Dry January Could Get You A Free Holiday

Now is the ideal time for you to think about doing Dry January.

Well, I say that. January 30th might be the best day to think about it if you want to set your target low.

But for many drinking less would be a good idea, and a team have done some maths to try to convince you to try. They have worked out how much money you could save by not drinking.

Before we get into the stats, the actual amount you could save depends on hos much you drink and where you live. If you are Pete Dougherty or you live in London these figures would be a lot higher. If Pete lived in London and he stopped, he'd kick Jeff Bezos off the richest man list.

The headline is "Stopping drinking for a year could get you a holiday in the Caribbean".

Wow, let's break it down.

If you do all of January and a little bit more, so five whole weeks off the booze you could save enough money for a two-night stay in Amsterdam.

OK, yes, two nights in Amsterdam might lead to activities that are worse for you than drinking, but the maths doesn't judge.

If you stayed dry for ten weeks they say you could save the equivalent of five nights in the Algarve. Ah, Portugal. Known for it's green wine, beers and… man-alive, you can't get away from the stuff. It's all very well saving up your beer money to spend on a holiday but it just concentrates the drinking while you're away. Technically this is making binge drinking worse.

That's what Dry January does any way, isn't it? People stop for a month and at the end they celebrate by going out for a session. Why? That's like doing a diet and celebrating by eating 4 trifles.

The top prize in this research – that's if you did Dry January and then stayed drive for the rest of the year – they say it would save you enough money to have a week-long all-inclusive stay in Montego Bay, Jamaica.

Again, what's the point in "all-inclusive" if you're drinking water? So the temptation is to drink on your holiday when your tolerance has dropped.

In a bid to cut binge drinking maybe the headline should be, "Giving up just one a holiday in the Caribbean could let you drink for a hole year!"

---

The new book by Steve N Allen is out now. Lasted Yet Another Year sums up the happenings of the last 12 months. It's available on Amazon Kindle, Kobo, Google Books and paperback.

While you're here, subscribe to the Steve N Allen podcast. It's free! Find it on BBC Sounds, iTunes or Spotify.

📕READ (the new book) | 🎧LISTEN (to the latest podcast) | 👀SEE (Steve's live stand-up)

Read More

Regifting Is The New Recycling

In the post-Christmas glow, as we sit with belts on a wider hole, I bring one final news story of the year to make you feel happy.

A new survey has found that around half of us say we will re-gift items we have been given. That is an important number. Not only because numbers that around around half, like 48% and 52% have had a big impact on our lives, but because this survey should make you feel better.

If someone gave you a gift that you don’t like, don’t worry. It’s not because you are ungrateful, half of us are thinking the same.

Give it to someone else. The new recipient might like it. At the very least it means someone gave you “the gift of not having to shop for someone in the future”. And isn’t that what Christmas is really about? No, it’s not, but you get my point.

And if you are worrying that your gift wasn’t appreciated, this survey tells us that half of all people loved their gifts. If you have bought something for at least two people rest safe in the knowledge that you have made someone happy.

I also think this survey should help us remove the shame from the act of re-gifting. It’s 2019, a year that feels like it was mainly filled with people talking about Greta and her angry boat trips. Re-gifting is the ultimate in recycling. You have cut your carbon footprint. It’s like you’re giving a Christmas present to the planet. If someone always buys you something you don’t like, don’t even take the wrapping off. You’ve just saved a bit of a tree.

All of which is a long way of me saying if I got you something that has an SA monogrammed on it, you know what happened.

---

The new book by Steve N Allen is out now. Lasted Yet Another Year sums up the happenings of the last 12 months. It's available on Amazon Kindle, Kobo, Google Books and paperback.

While you're here, subscribe to the Steve N Allen podcast. It's free! Find it on BBC Sounds, iTunes or Spotify.

📕READ (the new book) | 🎧LISTEN (to the latest podcast) | 👀SEE (Steve's live stand-up)

Read More

Kentucky F***ed Chicken

I always love a story where some worker accidentally swears at a customer by writing something that they don't think the customer will see. Normally it's on an order where they didn't know how to describe the customer so they put "Fat state with sh*t perm" or someone at a call centre leaves a note on someone's account saying "b*st*rd".

This is the reason we have account numbers. It's so you don't have to accurately describe the customer. And even though I have never worked in a call centre I presume more than one customer would fit the description of "b*st*rd" so it's a flawed system.

This time the news has told us of a KFC customer who was shocked to see that someone had put "f***ed at 18.03" on his gravy pot.

Let's break down what this could mean. Maybe the customer looked like he was totally shattered in the early evening and that could be a spot on way of explaining it.

Normally we would say someone more of a morning person, but "f***ed at 18.03" is another way of putting it.

It could be a frank way of getting sell-by information across. "Best before" implies the item would be OK after that time but "f***ed at 18.03" tells you it's time to throw it away.

The worst possibility is that someone has gone round that branch of the chicken shop having sexual intercourse with the pots of gravy like a Northerner porn parody of the American Pie films.

If it's the last one we have identified another of the Colonel's secret ingredients.

It's bad enough that someone would make love to a sauce but what really turns my stomach is that they would keep a log of the time they did it. Trying to make sure they you don't sleep with the same pot of gravy twice doesn't make you a player. Tut, men.

There could be someone out there who enjoys having sex with things you pour on your food but only likes it if they haven't been made love to before. In which case we really should lock up our virgin olive oil.

---

The new book by Steve N Allen is out now. Lasted Yet Another Year sums up the happenings of the last 12 months. It's available on Amazon Kindle, Kobo, Google Books and paperback.

While you're here, subscribe to the Steve N Allen podcast. It's free! Find it on BBC Sounds, iTunes or Spotify.

📕READ (the new book) | 🎧LISTEN (to the latest podcast) | 👀SEE (Steve's live stand-up)

Read More

Deleting Twitter

Social media comes in for some stick. It's blamed for increasing hate in political debate, for making us feel ugly and ruining our sleep patters. And if we're not sleeping we probably don't look as good, which makes the second point worse.

There was a story recently that linked using social media to getting piles. No wonder people are so angry on there.

Many people rant about how evil social media and often they do it on social media, without spotting the irony. It's like sending a "Royal Mail is Sh*t!" postcard.

Twitter is cleaning up its act as it announced a cull. Sadly it's not a cull of the hatemongers and spreaders of fake news – they don't want to lose Donald Trump as a user – they have said they'll be getting rid of inactive accounts.

Why? The inactive people on Twitter aren't the ones issuing death threats to people they disagree with over Brexit and telling anyone on TV that they're crap. They don't fill your timeline with retweets from Russia Today (RT RT) and they're not posting conspiracies about the media.

The inactive users don't make the world worse and yet they still boost your follower figures. On social media, inactive users might just be my idea target demographic.

In the last few years we have had elections and referenda, footballing events and some terrible acts on Britain's Got Talent. If you have kept your opinions about those things to yourself we should send you a gift basket.

The reason behind the thinning out of the herd is all about the usernames. Some people signed up and got a great Twitter handle and if they're doing nothing with it you may feel annoyed.

If you wanted to open up a stationery shop called The Pen Is Good but were upset to find that @penisgood was taken by some adult actor, this could be good for you.

The cynics will say that this isn't anything to do with freeing up usernames, it's an easy trick to get more people to log in. It's like when Harvester threatened to stop serving peas. No one really cared about peas but the threat of losing something you assumed you'd always have made you want it more.

So log on, spread some fake news, row about Brexit for a while and follow @mrstevenallen.

---

The new book by Steve N Allen is out now. Lasted Yet Another Year sums up the happenings of the last 12 months. It's available on Amazon Kindle, Kobo and paperback.

While you're here, subscribe to the Steve N Allen podcast. It's free! Find it on BBC Sounds, iTunes or Spotify.

📕READ (the new book) | 🎧LISTEN (to the latest podcast) | 👀SEE (Steve's live stand-up)

Read More

Lasted Yet Another Year

Congratulations, you have made it through another year. Yes, we do that every year but take a second to rejoice.

As the memories of those great 12 months start to fade you can get the perfect summary of it all in the new eBook from comedian Steve N Allen.

A lovely compilation of the newspaper columns you can find across the UK along with some other writing, Steve looks at a selection of the year's events. From Brexit to an angry Neighbourhood Watch to probably Brexit again, take a look back through the year in this comic take on things.

"Lasted Yet Another Year" is available on Amazon Kindle. It's the follow up to Lasted Another Year that summed up 2018 nicely in ebook and paperback.

It's also now available on Kobo reader.

Read More

Read Even More About It

There's some more news about the news. The newspaper column by Steve N Allen has now expanded to include publication in the Swindon Advertiser.

A longer, more in-depth look at the news is published every Tuesday. It can be found on sale in news agents in Wiltshire.

This adds to the circulation that already includes London, Essex, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire.

The column takes a look at a news story from that week and finds the angles that may not have been considered to shed light on issues in a way that only humour can.

Keep an eye out in your local papers to see if the Steve N Allen column comes to you area in the coming months.

Read More

The Goop Christmas Gift Ideas Have Landed

Do you have someone in your life who is difficult to buy for? If so, Christmas can be a harrowing time. Sure, you have thought of dumping them before the big day but that way you don't get the things they have bought for you so that option is off the table.

What do you get the man who has everything? Antibiotics. But you probably got them that last Christmas, or the Christmas before. It's certainly such an old joke I am sure you have bought it by now.

Thankfully help is on hand from someone who understands how hard it can be to keep someone happy. Gwyneth Paltrow! I am assuming she knows how hard it is to keep someone happy judging by the number of Coldplay songs in a minor key.

Her website Goop has published some gift ideas. If your money to sense ratio can be expressed as a vulgar fraction this stuff might be for you.

For just $250,000 you can buy a Virgin Galactic space flight. If I were to spend that much money and do something as risky as go into space I might be tempted to go to the actual Virgin website. Sure, I'd try Expedia first to see if I could get it cheaper but I'm not sure I want Pepper Potts selling me a space flight.

It's one thing if you buy that for yourself but if you buy a ticket to space as a gift for someone it's a bit of a hint. "I got you this. Now there is a risk you'll die and, best case, you're not on this planet for a while. Bye."

Also on the website you could treat someone to a $100,000 tree house. Actually, if you could have them build it somewhere in Zone 1 London you'd make a profit.

It's not all big ticket items, you can get some stocking-fillers, which have to be small as I'd guess the kind of person who shops at Goop and only has macrobiotic snacks won't fill large stockings.

You can get a pot of caviar for $16,000. Jesus! These are motorway service station prices.

My favourite item on the site is the lovers' bondage restraints. They cost $1,350 but at least they are useful. You can tie up your partner before you explain that you wasted all your joint savings eating a pot of fish eggs in a tree house.

Read More

A Few More Podcasts with Steve N Allen

For the 17th year in a row we're told that podcasts are the next big thing. Let's hope so because recently I have been kept busy turning up on the odd podcast.

Should you suddenly be hit by the urge to listen to what I get up to in podcastland here are a few of them.

I was interviewed about comedy and radio by Ben Punter in his "What Have We Learnt" podcast. Fun fact: It was recorded in a pub, which I think should be the location for more of my work.
Hear here

I talked about my theories of how to have a good relationship on the Frank podcast. I'm no expert, and some days it feels like calling myself a "gifted amateur" would be a bit of a stretch, but I give my thoughts all the same.
Hear here

I had an in depth conversation about comedy on Rhodder's "Stand and Deliver" podcast in this episode.
Hear here

I was on a panel of comedians talking about comedy and its role in political discourse and news coverage in this episode of the RedBox podcast from The Times
Hear here

And if all of that isn't enough for you there's my podcast with the BBC, it's called "Steve N Allen’s Week", which you can…
Hear here.

If you'd like to have me on your podcast find a way to get in touch and I bet we can make it happen.

Read More

Christmas Election - Get Festive

I hope you wanted a General Election for Christmas because that's what we're getting.

For me, the news was like getting my Christmas wish early. That makes sense because Christmas gets earlier every year, why shouldn't the wishes? As soon as the August Bank Holiday is over shops start to peddle their red-themed tat, but that's a rant for another column.

It's been nearly a century since this country had a December vote. Those who think things were better back in the olden days should be happy.

Christmas is a time for traditions like wrapping up warm to stand in a queue outside a primary school in whatever weather we'll get that day.

Some may struggle to get out to vote. Do a postal vote. Dashing to the post box before to deadline is a Yuletide classic.

Christmastime post isn't known to be reliable but if your postal vote gets lost it will probably turn up again years from now. You'll have voted in the 2034 election, which could easily still be mainly run along Brexit lines.

Will this festive election sort this whole mess out? Maybe not. A General Election isn't the best way to sort out a single issue and due to the first-past-the-post system people living in safe seats will feel like they don't have a say. But this is what we have. Learn to be grateful for what you get at Christmas. It could have been a lump of coal.

The Christmas election comes down to this, which Santa will you want to visit you? Will it be the old man with a white beard who wants to give things away to people but doesn't talk about how much that costs? Or will it be the overweight, jolly man who has been in many bedrooms?

I can't wait to find out.

Read More

The Jo Brand Milkshake Joke - BBC Has Last Laugh

Do you remember when people were throwing milkshakes at political figures? It seems to have stopped. Maybe it's the heatwave and we'd all rather drink the milkshake than waste it.

It kind of culminated with the Jo Brand joke. She hit the news after saying on Radio 4's show Heresy, "Why bother with a milkshake when you could get some battery acid?"

The BBC has now decided that the joke went too far. But in a classic case of BBC balance, it also found that the joke wasn't inciting violence.

It's another thing in life where the left and the right can read the news and think they're correct.

Even Jo Brand admitted it was "a somewhat crass and an ill-judged joke", which makes sense from the host of The Great British Bake Off: Extra Slice. That's someone who should never joke about wasting sweet goods. When GBBO was on the BBC it received more than 800 complaints when Diana Beard chucked Iain Watters’ ice cream away, so this is serious stuff.

The BBC found that the joke "went beyond what was appropriate" for a Radio 4 comedy show. Here's the tricky thing, the show is about saying the things that aren't appropriate. The joke can be inappropriate for Radio 4 but by definition that makes it an appropriate joke for the show.

Of course, no show should have jokes that incite violence but as the BBC found, the context of the joke made it clear that she wasn't doing that. Exactly. I have never incited violence but I presume you'd do that on social media, not a Radio 4 show. In the Venn diagram of life "people who riot" and "people who listen to Radio 4" probably don't share much of an overlap.

Nigel Farage said the joke was "incitement of violence" but then he said he'd "Don khaki, pick up a rifle and head for the front lines," if he didn't get the Brexit he wanted. OK, he hasn't done that yet. Or he has done that and the khaki part of that plan has really paid off and that's why no one has seen him.

He wasn't the only one to complain. The BBC said it received 444 complaints about Brand's joke.

Wow. That's around half as many people as complained about a waste of ice cream.

Read More

We're All Becoming Hot And Unfunny

The experts have run the figures and it is now official, July 2019 was the hottest month ever recorded.

This has the double-effect of giving us a temporary break from people who say climate change can't be real because it was cold in winter and also it stops people saying, "Oh, you think this is hot? I remember the summer of 1976." It was nippy by comparison.

I put forward another theory, that August 2019 is the least funny month in the UK. I am currently performing a show at the Edinburgh Fringe called Better Than. This year there are more comedy performers putting on shows than ever before. Therefore anywhere that isn't Edinburgh surely has fewer comedy performers in it than it has for the rest of the year. It's a funny drought.

In a similar way to extreme weather events being part of a larger trend I think the humour deficit in August shows a general decline in people having a sense of humour. When I mentioned climate change earlier someone probably got all upset because they prefer to think it's a hoax and can't take a joke.

Do you remember when you didn't give two hoots about trade deals? If someone brought up the issue of a customs union you'd mock them for being the dullest person in the pub.

Now if someone hears a point of view they disagree with they don't have a laugh about it the take to Twitter is issue death threats.

The world is becoming hotter and less funny. We're all sweating and not smiling. It's like we're living in a gym.

If you need an antidote to a hot, humourless world head to Edinburgh during August. You can see my stand up show and it's Scotland; the weather makes you feel like it's winter again.

Read More

Why Do We Hate Clever People

People think being rich is about how much money you have. They are wrong.

That sounds like I am about to go all new-age and say true richness is about having time to know yourself. That's a load of rubbish too.

Being rich is about how much money you have compared to the average person. If you have a million pounds you sound rich but if everyone else in the UK also has a million pounds you'd have to cough up a lot to get that millionaire plumber to come out.

This means that for all the talk of a fairer society it is in the interest of some to keep things unfair and you can see this in the education system.

A new report has found that poorer teenagers are 18 months behind their wealthier peers in their GCSEs. That education gap is largest and growing fastest in parts of northern England.

Part of the problem is that in the working class world we don't value being clever.

On a TV show like Big Brother we vote the smartest ones off first.

It may be different for posh people but when I went to school you didn't want to be seen as keen. Trying hard at school was a sure way to lose friends and when you don't have much other than a little bit of social status you can't afford to lose it.

It's probably impossible to make being clever cool so we should focus on making being dim uncool.

We also know that young people aren't using Facebook these days because older people are. Basically, if grown-ups are doing it young people don't like it.

So we can solve the wealth-based educational gap if old people pretend to be stupid even if they're very clever.

It looks like maybe Boris Johnson will make this country better after all.

---

See Steve N Allen's Edinburgh Fringe 2019 Show - Better Than
Info and stuff is here

Read More

Trump's Ineptitude

It’s been a fun week of seeing how upset Donald Trump got after being called inept by a UK ambassador.

I didn’t realise that was what ambassadors did. Maybe that's why the buy Ferrero Rocher; it's to say sorry.

Leaked emails from Sir Kim Darroch said Trump's leadership was inept. In all of the criticism of this no one has come out to say that Trump isn't inept. It seems the main objections are that secret documents shouldn't be leaked and you shouldn't call inept people inept because that's rude.

I'm sure Donald Trump didn't get upset right away, but as soon as he slammed that dictionary down he was gunning for us.

Since then he has been on the attack, calling our ambassador "very stupid".

It must feel strange to be someone's least favourite man called Kim when you know that man has met the North Korean dictator.

Here is my confusion. If it isn't OK to call someone inept in a message they thought would be private, how is it OK to call someone stupid in a public tweet to nearly 62 million followers?

Some say you should respect the office of president even if you don't respect the person, but Trump didn't do the same when he tweeted a dig at our Prime Minister implying he was happy she was leaving the job.

Is Trump inept? I don't know. But he is being a hypocrite. He can dish it out but not take it.

There's little we can do, however. We need a trade deal with America and we can't afford to fall out with them.

If we do, at least it will only be a war of words. That's better than a real war. No one gets hurt, we attack each other and it all ends when America develops an F-bomb.

Read More