Zeusblog

Spotted this restaurant the other day and it made me laugh. The idea of oriental food with a black country accent – what would that be like? Noodles in a Bank’s Mild sauce perhaps? Or Scratching Spring Rolls?

For non-Brummie readers perhaps I ought to explain. A ‘Yam-Yam’ is a derogatory name used by Brummies for people from the black country (Halesowen, Dudley, Wolverhampton, Walsall etc). We’re often lumped together, but our accents are quite different, and one of the strangest things they do is to say “Yao Am” instead of “You are”. And when this is part of their sing-song accent, it gets shortened to “Yam” as in “Yam gooin down the pub?” Hence Brummies call black country folk “Yam Yams”, and it puzzles us why you’d name your noodle bar after them.

I saw this ad on the tube and thought it was a very neat way of telling the public that people like me will be running the marathon on the 25th April and causing lots of disruption. Well done whoever did it.

Yesterday on the way home from Cornwall, my family made our usual detour to Padstow to grab lunch at Rick Stein’s fish & chip shop.

Now if I was the most famous fish chef in the country, I’d make sure that the specials board in my chip shop didn’t contain any spelling mistakes – but then I’m a copywriter

More importantly, if I were the most famous fish chef in the country, I wouldn’t serve cod in greasy batter.

On our previous visit, the fish was absolutely sublime, so come on Rick – sort it out!

First Batman in Hampstead Garden Suburb, now the Penguin (well two actually) at Wembley. 

I went to the Carling Cup Final at Wembley last Sunday and found myself sitting next to these two guys. What you can’t see in the picture was the rest of their outfits under their Villa shirts – they had big penguin bums and orange flipper feet – very funny. When I asked “Why the Pingu outfits?”, they just replied “Why not?” and laughed.

Apart from the score it was a great day out (particularly those beautiful, glorious 8 minutes when we were 1-0 up), and the new Wembley stadium (my first visit) is so much better than the old one, which other than the twin towers was really awful.

Now I’m not generally very well disposed towards Man Utd, but I have to take my Villa hat off to the Man Utd fans. Most (and I mean 95%) of them were not wearing the red colours that they are famous for, but were wearing green and yellow as a protest against the Glazers, their American owners who strapped the club in debt to buy it. Yellow and green were the club colours of Newton Heath, the original club formed in 1878 that became Man Utd. It’s the fans way of saying that you may have bought Man Utd Plc, but it’s still is and always has been our club. When they celebrated winning the cup (by the skin of their teeth) their end was a sea of swirling green and yellow scarves. Their line is “Love United. Hate Glazers.” My response would be “Hate United. Love the Protest.” Football clubs really are so much more than just a business and a balance sheet, so I hope it works for them.

Feeling very pleased with myself for finding the g-spot, I got to wondering which other problems the iPhone could solve for me. I tapped the maps app and searched for the answer.

Whatever your problem, the answer, as you can see below, lies on Long Lane between Addiscombe and Beckenham, just south of Penge. Which makes a lot of sense to anyone who works in advertising, because whenever we talk about market research we say, “Let’s see what the housewives in Penge think”