But while grumpy old men may often seem

calm and collected on the outside, inside their

heads is a constant turmoil. These people can't

hear an announcement on the station without mentally

correcting the grammar. Can't listen to a politician

speaking without noting that he hasn't said anything.

Can't see a sign advertising a massive rug

sale without wondering out loud who on earth

would want to buy a massive rug? And

enduring the family all raising their eyes and

bleating, Oh, Dad! Grumpy old men are condemned

to a lifetime of silently monitoring the lunacy

that is the world around them. But give

them a chance. Ask them an apparently innocuous

question, and it's like lighting the blue touch

paper. Public transport in Britain is absolutely atrocious.

The services are bad, they're crowded, things simply

don't come, things are expensive. Why we put

up with it, I simply don't know. Why

doesn't a political party with only one platform,

which is to make public transport better, try

putting up, for instance, in London? I would

vote for it. I'd vote for a Marxist.

I'd vote for a Trotskyite. I'd vote for

anybody that promised, with some chance of success,

that promised to do something about public transport

in London. How is it, by the way,

that when they had an earthquake in San

Francisco a few years ago, they have the

tube up and running in two days after

one of the biggest earthquakes the city had

seen, and that they had repaired the road

at the epicentre within three days so that

traffic was using it again? We have roadworks,

say, on the North Circular, and a motorway

somewhere in the north, and it would say

delays likely for three years sometimes. Hang a

lane gyratory system four years to get it

right. I mean, what the heck is going

on? And what would they do about it?

Well, sometimes desperate situations require desperate solutions. Pedestrians

that don't look out should be killed. And

will be, and it'll be an example to

the other ones. It's one of the few

ways in which the Darwinian selection process is

able to continue, is in the squashing of

slow pedestrians. Also, that's why I like those

buses, that you can jump on and off,

because it encourages the nimble and the lithe

and puts the lame at a competitive disadvantage.

So you're sitting on the tube on your

way to work, you've had a row with

the wife, you hate the boss, and someone's

trying to read your newspaper over your shoulder,

and you hear this. And

there's some guy going like... It's absolutely ridiculous.

Part of me's thinking, well, what is that?

What is that tune? I can recognise it.

And the other part, this is the more

predominant part, again, there's a lot of stress

you're going through. This one's to say, shut

that noise up! It's horrible! Drives you bloody

mad when you get on a train and

there's some idiot with... in their ear the

whole way. Or there's a new one, computer

games on trains. Boop, boop... Shut up! Shut

up! How can you do that? It's called

a personal walkman. That's what it's called, a

personal walkman. And that means it's for you,

not for me. I'm seven feet away. I

can hear it. It's really annoying. Turn it

off before I cut your head off and

use it as a bowling ball. Some of

today's grumpy old men are irritated by the

things that are obviously designed to annoy us,

like Nouvelle Cuisine or road signs in Welsh,

and some are irritated by unexpected things like

school plays or Lloyd Grossman. But there is

one thing that irritates each and every one

of them, beyond endurance, driving them to verbal

violence and only stopping there because physical violence

is not an option. Welcome to British Airways

London Eye. Champagne, light and cool. Press three.

Thank you for calling Arsenal Football Club. A

bell. Hello, and thanks for calling Sky Plus.

To help us answer your call, please click

the responsible third digit of your security key.

Please press the star button twice. Press two.

Please press one. Please dial zero now. Press

one. Press three. Press zero. Press one. If

you're a member with numbers from an eight

-number digit, press one. If you're a number

with a six-number digit, press this. If

you've been a member for so many years,

press that. If you're a Gold member, press

that. If your printer is not working because

the interface is not aligned properly with the

hosing channel, press one. I don't bloody know

why my printer's not working. 25 minutes before

you actually get something that says to you,

would you like to speak to an operator?

You have to go through all these stages

till you get, and now you'll be put

through to customer services, which is all you

wanted in the first place. Is that the

marketing people's idea, we'll get a load of

people at home blowing steam through our ears

because they've had to listen to Rach Maninoff

playing Tineley between computerised voices, asking you questions

you don't know the answer to? But Grumpy

Old Man is not so much a television

series, it's more a way of life. Weary

of sitting and taking it in the guts,

our grumpy old men are plotting the fight

back. Phone rings. Can you confirm your surname

and postcode, please? I said, no. She said,

I'm positive identification, that you are the person

that I'm speaking to. I said, it is

definitely me. She said, but you have to

prove it. I said, OK, I'm two stone

overweight and I've got a small dick. And

she said, pardon? I said, I'm two stone

overweight and I've got a small dick. They're

just proving that it's me. I said, I

can't believe you said that. I said, well,

I'm positive identifying myself. She said, I'm sorry,

Mr McGrath. Aha! You mentioned my name! I

said, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to...

I said, I can have you for sexual

harassment. She put the phone down. Thank God

for that. If you wish to speak to

me about my overdraft, press 1. If you

wish to speak to me about my new

balance that I wish to open, press 2.

If you wish to speak to somebody other

than me, press 3. And then when they've

done that, you say, OK, I can now

put you through to an opera and just

do all that for, like, 25 minutes. Cos

that's what they do to us. Thank you.

A member of our team will be with

you shortly. The first thing they say if

you ring up the train enquiries is, which

train are you... Where are you travelling from?

And I'm like, no, no, no, this is

an enquiry line. I ask the questions. Which

station are you travelling from? I said, pardon?

Which station are you travelling from? I said,

sorry, I don't understand the question. Which station

are you travelling from? I said, I'm not

travelling from any station. I'm standing by the

phone in my bedroom. No, why are you

phoning? I said, I want to know if

there's a bar at Oxford station. What time

are you travelling? I said, I might not

be travelling, I just want to know if

there's a bar at Oxford station. Welcome to

the Odeon film line. I love to speak

to a human being. I mean, I love

to be able to phone up Camden, Odeon

and just say, hi, it's me, can I

have a seat? Putney? Wapping? Watford? What? Oh,

shit, what number was Putney? Oh, shit, bang,

start again. They didn't say, oh, sorry, that

one's sold out, or, you know, they wait

until the end and say, ah, yeah, your

credit card will now clear, and, oh, sorry,

it's all in fact sold out, do try

some other, and you go, what? Oh, bollocks.

See, mobile phones, I didn't want to get

one, and now I've been forced to get

one by people, and Simon's got a withheld

number, why can't they tell me who's ringing

up? Yes, what do you want? You've had

an email. Simon, I'm not interested, I'm on

camera at the moment being a grumpy old

man, and you've interrupted me, all right? Well,

I'm sorry, I can't, I'll have to talk

to you later. What makes me fed up

about mobile phones? My goodness, it's the director.

That's a terrible thing when that happens, because

you lose so much respect. I'm so sorry.

Sorry about this. I hate phones that go

off in the middle of interviews. Hello? The

other day I took this train journey, and

there was a bloke sat near me, he

was making so many phone calls, it was

just like being in his office. But I

wouldn't have minded, but he had me doing

photocopying, making coffee. His wife's away this weekend,

I've got to go to Paris with them.

People used to take holidays, and they wouldn't

be contacted by the firm while they were

away. Always on holiday, you know, they won't

be hearing from him for two weeks. But

now you go away on holiday and you're

still on the phone. You never really stop,

do you? You never stop. That is one

curse of the mobile, there's no end, there's

no holiday. The minute that I got one,

I became fetishistic about it. It's funny, though,

men are very sensitive of the size of

their willies, but when it comes to talking

small, the smaller your phone, the better. All

I require is that it's the smallest one,

really. But as their partners kindly remind our

grumpy old men, it's not the size that

matters, it's what you do with it. And

what some people do with it is guaranteed

to drive them into the coronary unit. I

don't mind people using mobile phones, they're very

useful, but I always leave the compartment on

the train to speak, cos I don't think

everybody should listen to my conversation. But you

can be in a train and everyone's like,

Hiya! Is Elaine there? Is Greg? Yeah? Sorry,

I can't hear you, someone's talking on the

phone here, I can't hear what you're saying.

There's four people in the compartment all saying

the same thing. Has that stuff come through

from Tim in accounts yet? What? So Rory

devised a strategy, which we heartily commend to

grumpy old men up and down the country.

It's a fight back. It'll be locked up

after this. But I used to sing if

someone started talking on the mobile phone. You

know, we... Hi, Graham. And I'd go, I'm

coming home, I've done my time And I've

got to know what is and isn't mine

If you receive the letter telling you I'll

soon be free He said, Hang on, Greg,

there's a bloke singing in there. You know.

Then you know just what to do If

you still want me I'll call you back.

Oh, tie a yellow ribbon Oh, tree It's

been three long years I'll stay

on the bus Forget about us Put the

blame on me Oh, tree What a

great song that is. What they promote is

a meaningless level of anonymous chit-chat with

people where you don't actually have to get

down and dirty and smell somebody or see

their body language. They are actually the very,

very, very key representation of the anomie and

alienation of our culture. And the idea that

it's actually a cash bonanza from mobile phone

licencing that the government predicated its entire second

-term spending plans on is one of history's

most delicious ironies. And when it all comes

down, when it all falls down about us,

all that will be left in the wreckage

of our civilisation is a single, tiny, little

black oblong going de-loo-doo, de-loo

-doo-doo and there'll be nobody to answer

it. Next week, an average day in the

average life of an average, grumpy old man.

You wake up in the morning and it's

all downhill from there. But the

person you've called is not available.