Drawing a line under the Power of Frozen

Greatly daring, my mother left the UK for the first and last time in her life for a day trip to France in the mid-1980s.

Naturally expecting to be served a plate of snails and frogs’ legs for her lunch, she reported back with pleased surprise: “And do you know what? They eat frozen peas, just like we do.”

A French onion man in the North East:
my mother's only other known exposure to French food

Even the greatest food snobs are happy to consume frozen peas because they are tastier than the fresh ones, unless you go the trouble of growing, picking and shelling them yourself.

How could it be otherwise, when the frozen alternative goes from field to freezer in less than three hours, locking in all its freshness and goodness?

The same goes for most other frozen vegetables, fish and meat. The food-conscious French are well aware of this. Picard, a retail chain selling high quality frozen food, including gourmet ready meals, is a national institution across the Channel.

In Northumberland, a complex of chest freezers was key to the year-round self-sufficiency of the smallholders who lived next door to me for many years.

But in Britain frozen food is widely dismissed as cheap fodder for those who can afford nothing better: pizzas containing “analogue cheese”, dairy-free ice cream and the massively derided turkey twizzler.

I regularly read middle class mummy bloggers priding themselves on never giving little Tristram and Jemima frozen food, because it is “full of E-numbers and nasty additives” when that is the one thing it is not. Freezing obviates the need to add the preservatives that stop fresh prepared food from killing you.

So, yes, I am a big believer in “The Power of Frozen”, to drop in the name of the advertising campaign currently being run by my friends at Iceland Foods in an attempt to shift British prejudices.

But even I have to draw the line somewhere. And that line is definitely before last week’s lunatic suggestion from “bioethicist” Dr Kevin Smith that all males should bank their sperm at the age of 18 to avoid the risks associated with fathering children in later life.

By which he means not just obvious old codgers like me, but anyone who has made it beyond their 30s.

As the child of elderly parents, and the father of two sons born when I was over 55, I can naturally sympathise with his analysis that the risks of physical imperfection and mental disturbance in children increase as paternal age rises.

But who in their right mind would prefer to go back to some State-run bank to make a withdrawal after a couple of decades, in the hope of creating a healthier family through some cold, clinical process?

Given how well the State has run pretty much everything else ever entrusted to it, who could believe that their own samples would have been successfully preserved, and not mixed up with others in the intervening years?

For some reason I am reminded of the deeply comic but also highly dangerous saga of the top scientists who spent nearly five years testing frozen sheep brains for BSE, until someone pointed out that the samples in question actually came from cows.

One sure fire winner if artificial insemination became the norm in the human population would be the DNA testing industry, as parents and children alike tried to establish the true identity of fathers.

The invention of DNA tests has already established that many children fathered from sperm banks, supposedly stocked by top intellectuals and athletes, actually owe their existence to the small, ugly bloke running the organisation.

The less that government and science have to do with the conception and upbringing of children, the better it will be for the future of us all.

It is an old fashioned view, I know, but I rather like the idea that children should be conceived naturally, by two people who love each other and have some spare love left over to lavish on their offspring.

So in the area of conception, at any rate, I firmly believe that fresh is best. But please don’t hesitate to dip into the freezer to create the romantic dinner for two that so often provides the starting point for the process.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Conferences: just who are they aimed at?

Lectures are for thickoes. That was the blunt warning I received from a sophisticated second year student within days of arriving at arguably the country’s top university in 1972.

His logic was impeccable. Lecturers dumbed down their books into accessible gobbets for the less intelligent students. Those who aspired to the academic top flight should read the complete books instead.

Major advantages of this approach included not needing to get up in the morning, and being able to regurgitate some less familiar quotes when the time came to sit examinations.

So naturally I took his advice and attended virtually no lectures in my time at university, apart from those that promised a laugh or were obvious period pieces. The finest of which was Nikolaus Pevsner’s series on architecture, illustrated with pre-war black and white lantern slides.

This meant that the grand total of relevant “teaching” I received each term amounted to eight hours of individual supervision by a usually moderately distinguished historian, who typically gave me a glass of sherry, listened with a slightly condescending smile as I read out an essay, and suggested which books I should read next.

I am not convinced that I would regard this as fantastic value for money if I were racking up £9,000 a year in student debt to cover my tuition fees, instead of having all my educational and living costs covered by the generous ratepayers of North Tyneside, as was the case back then.

The reason for these reminiscences was my decision last week to accept an invitation to a two-day conference, widely acclaimed as the most interesting and exciting event in its field. Within little more than an hour on the first day I felt an urgent need to pop out for some fresh air. Shortly afterwards I found myself in the comforting embrace of a pub. It was just like Cambridge 40 years ago all over again, except with staggeringly higher beer prices.

Why do people pay large amounts of money to hear people recite edited versions of stuff you could read on their websites any time? One major advantage of the technological revolution is that one no longer even needs to trudge around to a library to access their work, or run the risk of someone else having borrowed the critical book.

For some, I suppose, the answer will be the “networking” opportunities between talks. These have no appeal to me as I’ve always loathed networking, not least because people invariably have a much higher opinion of my abilities before they’ve actually met me.

This was borne out by my experience earlier this year when I was approached to give a hilarious conference talk of my own on great PR disasters I have known. The organisers asked their agent to propose it on the strength of my appearances on the Iceland Foods TV series. It only took a few minutes talking to me on the phone for them to realise that I was nothing like famous or amusing enough for their purposes after all.

Still, at least my years studying history appear to have given me a better grounding in public relations than the many students now doing degrees in the subject, at no doubt huge personal expense. Some of them write to me asking for my help. Their English is usually execrable: one recently used the words “you was” more than five times in a list of questions.

Another was clearly shocked when her request to me to explain why Iceland’s response to Horsegate had been so utterly useless received a short and dusty response.

I am strongly tempted to write a book on the first principles of public relations to point these poor souls in the right direction, but I don’t imagine they would ever read it. They would no doubt much rather go to lectures for thickoes, delivered by people who couldn’t actually make a go of public relations so decided to teach it instead.

I imagine that they will go on to spend much of their working lives in meetings or at conferences, where they will fit in brilliantly. Because, let’s be honest: conference speeches appeal to precisely the same constituency as university lectures.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Goodbye, cruel world

They say that all good things must come to an end, though happily the British monarchy is testing this theory to its limits.

However, I feel sure we can all agree that there comes a time when we should bid farewell to the seriously mediocre.

So it is with this Tuesday column, which concludes today after a run of 387 over 7¾ years. A distinct advance on the nine months that Journal editor Brian Aitken predicted would be the longest I could possibly keep it going when I started.

At least I had a good innings, as they like to say in the day rooms at twilight homes.

I realise that my departure will come as a hammer blow to my beloved aunt and the handful of mainly elderly enthusiasts who buy The Journal every Tuesday simply to keep up with my ramblings.

On the other hand, it may lead to a modest spike in sales of Aldi budget champagne to fans of wind turbines and Gordon Brown (if he has any left).

While the world at large will naturally receive the news with the massive indifference I deserve.

I knew I was on to a good thing personally after my second column, published fortuitously on Valentine’s Day 2006, won me a hot date with an attractive PR woman plus a letter of sympathy from someone in sheltered accommodation in Rothbury.

In those days I was a solitary curmudgeon, winding down in the depths of the countryside after some years of toil in the City of London, and was able to prove my “green” credentials by having no children. This more than offset the fact that I burned lots of coal, ate huge numbers of animals and drove a Range Rover.

Then several remarkable things happened. A column I had written for the business pages called “The Chief Executive’s Handbook” went modestly viral enough to bring me to the attention of a youngish female accountant at Iceland Foods’ head office in Flintshire.

The fact that I knew her chief executive prompted me to ask him whether the e-mail she sent me had come from a fictitious troublemaker or a genuine eccentric, and he confirmed that she was the latter.

This touched off a correspondence that was supercharged by the fact that I had started writing a blog – a development that had prompted several derisive messages from Journal readers ridiculing me for wasting my time in such a futile manner.

Yet it played no small part in the chain of events that ultimately led to our marriage in February 2009 and the subsequent birth of two healthy sons.

All of which goes to show that you should always expect the totally unexpected, and never accept conventional wisdom about what constitutes a productive use of your time.

Of course, it has its downsides. I turn 60 in June next year and had been looking forward to paying off my mortgage, putting my feet up and doing a bit of pottering around on my senior citizen’s railcard.

Now I am scrabbling for more work and hoping that my sadly defective heart may keep going for another 20 years or so, to see my boys through university.

Luckily my wife’s employers have sprung to my aid, as viewers of the recent reality TV series on Iceland will have noticed, by granting me the use of a refrigerated broom cupboard as an office, and allowing me to pretend that I am in charge of their PR.

However, it is not pressures of work or the lure of short-lived TV stardom that have led me to call a day on this column. It is simply a change in production scheduling which creates a deadline I cannot meet.

It is sad that The Journal will no longer host the country’s premier agony aunt and most obscure misery uncle on the same day, but it was great while it lasted. Thank you so much for your readership and support.

Luckily for me I’ve landed a new job, starting next week. I’m going to be writing a Wednesday column for The Journal. But don’t despair, wind energy cheerleaders. Brian confidently predicts that it will last an absolute maximum of nine months.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

I'm A Very Minor Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here

Surveys regularly reveal that the overriding ambition of the young is to be famous, even if it is only for the 15 minutes that Andy Warhol proposed as everyone’s due.

After a 59-year wait I have just had my own small ration of notoriety as a result of BBC2’s Iceland Foods documentary. Let me tell you now, kids: it is not all that it’s cracked up to be.

For a start, being vaguely recognisable from the television gives total strangers the impression that they are licensed to greet you by your first name. No problem for the youth of today, I suppose, but absolute anathema to those of my generation who have a strong preference for being addressed by our title and surname. Except when writing envelopes, where I am one of the last people left alive still using “Esquire”.

Far worse than that, though, is the fact that the aforementioned strangers then feel entitled to let you know exactly what they think of your performance on the box. This is, I will admit, moderately pleasant when they are flattering, but thoroughly depressing when they take the opposite view. And, human nature being what it is, people are far more likely to treat you to their opinions when they have something nasty to say.

Luckily for me The Journal rarely posts my columns on its website, or I would no doubt long since have been driven into a despairing silence by vicious and always conveniently anonymous trolls.

Funnily enough, my first ambition in life was to be a TV presenter. My role models were Eamonn Andrews off Crackerjack! and Mike Neville on Look North. Luckily I soon grew out of it because I realised that I am naturally shy and have a personality with somewhat specialist appeal.

The most enjoyable aspect of the programmes for me has been receiving lots of emailed pitches from serious PR and media training companies, eager to point out where my client and I have been going wrong.

But in a world where every chief executive, like every minister and MP, sticks rigidly to well-polished, politically correct and endlessly repetitious soundbites, isn’t it refreshing to hear from some people who say what they actually think and do so with a touch of humour?

The only major political figure who has dared to adopt such a cavalier approach is Boris Johnson and it does not seem to have done him conspicuous harm so far, though I expect we will keep reading that he is “not serious enough” to be Prime Minister until the day he enters No 10.

Asked in the early 1970s about the impact of the French revolution of 1789, the Chinese premier Chou En-Lai reputedly said that it was far too early to tell. Similarly, I imagine that the jury will be out until long after I have retired on whether allowing in TV cameras for reality documentaries confers any real benefit on the participants.

One might think, as with televised talent shows, that the well was exhausted by now. However, there is no sign of any reduction in the pressure from TV companies eager to bring us a slice of life from an airline, train operator, retailer, school or hospital near you

I had thought it would all be over by the time I filed this column but in fact the final episode has been held over until tonight to make room for BBC2’s new series of The Choir (which is why, if you tuned in yesterday, there was less swearing and fewer PR gaffes than you had been expecting, but a significantly better standard of singing*).

As a stickler for tradition, which means that the Hann family completely ignores the ghastly Americanised trappings of Halloween but goes big on celebrations of thwarted Catholic plots 408 years ago, I intend to spend this evening outdoors letting off fireworks and writing my name in the air with a sparkler. My last name, naturally, since that is the one I prefer.

That will be quite enough of having my name up in lights for one year, and tomorrow I shall be very happy to return to the total obscurity that is my natural habitat.

* I wrote that before I actually watched The Choir, where the standard of singing in fact made Iceland's own head office choir sound like the chorus of the Royal Opera House.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

The St Jude's Day storm ... about bad language and a tie

The St Jude’s Day storm broke out in the Hann household with full force yesterday morning, though it had nothing to do with the weather.

Instead it was over my elder son Charlie’s return to school after the half term break and his switch to a “winter uniform” including a crisp white shirt and a smartly striped tie. This was in place of the monogrammed polo shirt he had been happily wearing since he started school last month.

A very grumpy boy (can't think where he gets it from)

For me, his new clothes brought back fond memories of my own garb at Akhurst Boys’ Preparatory School in Jesmond 55 years ago. The only real difference being that his outfit is blue, whereas mine was in a shade of dark brown specified in terms now so politically incorrect that I cannot even hint at them in a family newspaper.

Charlie, however, took violent exception to his tie. Not as an act of youthful rebellion against convention, but because it was a “totally rubbish” clip-on tie, not “a proper tie like Daddy’s”.

The key difference here is that I don’t think Akhurst’s occasional spells away from our desks for unenergetic bursts of “rhythmics” and Scottish country dancing ever required us to take our ties off after Mummy had put them on for us in the morning. Whereas Charlie and his classmates regularly change into PE kit, and the prospect of helping 20-odd four-year-olds back into proper neckties must seem rather daunting for their teachers.

Charlie had already shown encouraging signs of harbouring old-fashioned tastes two years ago, when we bought him a well-cut miniature suit to wear at a wedding, and he refused point blank to be seen wearing it in public unless we also got him a smart spotted silk handkerchief to sport in his top pocket.

At least I need have no worries about finding a suitable inheritor for the gold watch and chain handed down to me from my great-grandfather William Hann, who was born in Whittingham in 1836. This conveniently allows me to focus all my energies on worrying about whether I will ever work again as the current TV series about Iceland continues to unfold.

There does not seem to be a lot of obvious upside in being the PR adviser during what is already widely cited as a textbook PR disaster: Horsegate.

I have been unkindly described by one reviewer as “looking like a Werther’s Original granddad”, on which the only consolation I received was the e-mail from a friend pointing out that they could have substituted “Operation Yewtree suspect” with equal accuracy.

Given that I spent the best part of a year toning down my usual robust vocabulary because of the presence of cameras, it seemed ironic that I spent Saturday lunchtime in the Joiners’ Arms at Newton-by-the-Sea being lectured by my 88-year-old aunt about my “dreadful” language.

I do hope she heeded my strong advice not to tune in last night, when I quoted some irate people who had achieved simply dizzying new heights of colourful invective.

Perhaps I may yet carve out a niche as an author and lecturer on PR and how not to do it. After all, someone who is consistently wrong is as useful a guide to any subject as a person who is always right. The value of Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats in our national life lies precisely in our ability to find out what they are saying on any issue, so that we may then confidently assert the opposite.

One consolation if I do find myself unemployed, in the wake of this TV exposure of my professional limitations, is that my wife has finally conceded that Low Newton’s beach is her “favourite in the whole world” and she would not mind living nearby.

I suppose we might just about be able to afford a small caravan.

What’s more, I strongly suspect that the children at the local primary school don’t wear “totally rubbish” clip-on ties, though this may well be because they don’t wear ties of any sort.

And the way Charlie is going, in another year he will be sporting a Fedora, wing collar and spats, which may make fitting in a little bit of a challenge.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

A 1950s childhood: starving Africans versus Captain Manners

Like every child of the 1950s, I simply loathe waste.

The Hann household is enlivened by regular inquisitions into why we cannot make greater efforts to close windows and doors, turn down thermostats and pull on more woolly jumpers and socks.

As for chucking out food, it is a dagger to my heart every time a black banana or a mouldy crust of bread heads into the bin.

So I was naturally depressed by yesterday’s revelation from Tesco that it has managed to waste nearly 30,000 tonnes of food in the first six months of this year – and that its customers have chucked away yet more.

Given the scale of the problem, Tesco’s bright idea of ending multi-buy promotions on large bags of salad sounds like a drop in the proverbial ocean.

For the customer one vital key to avoiding waste, in my experience, is never to go shopping – either in a store or online – when one is actually hungry. Things I fancy but am never going to get around to eating always seem to creep into my basket when I am feeling peckish (which is, to be fair, most of the time).

Leaving the children at home also helps, so long as they don’t ransack the fridge and / or burn the house down while you are out.

Then there is adopting a common sense approach to “use by” dates, and only binning stuff when it has actually gone off rather than when the packet tells you to. If God had intended us to rely on “best before” advice, he wouldn’t have equipped us with noses as well as eyes.

(Having said that, I face an ongoing uphill struggle to convince Mrs Hann that certain products such as sugar, honey and golden syrup do not carry “use by” dates for the apparently incredible reason that they never go off.)

Then there is the potential to make intelligent use of the freezer – and, no, this column isn’t an incompetently concealed advertisement for my clients at Iceland.

I lived for more than 20 years next door to a couple who adopted “The Good Life” long before anyone thought to make it into a TV series, and their entire lifestyle depended on the complex of chest freezers that accommodated their seasonal hauls of home-reared meat, local game, and fruit and vegetables from their garden.

Yes, the best-tasting produce is the stuff that you grow yourself and eat fresh out of the ground. But if you can’t manage that, quick-frozen vegetables are highly likely to contain more vitamins and other nutrients than “fresh” food that has been in the supermarket supply chain for days (and probably in the salad drawer of your fridge for even longer).

The middle class intelligentsia love to rubbish convenience food in general, and frozen convenience food in particular, but the clue to its appeal is in the name: it’s convenient.

And despite the complaints of the British Heart Foundation about increasing portion sizes fuelling the current obesity epidemic, I for one have found that my only successful diets were those based around a carefully controlled intake of calorie-counted ready meals.

Starting to cook from scratch, with the almost inevitable temptation of “seconds”, is for me the high road to disaster.

It will not have escaped the attention of anyone who watched the BBC2 documentary on Iceland last night that I am currently immensely fat.

N.B. The banana is an ironic tribute to David Miliband, NOT a gaffe. Though the spelling of "it's" (not by me) clearly is.

This is not a reflection on frozen food but on my own lack of self-control and one other legacy of my 1950s upbringing.

Faced with a straight choice between clearing my plate and tipping an unwanted surplus into the bin, I’m always going to go for forking it down. To do otherwise, my mother assured me, was to administer a kick in the teeth to the starving children of Africa.

I never did understand why.

I have also met exact contemporaries whose parents dispensed the directly contrary advice that you should “always leave something for Captain Manners”.

But I suspect that Captain Manners moved in more exalted social circles than ours around the Four Lane Ends. What’s more, I bet the cad never once pulled on an extra pullover or sorted out his newspapers for recycling.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.