Renault are currently running a competition whereby employees are allowed to borrow a New Megane for a test drive. Employees are then asked to take a photograph of the car, with as many people as possible surrounding it, in a photogenic or unusual setting. The best photograph wins the prize of two tickets to the British Grand Prix.
Mark R and I have booked the vehicle and were wondering if anybody had any bright ideas about where we could photograph it.
Suggestions so far have included:
1) Parking the vehicle on a velvet bed in a brothel surrounded by dozens of naked ladies of the night - this would underline the car being "one f#ck of a ride." This would be an unusual setting and most photogenic picture. Would you not look at it in a magazine or on a billboard???
THANKS NICK L
2) How about some bird draped across the bonnet, with it parked on a farm?
The caption... "the best model in its field"
THANKS ALEX MACH
Your comments and ideas would be most appreciated and fully rewarded if successful. Please donate ideas through the comments function.
The agenda for Mark R and I last night was to take full advantage of the free bar at the Renault Christmas party in Battersea Park, then toddle off to a friend-of-a-friend's birthday party in Leicester Square sufficiently inebriated to make fools of ourselves.
We were looking rather dapper - suited and booted, shoes gleaming clean and hair freshly cut and styled. The first incident worth noting occurred whilst we were sat minding our own business in the tube carriage. The train stopped, the doors flew open and in marched a group of young London lads. They swung on the overhead handles, openly traded drugs and boasted about the "White City boys" they had "gone after" the previous weekend. "Ugh! Who's wearing all that aftershave?" one of the louts demanded and glared at us, which was rather ironic because I was about to enquire where the stench of urine was coming from. I smell nice, you smell of piss. Tossers.
Anyway, we made our way to Battersea Park after a brief tour of Sloane Square and entered the party complex where we encountered a hideously drunk Darren B. Free drinks flowed and the food was good, but it was after the meal that the entertainment began.
One of the fairground-style games involved hitting a catapult type contraption with a large mallet and trajecting a rubber frog towards the central zone and if it landed in one of the balti dish-esque receptacles, then you won a small cuddly toy. It was further complicated by the presence of coconuts in the balti dishes which basically meant that if your frog stuck on one of those, you won the coconut.
After several failed attempts, Mark R and I doubted we would ever win a prize so we decided instead to hit the catapult as hard as possible and see how far we could launch the frogs, with a view to either hitting players on the opposite side or the man giving frogs out. We noted that the selection of cuddly toys pegged to the clothes-line running from one side of the stall to the other was beginning to diminish. Then, in a flurry of activity I won a coconut.
I was extremely proud, but my sights were set on the cuddly toy. I stepped up once more and hit the catapult as hard as I could. The frog surged into the air, knocked off the peg holding one of the cuddly toys and landed unimpressively in the central zone, but the cuddly toy stayed put. "Why don't you just manually throw one and try to knock the little bugger down that way, rather than trying to win one using the catapult?" Mark R said as I plotted my next barrage. "Excellent idea" I replied and with that, waited until the stall attendant wasn't looking and threw the frog.
It sailed through the air in what seemed like slow motion, missed its target by some considerable distance, flew over the edge of the central zone and hit a rather large man right in the bollocks.
Further incidents included starting conversation with a colleague with a James Bond style "Ah, Miss Hunnissett..." and telling my boss that he had come second in the 'Who's Wearing the Worst Tie Competition'.
By then it was high time we left so a taxi was hailed and we journeyed to Leicester Square for party number two. Having convinced the driver that we worked for Aston Martin and had been to the Minnellium Stadium two times, we exited the cab only for Mark to open the door straight into a lamp-post, leaving a rather large and highly noticeable scratch down the door panel.
Bloody good night all in all.
STORY: Several women selling fruit on the streets of Swaziland bore their bottoms at police when they attempted to arrest them for unlicensed trade.
STORY: A Welsh man who admitted infecting thousands of computers across the world with fast-spreading e-mail viruses has been jailed for two years.
Simon S, Simon H, Shaun H and I all met up last night for what turned out to be an evening of drinks and giggles.
"Pete has gone back to university to do his masters" Simon S blurted. "As it were" came the reply, as the Jack Daniels quietly vanished.
"Can I get some cash back please Matt?" I enquired. "Well how much do you need?" he responded, with the distinct undertone that I was putting him out. "Ummmm, £10, maybe £20?" I said, trying to be as nice as pie. "How about £40?" Matt blurted. "Yeah, that'll do" I compromised as he charged and handed me £60.
Later in the evening, Simon H decided that he didn't actually like the Sambuca that he had just been forced to drink and that he was going to throw up. So we followed him out the door in single file and proceeded to watch him vomit, egging him on with phrases such as "just say BLEEURRGGHH!"
But the most amusing incident involved the trip home. Since Simon S was driving that night, he offered to give me a lift. However, there was a particularly inebriated young black girl staggering around the car park and being the kind bloke that he is, Simon offered her a lift home. As soon as she got in the car, she started insulting us and making racist comments. SO, as the kebab van approached, we stopped, opened the door and literally threw her out of the car like some sort of reversed kidnap.
And who said that Cranleigh was dull?
When it said 'Partner's Name:' on the Renault Christmas Party invitation back in November, I was stumped. "I don't have a partner" I said to my colleagues. "Well just put down a random name then, and if you do get a partner between now and the party, although she'll have been invited under a different name, then she will have an invite nonetheless." An excellent plan. Or so I thought.
So, resisting the temptation to write down an obscure name, I wrote down the first normal name I could think of - Joanne Martin.
"So who is Joanne Martin then Jon?" my colleagues enquired today. At this point, another person piped up with "is it the Joanne Martin from Human Resources?"
To say I was speechless was an understatement. As far as I was concerned, I was going to the party with the non-existent Joanne Martin, but it turns out that Joanne Martin does in fact exist, she works for Renault, and I have managed to randomly promise to go to the party with her.
Why does it always happen to me?
"Right, Jon, your turn" the tutor said as she motioned to me to take the floor and present myself in front of my colleagues. I had scribbled a few notes on a scrap of paper just before the course began in preparation for providing a few stories from my early days, including an early childhood memory.
The previous presentations had described such events as missing lessons at school and grazing knees, but I wanted to be different.
"Kiss chase" I blurted. "At my school, the girls used to chase the boys, slobbering at the mouth and generally putting the fear of God in us", I continued, proceeding to recount an anecdote involving girls, me, a tree and a ladder.
"Nowadays" I added, trying to convince the audience that I hadn't, in fact, attended some special school for the sexually reversed, "nowadays, if a school girl was chasing me, slobbering at the mouth, then I might find it more difficult to resist and I'd probably have to force myself to abide by her wishes." I turned my back to the audience, section one complete, but then horror dawned on me. I rapidly turned back around and tried to repair some of the potential damage.
"I don't mean that in the Matthew Kelly sense of the phrase" I hastily added, "what I mean is that if they were at the more mature end of the schooling stage, then I might have to co-operate". By this time it was too late, Rogers was in fits of laughter, the tutors were shaking their heads and the video camera had it recorded.....
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Odd. That's can be the only plausible word that best describes the incidents Mark R and I experienced at the Outdoor Pursuits Exhibition in Kensington today.
Kensington is a posh area, everybody knows that, and it was further backed up by the sighting of three Ferraris, two Aston Martins, several Porsches and more BMW's than you would care to imagine but this initial impression was wiped out by the class of attendee at the exhibition.
Having fully expected to encounter the long-haired, small tuft of goatee on the bit between bottom lip and chin, random ear-piercing folk that are so often associated with such sports, we were shocked to find out that people who practice these sports obviously have fewer brain cells than a boiled potato.
There was a man walking around in a blanket style jacket that would have looked better suited in a Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat theatre production, there was the 'Killing Heidi' stand advertising a rock band (what that has to do with outdoor pursuits, I just don't know - I got out of buying tickets by claiming to be a jazz man), and there was the jabbering Kiwi who tried to persuade us to go to New Zealand because "it's all you could possibly want, and maybe more" and then proceeded to keel over in hysterics.
Also, some stand attendant started pointing at me whilst talking to a customer, so I stood there, looked down my clothes to see if I had spilt lunch down myself or something, but there was nothing. When I enquired as to what he was pointing at, he just laughed and started talking in some incomprehensible colloquial tongue.
But the oddest incident throughout the entire day was on the walk back from Ealing Broadway station. There we were, ambling along at a leisurely pace when on the opposite side of the road came two men. They can't have been normal. One was wearing red trousers, a tweed jacket, glasses and a trilby-esque hat and the other would have looked more at home in the film Dick Tracy. Queerer than a party at Barrymore's.....
Highlights from another debauched party at Ellie C's house include:
- helping Ellie C put on her thong in front of absolutely everybody
- allowing my favourite cd to be played, but on the condition "as long as it's safe and away from mayonnaise"
- slipping over in the kitchen, grabbing Mel N on the way down, her falling on top of me whilst her heel goes straight through the large plastic storage tray that was acting as ice bucket and consequently depositing several litres of freezing cold water all over the kitchen floor. Then using the dustpan and brush to clear it up.
- wearing a blindfold, Michelle C pinging it and causing me to fall off the side of the bed in a da-nah, ping, ow motion.
From the cashier in Birthdays' point of view, it was just another ordinary Saturday morning in Watford, busy processing customer purchases and glancing at the watch every few seconds to see if it was time to go home yet.
"Just that please", I said as I placed the card on the counter. I had ventured into the shop to buy a card for Ellie C's birthday and, despite the numerous, yet rather uninspiring, selection of Happy Birthday cards, I plumped for one that read 'Happy Birthday Auntie'.
"Oh, and this" I added, and proceded to place on the counter the gift that I had selected for Ellie - a 'Horny Devil Passion Pack'. The cashier looked at me strangely, shrugged her shoulders and scanned it through.
It was only about an hour later that I realised the cashier must have thought I was having some sort of sordid, perverted, incestuous sexual relationship with my aunt.
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Gets your puns ready.....
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Further to New Year's acquainting with the Sky News headline writer by Simon S and I, I have devised what should be a rather amusing comments-based exercise to come up with our very own headlines. All you have to do is read the STORY at the bottom of this entry, click on 'comments' and pun away.....
SO, get your puns ready. Here goes..... (remember to look on Sky News to see if any of your 'work' makes it to the global audience.....)
STORY: England floods once more, many homes ruined by flood waters. Further rain expected.
Darren B was telling Mark and I about a certain young lady he had 'romanced' over the festive period.....
Darren B: "She was petite, blonde, gorgeous and 36DD" (all lies)
Mark R: "I like the sound of her so far"
Jonola: "You don't know the first thing about her sofa"
Laura W was recounting a story the other day.
Whilst perusing the shelves of her local video store, Laura discovered a blockbuster film showered with praise from various newspapers, magazines and critics about the momentous plot, the splendid scenery and the superb acting.
'Brilliant', she thought, and walked toward the counter to rent the film. Only one thing puzzled her. Why did the film boast about having 40 scars? What did this mean anyway? Nevertheless, she rented the film out and headed home.
It was only when she returned the video to the shop that she realized that 40 scars was, in fact, 4 oscars.
Happy New Year!
A house party in Balham beckoned, with the ever present Simon S, his girlfriend Michelle, some college friends and a whole host of people I had never met before. Probably best that way.....
Highlights of the evening included: watching Helen open a jar of Doritos salsa dip and managing to spray it all around the room - covering the floor, the walls, the sofas, herself and everyone else present in the room; playing mindless drinking games until the early hours; blowing up a balloon, only for the bastard to explode in my face; meeting the man responsible for Sky TV's headline puns and promptly helping him out with his work, including - Saddam Shame, Water Disaster and Chink in the Armour; making random 0898 phone calls from the host's house phone; and laughing uncontrollably at Simon S.
About standard really.