Stag dos and don'ts

For all the upsides to a stag do – beer, football, scantily clad ladies, more beer – there are also some downs. Mainly these are in the organising stages. If you’ve read my previous entries (the funny thing is I’m writing this and I have no idea if anyone *is* reading it), you’ll have heard in great detail all the fun we had on my stag do in Hamburg. You have to understand that getting 17 people together for that wasn’t easy, in fact getting 17 people all to agree to the same weekend was a nightmare. But to take things back even further than that, it might surprise you to find out we were supposed to be going to Prague (stag do to Prague? Oh that’s so last year daahhhling). Twice my best men Niall and Paul seemed to have it sorted, but both times no booking was made. In the end the rocketing cost of the flights priced us out. So Hamburg was a second choice venue, even if it did turn out to be first class.

Naturally, there were people who couldn’t afford the time, the cost or the effort involved in going to Hamburg. I also excluded a few people who I thought might be casualties (sorry dad, but at some point I’ll post my rescue story from my brother Tim’s stag do). To make it up to them - and because I think it’s a lost tradition – I decided to have a London stag do the night before the wedding! Since my family are all in the big smoke on the Friday night, it seemed the easiest thing to do. At first we thought we’d go to Walthamstow Dogs, since it’s within walking distance. Alas, I found out quite late that it doesn't hold races there on a Friday night. Bugger. So I formulated a clever plan, which I’ll post in full here (my next comment on this starts in caps):

Sorry if this comes out of the blue for a few of you, but I'm pretty sure most of you know I'm getting married. Apologies if you've not made the VIP guest list on the day itself, but it's a fairly quiet affair with just family and a few friends. There is still a way you could help me celebrate though, before I'm fitted for the ball and chain. The wedding takes place on the 3rd April and I thought it would be fun to have a traditional stag do the night before. Just no tying me up and bundling me on the Eurostar. We were going to go to Walthamstow dogs, but it's only open Thursday or Saturday so that's out. Instead, we're going to head to the lovely gentlemen's club Browns. It's free to get in, cheap to watch the dancers (£1 in the pint pot each time a dancer comes on stage) and they don't kill you with the beer prices. I'm pretending you don't all know this already. You can find it at 1 Hackney Road, Shoreditch, London E2 7NX. It can be reached from Old Street, Liverpool Street and Shoreditch stations. A map of the area can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/3d49y. I suggest we meet in The Pool from about 7pm. I might be there a bit earlier than that so I'll try and book a pool table to play on while we wait for stragglers. Either way I'll let you know for definite next week. Hopefully see you there, Matt
PS. Dad or Tim, can you let Uncles Pete & Derek know plan B.

ALL WELL AND GOOD YOU MIGHT think. I went to Brown’s with my soon-to-be-brother-in-law on his stag do (there’ve been a lot over the last few years, my friends and I are reaching that age). It was rude enough without going too far and I thought it would suit the occasion beautifully. However, I wasn’t counting on my family’s reaction to this. My brother’s email came scorching into my inbox, the first line simply saying: “I ain't gonna be able to do this bloke!!!!” My mum seemed happy to take all the ladies out on the Friday night, but my dad wouldn’t hear of it. So, after much sorting out, I came up with the following compromise plan:

OK, you may remember the last email, where I suggested we go to a lovely gentleman's club since there was no Walthamstow dogs on a Friday night. However, it seems this has contravened Chapman family law, because the ladies were also going to go to the dogs as they're obviously in town the night before the wedding. I'm not sure it still counts as a stag do if your nan is there, but the stadium has enough stands for me to hide my shame.
So rather than have my dad, brothers and uncles all pull out on grounds of spousal abuse, I think I've found an alternative. There's dog racing on at Romford dog track on the Friday night. Romford station is only 20-40 minutes train ride from Liverpool Street Station, depending on how many stops the train makes. The last race is at 10.35pm, so there's plenty of time for those of you who want to make connections back to the deeper, darker parts of London (does it come deeper and darker than Romford?). Just so you know, the very last train leaves Romford at 11.56pm, arriving at Liverpool Street at 12.16am. But I reckon there may even be enough of us to split cabs on the way back to make it easy.
The address for the dog track is:
Coral Romford Greyhound Stadium,
London Road,
Romford,
Essex RM7 9DU
Phone: 01708 762345
This map shows Romford train station and the dog track. Doors open at 6.30pm and the first race is at 7.35pm. I suggest we meet at a pub next to Romford train station at 5.30-6pm. According to the Beer in the Evening website The Goose is 0.0 miles from the station. Should be easy to find then. If you can't reach us by 6.30pm, just look for the loud group of idiots inside the dog track. You may want to phone one of us to see which stand we're in.
Should you need to get in touch that night, here are some handy numbers:
Matt moby – [REMOVED]
Best man Niall - [REMOVED]
Best man Paul - [REMOVED]
I hope to see you there, but fully understand if the change of plans is a bunch of arse for you. And those of you who've already paid your dues on the Hamburg stag do (and boy did you pay) should not feel obliged to come, although it would be a great reunion.
Right, that's all folks. If you do intend on coming, why not print this page and the web map out to help you? You know it makes sense.
Matt
PS. I reserve the right *not* to dress up on this stag do. Those of you who've seen the photos will know how far I had to go last time.

DISSENTING VOICES TO THIS NEW PLAN will be met with my sternest face,  the one that can crack mirrors (facetious people would say that’s my normal face). I can only hope that this works, otherwise I’m getting a six pack of lager and staying in.

Do you want fries with that?

It's not-actually-that-funny how the surge of press coverage about UK people being overweight coincides with my own leap away from an ideal trim figure. I'm not exactly Bernard Manning, but I could do with a bit more exercise. Is it the media helping me pile on the pounds, or should I really stop seeing fry-ups and lager binges as the basis of a healthy diet?

The latest bit of research suggests we're asking for bigger portions, but it's the second paragraph of this story that's the most worrying. "One worker said a parent had ordered a double bacon and egg cheeseburger liquidised with gravy for a toddler."

That is so wrong. You should never have gravy with a cheeseburger.

TV / POKER: Late Night Poker & Celebrity Poker Club

In the last post I went on (at length) about my poker playing midweek. I really have watched every episode of Late Night Poker, first on Channel 4 and now with the satellite repeats on Discovery Home & Leisure. I've only recently become aware of Celebrity Poker Club, which is like LNP but with people you might have seen stumbling into or out of parties in Hello magazine. Both programmes are made by the same production company. Since CPC uses the same commentators as the last few series of LNP (Jesse May and Barney Boatman), the same dealers (Marina and Peter) and even the same kind of camera shots (pulling out of a closeup of a vase of flowers and into a wide shot of the players anyone?), if you blinked you couldn't tell the difference.

Watching people play poker might seem a bit strange. Watching football can be explained away because I could never do the kinds of things I see players doing on the pitch (and I watch Stoke City). But I could quite easily join a poker game online and strut my stuff. I can only compare it to the odd fascination I used to have for watching darts. I mean come on, it's two blokes chucking bits of metal at a circle. Surely the same drama you get from watching it could be gained from opening the paper the next day and thinking "Oh look, Phil 'The Power' Taylor won." But still I stayed glued to the screen. At least darts had its entertainment value with the legendary commentator Sid Waddell. His crazy turns of phrase and erratic shouts pumped in some much needed excitement.

Watching poker may not be as good as playing it, but it does have its very own over-the-top commentary thanks to Jesse May. My favourite quote from LNP was when someone made a big bet and the 'under the table' cameras showed us what cards they had. "Oh my god, he's got the gay waiter," shouted Jesse, before quickly explaining, "It's a Queen with a trey." It took me a moment to realise he meant the player had a Queen with a Three, trey being Spanish for three. Geddit - gay waiter, Queen with a tray? Unbelievable, I thought.

But I think it's been beaten by the episode of CPC I just watched. Actors Keith Allen and Nigel Lindsay try and muscle each other out of a pot, raising and re-raising until Nigel's 'all in'. When the cards are flipped over it's clear they both have the same hand, and the chips will be shared out. Cue Jesse, "Showdown, we're going to see a split pot here. It's all for nought, like kissing your sister."

Poker revelation

It's a landmark moment when you lose your virginity. And once it's gone, you can never repeat the experience with the same fears and feelings, joys and juices. From that moment on you have to look for other things to try for the first time and just hope they deliver something close to the highs and (usually drunken) lows. I had one of those experiences again last night. For the first time ever I sat down to play a Texas hold'em tournament face-to-face with a table full of people.

To say I absolutely loved it doesn't come close. Think drinking a beer, having sex with the missus and watching Stoke City go 4-nil up against Man Utd all at the same time and we're just about getting there. You see I usually play poker online using software from Victor Chandler (you can find me on there as meejaboy, naturally). I've visited this site ever since I wrote a feature about learning to play poker using information on the net. At the end of the piece I entered a $3 nine-player tournament and came second, getting my stake and a bit more back. I was instantly hooked. From there it's been a diet of low-level 10c tourneys, Late Night Poker on the Discovery Home & Leisure channel and poker tactics books on my Amazon wish list.

To set the scene, this was the first Texas Hold'em event held by Victor Chandler for journalists, clients and associated hangers on. There was even a bit of celebrity colour, with Louise Wener (former frontwoman of Sleeper and now a novelist) and racing 'guru' John McCririck both on hand to steal my chips. Louise was looking gorgeous with a red flower in her hair and John was the typical overblown character we've come to expect - complete with hat, huge face-covering shades and a massive cigar. Top man. I had a decent chat with Lou and her fella, who both seem like the kind of people you'd want to hang out with. By contrast, the only words I exchanged with John were that there were a lot of people in the blokes toilets, to which he replied "OK, I'm going to go in the Ladies".

What started out as three tables - about 32 players by my count - took a good few hours to whittle down to a final table of 10. By the skin of my teeth I was still in it with just less than 2,000 chips. This was a paltry sum when you consider I started with that amount, which meant the other nine players shared the 44,000 chips from those already knocked out. McCririck for one had a stack the size of his personality. The big blind (a mandatory bet for one player each turn) was 600 chips, while the small blind was 300. It was not looking good.

As the game got underway I took down a couple of early pots uncontested to boost my stack, and the player across from me went out. I was at least ninth and already climbing the ladder of places, with the tales I'd tell in the office the next day starting to creep into my head. The real jump in my fortunes came when the cocky guy from Inside Edge magazine announced 'All in'. From the look on his face I don't think he was expecting to get called by three other players, two of them also betting their entire stacks. One of the other all-ins took the whole pot with three Jacks and we were suddenly down to six players. That little beacon of hope which says "Wow, you could still win this" was lit for the first time, although its light was hardly blinding.

I had a minor setback when Lee, the other shortstacked player, went all in without even looking at his cards. I had the Ace and Seven of Diamonds, so it seemed like a natural call as everyone else had already tossed their cards. After a 10-minute argument while he refused to turn his cards over despite being all-in (the free Kronenburg had been flowing, well, freely), he finally submitted. It was a Three and a Six, not even the same suit. Right now I was a massive favourite with two overcards (two cards higher than his). But that's the great thing about this game. When Matt Damon in Rounders says, ""Why does this still seem like gambling to you? I mean, why do you think the same five guys make it to the final table of the World Series of Poker every single year? What are they, the luckiest guys in Las Vegas? It's a skill game", he's only telling half the truth. In actual fact Texas Hold'em is one part skill, one part balls and an added shot of luck. With two threes and a six being laid down in the middle of the table, my shortstacked friend made a full house. It's not what you have when the betting starts, it's what the poker gods decide to give you on the flop, the turn and the river (the five community cards that help make everyone's hands). It looked like the poker gods were telling me I might still make that last tube home.

Back down to about 2,000 chips and with the big blind up to 800, it was all-in with the first two good looking cards I could find. The first time I did this I held out with a low pair on the flop and the other player didn't hit anything on the two remaining cards. The second time I was a massive underdog, but in a reverse of my previous 'bad beat' I made a full house. There were now only four of us left and I'd outlived even my wildest expectations. When a player in front of me went all in and I had the Jack and Queen of Hearts I had a big decision to make. Something was telling me I shouldn't lay down these cards, that there were a lot of outs and I was probably just looking at an Ace. When I called I was proved right, but that didn't make me feel any better. Right now the other player's Ace was winning and I needed to hit something to stay in the tourney. An Ace on the flop had me standing up, ready to concede my chair and shake hands with the victor. But a King on the River meant I could hit a 10 and win with a straight - 10, Jack, Queen, King, Ace. When that 10 got turned over I actually whooped and clapped my hands together. It seemed the gods weren't willing to let me off the hook just yet.

The gushing excitement of that pot faded a little when I realised I'd only won 2,000 plus the blinds, making my stack about 5,200. Stealing the blinds a hand later pushed the light from my little beacon of hope up a notch, although the glow wasn't throwing the other players into shadow yet. But with so few chips, when the next good hand came into view I was going to have to go for it again. I managed to get away with just calling a 1,000 big blind with a King and a Four (a hand I'd have mucked without thinking when there were more than four players). There were three of us for the flop, which came King high. McCririck shoved another 3,000 in to try and scare us off. I was all-in quicker than a Michael Shumacher qualifying lap and John mucked his hand. It wasn't much to call, though, and the other player didn't hang about. When he turned over his cards it was obvious why not. He had a Kind as well, but his 'kicker' was a 10. With the three cards on the flop my hand was a Pair of Kings, Eight, Six, Four but his used the 10 and was ahead. The turn card was another Eight, which meant we both now had two pair but the kickers still separated us into winner and loser. An Ace on the river had me extending my hand and almost getting out of my seat, until I realised what had happened. We both made the same best hand - Two Pair with an Ace kicker - and the pot was shared out between us. Phew!

Amazingly I was still in the game and now had a playable stack thanks to the chips John had sacrificed with his bluff. With a Queen King hand on the next deal I flashed 5,000 into the pot. John took what seemed like a generation to call. The flop was an evil one for players with high cards, Four, Five, Seven. I took a good hard look at it and pushed the rest of my chips into the centre of the table, about five or six thousand at this point. I didn't really want John to call, as I needed to hit one of just six cards in the deck if John had already made a pair. After a long old period of thought he finally went for it, my chips hadn't been enough to scare him off. When we turned our cards over everyone agreed we'd both made gutsy plays. I'd gone all-in with King high, and John was only beating me by a single pip. The turn and river didn't bring any joy from the poker gods and after all my earlier great escapes I was finally sent packing by Ace high.

To say I was pleased with my fourth place finish is again breaking some kind of Guiness World Record for understatement. Call Norris McWhirter. By my reckoning I was the highest placed journalist in what had been touted as a 'Journalist tournament'. First place went to a Victor Chandler staffer, second was the celeb guest big John and third was a boxing promoter called Mickey (who deals with VC for sponsorship). I was secretly very pleased to beat the big boys from Inside Edge (a magazine written for gamblers but also looking like it's staffed by gamblers). Those boys obviously came to take no prisoners and I'm glad I wasn't on their table in the early rounds.

Now that I've puntured the poker tournament hymen (sorry to be so graphic, mum), what does it mean for the future? Will the rush of blood to the head and the spread of adrenaline through my system be that little bit less next time, an ever decreasing circle that finally leaves the water clear and unbroken? There are always new things to try, every flops a different hit. And I've yet to get the biggest hit of all, blowing the competition away and claiming top spot. Numero uno. The big cheese.

Things we learned today

The Gorillaz album is not the chilled, hangover-soothing piece of work we seem to remember. In contrast Sheryl Crow fits the bill perfectly.

And the loser is...

Last night was the IPC Editorial Awards, and it’s tempting to let this pass without comment. Mainly because our magazine didn’t win anything and I wasn’t even nominated in my chosen category. But that would just be sour grapes.

Let me explain a bit more about the evening. It’s held every year at the Grosvenor House Hotel, a huge venue for the couple of thousand people who attend. Most people dress up in posh frocks or suits (I was wearing the latter, my frock still being at the dry cleaners) and we get a champagne reception, three course meal, congratulatory pats on the back for a job well done and then more free booze and dancing till about 2am. Prizes aren’t small, with individual winners getting £500 each, and £750 going to awards won by the magazine as a whole. All this doesn’t cost those attending a penny, although it obviously stings the company bank balance. But as perks go it’s up there with the best.

It seems a little churlish, then, to get downhearted over not actually winning an award. Every year I enter the ‘Technical/Practical Editor of the Year’ category. Since my job title is Technical Editor this is a bit of a no-brainer. IPC doesn’t have many computer magazines on its books – just What Digital Camera and Better Digital Photography to my knowledge – so you’d think it would be a walkover. A bit like Smithers winning ‘Employee of the Month’ in The Simpsons. But there are plenty of magazines that have a practical section, everything from fashion magazines’ make-up pages, car and bike technical details, photography tutorials, right up to the knitting section in Woman’s Weekly.

I think the thing that annoyed me most is that I put a lot more effort into my application this year than in previous attempts. The fact it was a repeat winner – a guy from one of our boating magazines who won it two years ago – didn’t help. I’m just glad there was no camera in your face like they have at the Oscars. Surely an actor’s best ever performance is when that golden envelope is opened, and they find it doesn’t contain the name that’s going to let them say their well-prepared speech. That happy-for-the-winner grin must have been practised as much as the thank yous for family and friends.

So I’m disappointed I didn’t get a nomination this year, but is it so bad to feel that? If I didn’t feel a bit let down then I might as well not have entered, as I obviously didn’t want it enough. To be fair, in 2002 and 2003 I was nominated for the award, which means I made a shortlist of four or five contenders. That has to count for something or I wouldn’t have added the information to my CV. Our Reviews Editor has put in for the same award all three years and never gotten a nod once. “Just one nomination!” was his response last night, before we moved on to the more pressing business of finding another pint. Maybe it’s time to just eat those sour grapes and spit out the pips. After all, there’s always next year.

"Working from home" (people always do the sign for speechmarks to suggest It's not really working)

If your boss ever offers you the chance to work from home, bite their hand off. Or just say Yes if you think they might need both their hands in the future. I write for an internet magazine, so I've known for a long time that there are certain things you can do anywhere as long as you have a net connection. More importantly, I've known I could do my job anywhere.

So when they reorganised our office at work, they asked  if anyone fancied 'hotdesking', which I took to be some kind of Dilbert managment-speak for staying at home a few days a week. In the end I got to keep my desk at work, so I can still go in whenever I feel like it. But why the hell would I want to?

I mean, let's start with the journey to work itself.

Option 1, work from home - which means I can roll out of bed at 9.55am and still be on time. I'm not exactly known for my good timekeeping, so this is a real bonus.
Option 2, travel to work on the tube - which means being up at 8.30am to get washed and dressed and then rubbing your arse against lots of strangers. I realise that can be fun if you're a bit of deviant, but I don't get my rocks off that way.

Then there's actually doing the work.
Option 1, try and get through my 8-10 page workload while being bothered by the boss, the phone, or the enormous jabbering Aussie who sits next to me showering me with verbal diarrhoea.
Option 2, bung something chilled on the CD player and get on with it. Without the constant interruptions I can wade through the workload at about one-and-a-half times my normal speed. (If my boss is reading this I obviously spend the extra time on research to help me do my job. At no point am I using it to wade through DVD boxsets of the Sopranos, that would just be wrong )

I have to admit it's nice to go into the office and see the people there, but then I've got the best of both worlds since I still have that option. At the moment I've got the journey into work down to two days a week, which seems a good balance. And since one of those days is generally a Friday and we spend a lot of that in the pub playing pool, I can't really complain. As I'm getting increasingly fond of saying, 'Life is good'.

DVD: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - Collector’s Edition

Following their break up, Joel (Jim Carrey) is shocked when he finds that his ex-girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) has erased all memory of their relationship. Taking it badly, he calls upon the Lacuna company to remove his memories and help him deal with the pain of his loss...


In Finding Nemo there’s a scene where Marlin leaves Dory behind, and when her short-term memory loss kicks in she swims around and around worried that she’s supposed to be with someone but not able to remember who. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind takes that feeling and inflates it a thousand fold, as Joel only starts to realize what he’s about to lose as he relives the memories as they are removed from his mind.

Wonderfully touching performances from the two leads – you actually forget you’re watching Jim Carey and Winslet buries her ‘classical Kate’ image – are topped off by an incredible supporting cast. The relationships of the staff at Lacuna play parallel to the main story, with Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood and Tom Wilkinson all on the kind of form that wins awards.

This collector’s edition DVD is all about the extras. However, at first glance you think the movie must have started to believe its own press. The photo book of stills could be a wonderful album showing Joel and Clementine’s relationship, but the snippets of reviews overlaying the pictures spoils the feel of it.

The new featurette Inside the Mind of Michel Gondry also opens with gushing comments from the cast and crew, but happily settles down into a very watchable documentary. Gondry’s vision is lauded throughout, mainly for his refusal to use what he calls “the stupid blue screen” when it comes to effects, preferring to find real world ways to solve problems. While this doesn’t always work – and some of the outtakes prove that – it’s nice to see a shoot that allows him to experiment and then sort it out in the editing suite.

This is a powerful and moving story shot in an innovative way. And with some quality extras to boot, it doesn’t get much better.

Buy Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on DVD at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

Beer, birds & football

I suppose I should tell you about the weekend I just spent in Hamburg. There's a dilemma here, because it was my stag do and what happened in the Ham is supposed to stay in the Ham (this saying comes from the last stag do I went on in Amsterdam - and what happened in the 'Dam has stayed in the 'Dam. Mostly). Aside from that, I know the missus has this web address so I won't be saying too much  

For me there were a number of real highlights. For starters, there's nothing finer than getting 16 of your better friends all together in the same place and watching them get on. Since the crowd included my two brothers, various work colleagues from the past five years and a couple of university guys, most of these people were meeting for the first time. But they really hit it off, and you'd have thought my little brother Simon had known my university mates John and Tim all his life. The last time I went on a lads holiday there were six of us and we ended up properly fighting at least twice! Even managing to coordinate 17 of us meeting up in a bar or catching the same flight went OK. Thanks to my best men and the others for that.

Secondly, I managed to get tickets to go and see HSV play Hertha Berlin on the Saturday afternoon. You've just gotta love the internet for making things like this easier, as there was no way I was getting through the German answer phone message to book on the phone. As this was a stag do there was no slacking off allowed, especially as they sold beer in the stadium. They had guys with big barrels on their back and hand taps to fill up your glasses. In the UK you're not allowed to drink beer while watching the match, so this was a real treat. The game itself had lots of incident, with two Berlin players being sent off and HSV winning two nil. But there were lots of quaint little customs the team had, like cranking a band high into the air before the game to sing the home team song to the fans, or the announcer shouting out the first name of the scorer and the fans shouting back the surname. My favourite though was when the announcer read out the score - he shouted 'Hamburger' and the crowd shouted 'zwei' and then in a very low voice he said 'Berlin' and the home fans all shouted back 'nuuuuuulllllllllll'. Way to rub it in.

But the best bits were obviously the trawls around the shadier areas of Hamburg. Since our cheap-but-not-really-that-cheerful hotel was right on the Reeperbahn, we were always just seconds away from filth. I shouldn't really be talking about these bits, so here are some things that didn't happen:
* I did not dance in the window of a bar with two dancing girls
* I did not get quite a saucy private lapdance
* At no point did I dress as a fairy in bad makeup and nail polish and go around granting people's wishes
* I definately did not get stripped to my pants onstage and have to do a pole dance. I would have remembered that

Anyway, we had a brilliant time and I'm looking forward to seeing all the boys at the wedding in a couple of weeks. The only casualties of war were my innocence, a couple of lost phones, one lost wallet and a lost travel card. Before you think a few of us had bad luck, the wallet, a phone and the travel card were all lost by Stevie D. You can't take that boy anywhere.

My overiding memory will be of my mate Jim, sitting in a suit in the only armchair next to the stage in a poledancing club. He pulled a wad of notes out of his pocket, beckoned the girl on stage over and asked if he could get a private dance for me. At that moment, he was the daddy.

Bikers, errrr, rock

I thought I should start using this blog a bit more, as a way of stopping my endless rants at those people unlucky enough to be my friends. Why should they suffer when I can inflict it on the rest of you deserving whinge-sponges?
Anyway, first up is this weird event I found on the TicketMaster website:
"Just in: PETER ANDRE has been added to the bill of DAYS OF THUNDER 3 (along with Lemar, Jamelia, Girls Aloud and the Cheeky Girls) at Rockingham Motor Speedway on 4 July. This will be a day or music enterainment and car racing."

I mean, who the hell is that for?  Do race fans really like the Cheeky Girls, Peter Andre and all the other associated pop shitesters? I sent this to the missus to see if she could shed any light (she's a bit of a popular culture diva) and her reply was very amusing:
"Maybe the Rock Puppets have been drafted in to give the kids something to do while their dads stand at the race track, going: 'not now, Kylie. Go and find your mother.'