Share Karoshi

May 26th, 2010 |

In Japan the parents of a 24 year old restaurant worker have been awarded 78.63 million yen (£607,000) because the man died due to ‘overwork’ (Karoshi).

It is claimed that ‘Motoyasu Fukiage worked more than 112 hours of overtime a month for the four month period of his employment at the restaurant, in addition to his regular 40 hours a week – making a total of around 272 hours a month.’ He died in bed of heart failure.

Sounds like a lot of hours, doesn’t it? So break it down… 40 hours a week = 5.7 hours a day (based on a 7 day week); 112 hours of overtime over a month = 3.7 hours a day; QED… 272 hours over 30 days = 9 hours a day.

Nine hours a day! Is that all? Sheesh!

I, at first, had some sympathy having ended up in hospital, some years back, with exhaustion after working twelve hours a day, seven days a week, for eighteen months. I did feel somewhat tired after touring a heavy theatre show for twenty-one weeks, non stop, and slept for a couple of days afterwards.

The average Brit works 40.5 hours a week (then add overtime) but some, like theatre workers, do 50+ and some construction workers and taxi drivers work 60.

Nine hours a day? Wuss! … and, I would suspect, another case of ambulance chasing lawyers.

Share Paper v Batteries

May 26th, 2010 |

Just read a tongue in cheek piece over at ereads by Richard Curtis entitled ‘Quaint Brits Cling To Paper’ and why we, unlike our American cousins, won’t grasp the tech that is ereaders (This follows on from a survey reported last week in the DTeleg).

Perhaps it is because we like the feel of a proper book/newspaper and… If you drop a book earthwards from the 10th floor it still works; books don’t need batteries; if you’ve run out of fag papers you can’t tear a strip off an ereader; if you burn an ereader you’ll get a god awful smell but it won’t keep you warm; you can’t keep food warm wrapped in an ereader and you can’t wipe your ar*e on a Kindle!

Then again it may be that Big Brother won’t delete my copy of 1984 and Animal Farm overnight from my library - that and the fact I do not want to pay £200+ for something that will be outdated in a couple of years.

Americans? Phuh!

Share Times Jux

May 25th, 2010 |

Juxtaposition from today’s Times.

Share Gene Genie Gems

May 23rd, 2010 |

“What I call a dream involves Diana Dors and a bottle of chip oil.”

Suspect: “I want a lawyer!” Gene: “I want to hump Britt Ekland - what you going to do?”

“She’s a nervous as a very small nun at a penguin shoot.”

“Don’t move! You are surrounded by armed bastards!”

“She’s been in front of more beaks than Daffy Duck at a family knees up!”

“Drugs, eh? What’s the point? They make you forget, make you talk funny, make you see things that aren’t there. My old grandma got that when she had a stroke.”

“So we’re looking for a bloke who’s done time? That narrows it down to most of planet Earth and the whole of Sunderland.”

“You killed the Quatro you dyke digging tosspot!”

Who is the man on the roof?

Share Hang The Blacks And Kill The Workers*

May 19th, 2010 |

I was chatting, t’other day, to a former work colleague about our early days in the theatre and what the ‘boys’ have to put up with now. Ah, those heady days of theatre before the stupidity of overly enforced PCness, the raging armies of Elfin Safety got their grubby mits on being sensible and ambulance chasing lawyers.

You were allowed to go for a pie and a pint at lunchtime (but go back drunk and you were sent home) and normally with cast and crew from the visiting show and, I believe, that this gave a good feeling of repartee between the inhousers and the visitors. Gone.

If you wanted to climb up a stepladder you did - if you fell off… well, shouldn’t have overreached, should you. Gone - Working At Height Directive - a pal of mine has just been sent on a 2 day course to teach him about climbing ladders. He’s 54 and been doing it all his life with no mishap.

The time I was told by an official H&S bod that the crew on stage had to wear hard hats whilst the scenery was moving - I informed him that I would let the director and the actors know as well. (berk!)

The days of being able to send an apprentice out for ‘a long stand’ or ‘a short weight’ or ‘the key to the grid’ (no such thing); ‘tartan paint’; sky hooks; a fallopian tube to fix that light… the list went on but now it would ‘breach their human rights’.

Mind you… I did find out you can now buy Sky Hooks - like the ad says ‘…what use are these?’

*”Hang the blacks” is a reference to putting up the black serge cloths that back off many a production and “Kill the workers” means going to the show state whereby working lights are turned off.

Share Onward & Onward

May 18th, 2010 |

The next book ‘Men In Blacks’ is done but not quite dusted as it is with my editor and should be published in November.

As there are only a couple of theatres in the world that have retained their Victorian understage machinery I was doodling in Illustrator t’other day and thought it might be good to include elevations of what is known as a bridge in said book.

Then I got carried away and continued with a Genie trap…

Onward I go… the following book is to be ‘Circus-Circus’ and words have been started…

Share Pop Idle

May 13th, 2010 |

Alberts Press latest tome ‘Pop Idle’ will be on sale from Saturday 15th. Set in the music biz it’s another delve into what goes on behind the scenes by author Phil P Mitchell.

Synopsis:

Waking up to his worst hangover in over a week Dave Grant greeted his thirty-fifth birthday. Once Dave was one of the hotshots of the Music Biz, an A&R whizzkid who had hits (yeah and the odd large miss but who’s counting) through the 80’s and 90’s. But Dave hadn’t had what you might call a smash in the last five years - Platinum was way back there somewhere and even Gold was heading for the hills… He’d worked at all the major record companies and managed to get out just before a merger, a takeover or more often his own incompetence had cost him his job. Now he was at Miles Hi Records, a small but voraciously ambitious indie label owned by Miles Brandon gamely determined to ‘crack the UK like a watermelon.’

Dave was in the last chance saloon and in desperate need of a break (or at least an extremely large vodka). Enter Big Stewy Black a mean Brummie and manager so old school he should be wearing shorts, touting his new discovery Gary Gray, a kid so devoid of talent the word ‘fuckwit’ should have been invented for him. Under pressure to sign a new act or lose his job for the last time Dave joins Stewy to hatch a plan to make Gary the NEXT BIG THING…

ISBN-13: 978-0956048462 :: RRP: £7.99 :: 236pp :: BUY at Amazon

Share Times Jux

May 11th, 2010 |

You’ve got to love the Times… this mornings juxtaposition of ads and comment…

Share Research & Rights II

May 11th, 2010 |

More time spent at the library going through old newspapers from 1887 - and whilst you can get a Black Worsted suit for fifty shillings (£2.50) or a case of Port (12 bts) for thirty-six shillings (£1.80) in the advertisments on the front page there are no cries of “Injured at work? Contact Ambulance Chase Lawyers 4U!”

Nope, in those days if you were injured, or even killed, at work there was very little your loved ones could do about it. Which is where the whip round came in.

When Robert Crowther was killed by a cannon ball at the Tyne Theatre in 1887 a fund was set up for his widow and four kids - within a month it had raised £74.19s - or put it another way… a year and a half of wages.

Share Research & Rights

May 5th, 2010 |

I was at the library yesterday doing some research for my new book and delving into the local newspapers of 1887.

As you may have seen from this mornings newspapers a kid has had part of his ASBO lifted for wearing his pants half way down his backside because it “may breach his human rights.”

I would take pity on one Isabella Short’s ‘rights’ way back in 1887 - as she was given twelve days custody and fourteen days hard labour in Durham Gaol. Her crime… she shoplifted a feather whilst under the influence.