Discover Top Posts Tagged with #domjoly

#triggerhappytv #domjoly #2002 #photomontage #albumcover

#triggerhappytv #albumcover #domjoly #photomontage #2002

Just saw The legend dom joly just now at carphone warehouse #domjoly #triggerhappytv (at Oxford Street - Central London)

#triggerhappytv #domjoly

Forget Taking Your Work Home, Let’s Publicise Life

It may be rather a sad irony that it was from a public argument with the wife (of which I now write) regarding loud telephone ringtones and broadcasting one’s existence on a tram that the final straw came, forcing my hand to blog about a dark shadow over today’s life culture. From a Brit’s point of view, the whole “discretion in public” characteristic was drummed into me from birth. Not making a scene by shouting, arguing or especially humiliating others in front of the world is a strong notion, and one in which I still believe.

Yet, with the bombardment from social media statuses (“John Doe is at the grocery counter at ASDA”), “reality” TV shows (everyone knew some freaks while growing up but IF the Kardashians or Big Brother’s identity parades are reality, hurry up and send me to Mars) over the past decade, I wonder how much “reality” covered my own existence thus far. While stock exchange operators and sales executives are paid to work and trade on a telephone, the high streets – and low lanes of small towns for that matter – now have become a theatre for everyone’s unwanted chores and foibles.

I seem to remember a time in this decade when someone taking a phone call on their mobile (yes, you can still move with them) phone meant that they moved to a quiet or more private corner to conduct a “private” conversation. Even the ringtones seemed to be at a lower volume! My search today is for where the need for privacy seems to have evaporated.

Having lived in the Middle East and sat in hospital waiting rooms, walked through supermarkets and such; and noticed that the Nokia piano tone seems written into the Gulf's constitutions as “one of the tunes which must be played at its loudest in all places” (sometimes one after the other, with bellowed conversation to follow) – I wonder if I missed a global decree; that humility and personal shame is now outlawed and that everything is under supervision and must be performed publicly and openly......

Walking on high streets and travelling on buses and trams in major cities of the world recently, am I the one who is “stuck in the past”? A few weeks ago while travelling to Brixton from Waterloo on a London bus – a full bus - one girl spoke aloud for the whole 40-minute, peak-time journey. Complaining about being up all night with excruciating tooth pain and despite the pain there was no way she would visit a dentist.

Almost as though it was through a piece of string, connecting two used toilet rolls, a mile apart. “Do you have connection problems, dear? Oh yes, we’ve been here all along. Yes, we still don’t want to know.”

On one high street in Australia in the past week, I have been alone, walking from one place to another (as is the done thing in such places) and almost half-a-dozen times - with no space to overtake the person in front during a busy daytime – the person in front slows down their walking to a slow tread until they stop, as though there is no-one else in close proximity! Were I to think this a habit found only in Australia, I would automatically think it a local trait, problematic as it may be. Thudding into someone’s back due to their own life-occurrences taking public priority in an emergency may be understandable. However, there seem to be more emergencies happening now than ever before across the world, if that’s the excuse! More to the point, an apology for stopping, turning and bumping into someone because taking a call is all-vital, is of course; out-of-the-question.

Also on the irony stage, Dom Joly’s “Trigger Happy TV” began in 2000, with the famous sketch of the stereophonic Nokia piano tune being played before a call is answered in a public place, on a giant mobile phone – over a decade before there was a poll in the USA asking about phone rudeness and etiquette. In that survey, 75% of Americans thought phone rudeness had worsened. This was published in 2011. I wonder what the reaction would be now. My feelings are that those who thought society had deteriorated two years ago – may have either seen things dip even further, or have slowly slipped into such habits themselves. At least the “holding a phone to an ear while driving” will not eclipse that of the problem in the Middle East. Bumping into someone on a busy high street holds nowhere near as much danger as driving at 50mph while concentrating on a phone call. Either way, nations which ask people to dress discreetly by covering shoulders and knees but then have their lives on speakerphone seem like a proverbial gulf of oxymoron.

Conclusively, common sense would tell you (or maybe that’s a thing of the past, judging by health and safety systems and their scaremongering these days) that as human beings we have the sensitivity to heed calls for help when others are in need of help. We also have the intelligence – hopefully – to understand that when someone knows that if help (dental, in particular) is there; telling the world of midnight pain is just whingeing.

http://blogs.menshealth.com/health-headlines/the-worst-places-to-use-your-phone/2011/03/03

http://www.wikihow.com/Use-Your-Cell-Phone-in-Public