Every year, me and my friends have a fake Christmas day about a week before Christmas. It’s pretty much exactly like Wham’s Last Christmas video. Last year, I was in charge of entertainment and took this opportunity to pioneer an exciting new game, called Share A Shocking Revelation. One by one we went round the table and admitted something shocking (“I hate Disney”; “I’ve been to 11 Boyzone concerts”; “I have a fear of walking over three drains in a row”) and we all felt much better for getting it out in the open. So, Internet Following, shall we play? I’ll start – with 10 revelations:
1. I hate cartoons.
According to my mum, as a child I refused to watch cartoons “because they are not real”. This has continued into adulthood where I still believe there is nothing worse than the bit in Mary Poppins when it becomes a cartoon. Why couldn’t they have got a load of real animals and made it look like they were singing?
2. I don’t think Ross and Rachel should have ended up together in Friends.
I love Friends, but the last episode was pretty rubbish. Made all the worse by the fact that at this point in the series Ross had become a caricature of himself and him and Rachel hadn’t bothered dating for at least six seasons. So when they suddenly got together at the end of the last episode it just didn’t feel real. Like cartoons.
3. I think Diana Vickers is the best thing to have come out of the X Factor.
Yes, better than Leona. I know, I know, she can’t sing as well but I love her quirky pop and even the claw. Watch, for example, this amazing video where she acts out the whole of her song with the claw, including being stabbed by an arrow just before each chorus.
Does it matter that I only understand three words in the song? No.
4. I think Build Me Up Buttercup is the worst song of all time.
Yes, worse even than Chumbawumba’s “Tubthumping”. There’s something about “Build Me Up Buttercup” that sums up every rubbish night out I had at university spent in a club I didn’t really want to be in, dancing to rubbish music with groups of people alternating between inappropriately snogging each other and crying. Those introductory bars are enough to make me shudder.
5. I spent 26 years of my life believing that Wolves were not real.
When during an important work meeting I announced that wolves weren’t real, but were in fact mythical beasts, I genuinely believed it.
6. If it had been an Andy Murray & Andy Roddick Wimbledon final, I would have supported Roddick.
Shocking, I know and completely unpatriotic. But it’s very much my rule in sport that everyone should win at least once and Federer was a bit selfish last year when he beat Roddick when he’d already won five times before. So I felt it was Roddick’s year. Plus Roddick has really nice eyes.
7. I think ice-cream is too cold.
I also think generally it’s a waste of time. Bring me a bowl of custard instead any day.
8. I often secretly watch Price Drop TV.
I find these programmes sickly addictive and am getting increasingly persuaded to nearly buy things. Like these amazing vacuum-suction storage bags I saw on the other night. They look amazing! Really good value too.
9. I once went to a Boyzone concert (just to support the friend who’s been 11 times) and got so drunk I was sick on the tube on the way home.
In my defence, the tickets were free and we had a free box at the O2. There is nothing to excuse the vomiting on the tube or the fact that I know all the actions to “A Different Beat” (a song that incomprehensibly rhymes “Africa” with “Niagara”).
10. I find Derren Brown attractive
Maybe everyone does and that confusing TV show he did where he predicted the lottery results was actually full of subliminal message around his attractiveness? Maybe.
There we go Internet Following. Now please share some of yours. So that I feel less humiliated.






Contents
July 7, 2010 - 9:18 pm
1 – you should have watched Mary Poppins in the west end then, no scary cartoons and supercalifragilisticexpialidocious had a dance routine!
2 – i don’t think Joey and Rachel should have even looked at each other in that way. Hideous.
3 – yeah, i’m going to have to go with same difference on this one.
4 – i happen to think Cher’s Believe is pretty fucking awful and I Gotta Feeling is a bloody cacaophonous mess. Take that build me up buttercup!
5 – Wolves the football team is not real. it’s a joke. I actually thought reindeer weren’t real, you know because of the whole santa not real (gasp!) thing and them being linked to him. I only found out last year. I shit you not.
6 – i’m out of my depth on this one, but i confess to not watching any of the world cup or knowing when England played if we are going on a sports theme!
7 – Try carte dior. it usually melts quite quickly. I smoosh it around with a spoon til it’s runny like custard. Can’t stand this hard stuff. It bends my spoons and those things were expensive.
8 – I have every episode of Prisoner Cell Block H and Sunset Beach lovingly transferred to a 1TB hard drive…
9 – I have been to see Steps 7 times. Even at my youngest I was 25!! And i accidentally punched a girl so hard in the face during tragedy that her devil horns fell off.
10 – I find lots of people attractive. My current weirdest is Lee Pace (formerly of Pushing Daisies)
July 7, 2010 - 9:27 pm
Diana Vickers better than Leona? Are you INSANE?
If everyone deserves to win once surely it must be Andy Murray’s turn?!?!
Now lets be honest, I heard that the vomiting at Boyzone had nothing to do with alcohol and was due to pure over excitement…..if you’ve owned up to everything else on the list you can admit that……’Ni – ag-a-ra-ah-ah-ah-ah’!
And Paul, I too loved Sunset Beach – I used to record it everyday to watch when I got home from school…..TV gold.
July 8, 2010 - 9:31 am
I do not recall the time we all revealed something at Tacky Christmas.
Oddly, though, one of my humiliating revelations would be that I made my company pay over £200 so I could take two of my friends to see Boyzone and allow one of them to vomit on the tube on the way home.
My most unfortunate one, though, is still the time I got stuck in a slide at the age of 9. Still the most embarrassing moment of my life, and I hope shocking.
July 8, 2010 - 4:02 pm
To the Sunset Beach fans – you have excellent taste – nothing on TV has quite topped the “it was all a drea, oh no it wasn’t – the dream part was just a dream” finale – awewsome.
Mark – wolves?! Seriously?! Build me up buttercup, I have to agree with. And it certainly wouldn’t have been possible even to bring yourself to enter Cindy’s without several bottles of wine laced with copper… I don’t believe I ever cried there but I may have inappropriately snogged…. although I married him so I think that cancels it out
Can I add “5 will make you get down” and “summer of 69″ to the list??
Revelations… hmmmm
I don’t like cartoons either… in fact I think Finding Nemo is one of the worst films I have ever sat through, And I’ve seen Van Helsing.
Until I was 15 I thought Kim Bassinger was a man and Mel Gibson was a woman
Until last year I firmly believed that sound travelled up and only up. That’s the last time I believe my mother on a matter of science.
When I was 7 I found my grandma’s secret stash of white waxy chalk. I took it to school and shared it with my friends and we drew all over the playground with it. When it rained it didn’t disappear. Odd. Then my teacher asked me to show her the chalk. Not chalk. Suppositories.
And Price Drop is cool.
July 8, 2010 - 5:28 pm
Paul – I’ve seen the Mary Poppins stage show (bit bleak, but good); *amazing* re the reindeer (do any have red noses?); and I love that you confused Wimbeldon with the World Cup. And also that you punched a girl at a Steps concert. That’s definitely truly shocking.
Becky 1 – Andy Murray has many more turns left. Roddick doesn’t. And he has better eyes.
Philippa 1 – you were definitely there when we revealed the shocking secrets. You may have been too drunk/hung-over to be aware of the conversation? Your slide story is good; but what about the time you dropped your mobile phone down a portable toilet?
Daisy – you will be pleased to hear you were definitely not one of the irritating people in Cindy’s. I completely agree re 5 will make you get down: can I through in “Reach For The Stars” too? Especially when people act out the chorus through dancing? I have been laughing for 15 minutes about the suppositories.
More people!
July 12, 2010 - 3:13 pm
These may seem a little familiar.
1. I have never found, and furthermore cannot see how other people find, Brad Pitt attractive.
2. I think Lindsay Lohan is a criminally underrated actress. Look at The Parent Trap, Freaky Friday and Mean Girls – that is one fine canon of work.
3. I hate West Side Story. Though the gang stuff is OK.
4. Nothing Alan Carr has ever said has made me laugh* (*this used to be absolutely true, but he’s much improved on his chat show so sometimes I crack a smile)
5. I agreed with the guy who said Stephen Fry’s tweets were slightly boring, and I’ve never been able to watch more than 5 minutes of QI.
6. I think the 1970s Hammer remake of The Lady Vanishes with Cybill Shepherd and Elliot Gould is superior to the Hitchcock original.
7. When I first saw The Full Monty, I thought it was a deeply moving piece about the emasculation of modern man rather than an uproarious comedy about strippers. I still think that.
8. I hate Little Women.
9. I went on holiday to Madrid and didn’t go to the Prado. Or to the Reina Sofia. Not even to see ‘Guernica.’
10. Nothing on TV gives me quite as much joy as a well-edited BBC musical montage at the end of a sports tournament.
11. There’s no limit to the number of Air Crash Investigation episodes I could watch happily in one sitting.
July 30, 2010 - 7:16 pm
1. Most men that have a vast female following I don’t find attractive (e.g. Brad Pitt. I don’t get it. He has a bucket-shaped head! Mel Gibson is also pretty bland to look at. Derren Brown, on the other hand, is definitely attractive. Mostly because, unlike Brad Pitt and Mel Gibson, he has a brain, and is good at what he does.
)
2. I have been to Paris four times (once for an entire month,) with ‘Go to the top of the Eiffel Tower’ at the top of my Things To Do list. I have only actually been on the Eiffel Tower once, and have still never been to the top.
3. I am a Pagan/Wiccan (and I wish I had a pound for every time someone said to me “But pagans don’t exist anymore!” *eyeroll*)
4. I have a huge fear of clowns (Got it when I was about four at a friend’s birthday party. Her mum booked one of those super creepy looking silent clowns, like the one in ‘Supernatural’ that befriends the kids, but eats their parents. It came running up the front steps of the house towards me, with its arms in the air, and a massive, weird grin on its face, and I just screamed and ran away.)
5. I love Hammer Horror films, and would happily have taken/dragged young Peter Cushing out for dinner.
6. My record for not sleeping is four days straight…seriously.
7. My favourite programme when I was little was ‘The X Files’.
8. I used to think that the song ‘I Put a Spell on You’ (sung by Nina Simone,) was sung by a man.
9. I used to sneak downstairs at 2:00 am/3:00 am to watch the Sherlock Holmes episodes on ITV3 starring Jeremy Brett (Now have them on DVD.)
10. I may now be a Wiccan who wears a lot of black and purple, with buckles on my boots shaped like bats, but I used to be a little girl who had a shelf full of Barbie videos, and took ballet lessons in a bright pink tutu.