ALBANIAN ANNIVERSARY WALTZ TURNS OUT TO BE A GOOSESTEP

Today I find myself in slight shock. Not due to the determination from Immigration Judge Morrison which states that my daughter’s husband Besmir may not join her in this country. That was always a possibility as we hurtle towards a Britain tinier than Little in its global outlook.
It is the appalling structure of his case for doing so. It is the incompetent legal representation provided by the Immigration Advisory Service and regrettably in person, by Shereen Shafaatullia.
When she phoned us 15 minutes after the hearing to apologies for “forgetting” about a recent legal change which meant that my wife and I could have given evidence in support of the application. We submitted a witness statement but the flexibility of appearing in person would have allowed a more clearly stated case to be made.
This “oversight” is with hindsight unforgivable.
In the determination Judge Morrison states “Mr & Mrs Somerville did not give evidence although I was told they were present at the hearing centre but felt too nervous to give evidence.”
I have been in the broadcast business my entire life and was being represented as “too nervous” to speak to this man. Unbelievable.
More important and central to proceedings is that Morrison focused on the fact that Besmir did not disclose the fact that he, like every other Albanian in the Greek islands, was working illegally when they met in May 2007. Well he did not until September after they lived and worked together as it was NOT RELEVANT to their relationship.
Only when they contemplated a future outside of Greece did it become so, and he was honest and forthright in declaring a possible impediment to that. Central to Judge Morrison’s decision was the fact that in his view this was tantamount to deception.
To what end, exactly? Deception implies personal gain by fraudulent means, and this clearly has not been the case.
He also questioned Bes’ intentions and lack of input to the hearing. If he was living in Albania with barely two potatoes to rub together, Judge Morrison might have found it difficult to input into a legal process in Western Europe. Living in Edinburgh’s legal circles is more than a million miles away, metaphorically speaking.
He had after all endured a wilfully misleading interview process at the Embassy in Tirana, involving a 10 hour round trip. That appears to be demonstrating commitment.
“The final factor which led to my conclusion is that I am concerned about the content of the email in the appellant’s bundle.”
It is hardly surprising that the Judge toils to comprehend the language spoken by young people in texting and emailing one another.
On 15th January he states incredulously that the message read “hi hun can you please call me when you can. Love you.”
Apparently this suggests to the judiciary that the appellant does not regard the relationship “as being genuine and subsisting.”
Really. Come to my house and see how your absurd ruling has reduced my daughter to emotional rubble. You hopelessly detached prick.
Et des boyaux du dernier prêtre, Serrons le cou du dernier roi.

wihtout a trace...

So, 25 years ago I first came to the United States. It was to attend the Country Music Fanfair event in Nashville, a place perversely romanticised in my head by Robert Altman’s film of the same name, Of course, it was nothing like that.
I was looking for Geraldine Chaplin, but only found a reporter from Time magazine who was staying at the Grand Ol’ Opry Hotel which had rivers running through it. I was billeted at an out of town Days Inn which still seemed impossibly romantic, and, well, frankly, American.
My tenuous purpose for being there free and gratis was chaperoning a bunch of listeners to Radio Forth’s Barrie Country on an annual pilgrimage to the source of all things C & W.
Nashville was their Lourdes, and the sub postmistress from Fife, registered epileptic boy in his early 20’s and at least 3 visually impaired punters sought salvation through the country nation.
They craved Conway Twitty City and I desperately sought Jason Ringenberger & His Scorchers, but made do with Rodney Crowell playing for free in the city’s pedestrianised central square.
A quarter of a century later and I am watching Trace Adkins and a mightily impressive band rip up Universal Studios using what looks and sounds like a full festival sound and lighting rig.
Adkins is the latest big name turn to light up the theme park’s entertainments schedule, with MC Hammer and Pat Benatar among the recent old school attractions to get the nostalgic nods from the cognoscenti. Actually nobody seemed to care too much for Hammer’s panto routine, but thought old Pat was holding up well, giving it her well known best shot.
Trace is of a similar vintage but far more current, enjoying crossover Top 20 hits in the Billboard singles chart as well as enormously successful albums, including 2 best of compilations.
Live the music sounds like rock-lite, designed for the masses swilling Bud, Miller or Coors low calorie excuses for beer. But hell, this is a man who has been sentenced to jail (for drink driving) but never had to do the time. A 48-year-old Lousiana man who was shot flush in the chest by his second wife and lived to tell the tale. Whose drinking has got him in to tight scrapes and less than jolly japes. Yet he still sets the ladies’ hearts aflutter, and whisper it, maybe some of the men’s too.
The speakers in Monster Square are like sniper’s rifles, picking off their targets from long range.
Marie Duipuise, a French Canadian single mom relocated to Florida with her 9-year-old son Daniel, is very keen and knows the words to every song.
Her companions, John and Juan, the latter being from Panama City, are equally enthusiastic. They are charming middle aged men who look like they have line danced in the past, and make La Cage Aux Folle look like a gritty prison drama.
Trace is moving on to films now, and last year made the final of American Celebrity Apprentice. He lost out to that great British export Piers Morgan. The US equivalent of Alan Sugar? Donald Trump.
Yup. Trace Adkins – he ain’t Steve Earle but he does not appear to be Randy Travis either.

share a little time

So, Jeff Davies is showing me pictures of his family.
Lovely wife, daughter aged 20, son coming up 17, and there may have been a dog. We have never met.
All snapped smiling on the front drive of their pretty house in Central Orlando.
It has lost half its value in the past 12 months, but Jeff is obliged to show me all of this.
Obliged because his manager at West Lake Resort has determined that family is a great sales tool, and as a front line salesman he is expected to exploit his own.
We have never met, but he is showing me these pictures and giving me the back story, what his children are studying and what they aspire to be.
And Jeff tells me that he used to be a chiropractor, but time-share apparently pays better and the hours are not so long.
We have never met, and will never meet again. We do not want to own a 2 or 3 bedroomed condominium in this lakeside development, for one week a year. Or indeed every other year. We do not want to own it, or pay just $300 extra to swap it for a similar property in any of the other major tourist resorts where West Lake’s partners have identical condo.
While paying spiralling maintenance charges to keep the lawns of all these time-share properties immaculately manicured, without a blade out of place.
We do not want this. We do want tickets for the Florida theme parks at a fraction of the cost if you were to buy from any one of the hundreds of kiosks hustling a deal.
That is the sole reason for being one of the few white families in a throng of Afro American folks contemplating this tiny slice of the American dream.
We do not want the peanut butter cookies fresh out of the oven in the ‘show condo’.
They are safe in the oven gloved hands of a lady from Honduras, and are the new ‘making bread’ or ‘brewing coffee’. They smell like home. Just not our home.
But Jeff can’t let us go just yet. We have to meet his manager, a charming lady from Peru. We swap memories of the great Teofilio Cubillas, who was the real slayer of Scottish dreams at the 1978 World Cup in Argentina.
We were told she came to the United States, and started out cleaning peoples’ homes.
Now she sells extra part time accommodation to those who feel such a thing is necessary.
After all, for those 51 weeks of the year you are not there, rest assured your cash is keeping the place in the style to which you are barely accustomed.
Her children are keen football fans, having gone to Germany in 2006 and booked up for South Arica next year. Sadly Peru have been as absent from the tournament for as long as the unfortunate Scots.
Equally unfortunately was the fact that we did not want anything else she was selling.
We left with what we wanted, passes for the parks, the ultimate time-share experience for those with a bellyful of reality.
Jeff joked our intransigence ensured that he could hit the golf course early. Where he could daydream about still being called doctor and making the nasty back pain go away. But clearly he didn’t want that, oh no.
Next, the wonderful world of fast lines and synthetic Mardi Gras, complete with an exotic man from Panama and his partner John.
Hasta la vista, as they say down that way.

long haul

So, the United States does have a favourable policy in respect of senior citizens, despite not giving John McCain a sniff of the Oval Office in the Presidential Election.
The cabin crew of the United flight to Washington from Heathrow must have had an average age of 58, and that was with a spritely thing in her mid 30’s on board.
Transferring through Washington Dulles, cardboard cut out Obama proclaimed there was hope, and just round the corner there were t-shirts on sale shouting “Don’t blame me, I voted for McCain and Palin”. Only in America. The reactionary regressing the intellectually repressed. Result.
En route to Florida from DC the trolley dollies were mature gay men, elegantly wafting tasteful cologne as they whizzed up and down the aisle with similarly ageless in flight delights.
Sat behind us was one Barry Pryor, who appeared to be giving a demonstration of the airline’s new policy of allowing cell phones to be used during the taxi process.
“Yeah man, you would not believe what happened when I walked into the rest rooms at the airport this morning,” roared Barry to his unknown acquantance. “I found this fucking titanium bracelet, man, with five freakin’ huge diamonds set in it,” he said with all the authority of the buyer at Tiffany’s.
Barry looked like Rizzo from Midnight Cowboy on a good day or Lenny from Strange Days on a bad one. He had a black and green ring through each ear lobe, and seemed a generous type.
“I could sell this thing and buy you a freakin’ car,” he enthused to his next caller. That this could have been a family heirloom or prized anniversary gift which happened on the floor of Minneapolis airport’s toilet did not trouble Barry. To be fair to him he was nice to children, or specifically my 6 year old youngest one who kept asking him why there were so many lakes in the Orlando area as he looked out over Central Florida on the approach to an interesting landing in 40mph cross winds.
Barry and his booty disappeared in the direction of the shuttle bus. I did not see his morals.
On to the Clarion Hotel on Universal Boulevard, marching to the beat of holidaying college bands from the northern states soaking up the sunshine for spring break.
For the past two years visitor numbers have been down, and there is a hint of desperation in the air over the theme parks.
Universal is making a major investment in a Harry Potter attraction, with cranes towering over the ramparts of Hogwart’s behind the ‘work in progress’ hoardings.
This year’s principal new arrival is the Simpsons Ride. If Americans don’t get irony, then the marvellously elaborate schtick putting this in the context of Krustyland, a theme park within a theme park will go over many heads this summer.
Due to open this spring but still clearly under construction is the other big investment, Hollywood Ripe Ride Rocket.
There are many offers for cheap packages to spend days at both Universal and Disney.
More tired than some of the park’s more senior attractions are taking a time-share tour, listening to a sales pitch for 3 hours in exchange for half price tickets.
If theme park crowds are falling, it is a safe bet that the queue to own a week every other year in one of these glorified holiday camps is not getting any longer either.
Tales from this bizarre JG Ballard scenario will continue on this channel….

Peerless Texas

So it was the first time I had seen Lyle Lovett since the splendour of his Large Band captivated 3000 fans and more at the Edinburgh Playhouse in the mid 1990’s
In the comparatively boutique surroundings of the Queen’s Hall fronting his four piece ‘Acoustic Band’, the long tall man from Texas is an even more commanding presence.
Sliver of suit, boots boasting the most immaculate chiselled toes, the 51-year-old with the grin that transcends lop-sided is the most tastefully tortured artist imaginable.
Anchored by the redoubtable Russ Kunkel, his drummer of long standing who also played with the cream of the Seventies Californian scene, and gets more power out of brushes than lesser mortals manage with sticks, this is a gentlemen’s ensemble of great talent.
Cellist John Hagen has been around Lyle for at least two decades, and it shows in the repartee between them. If timing is indeed the secret of comedy, then Lovett can stand up with the best of them.
He is more tall and droll than Chic Murray, a deadpan storyteller both spoken and sung. Hagen plays the knowing straight man almost as well as he bows that cello, which is very well indeed.
They reach back as far as If I Had A Boat, cherry picking from a 23 year career, injecting renewed vigour into tunes like My Baby Don’t Tolerate and Since The Last Time.
Showstopper of the night? In a set that wreaks casual emotional havoc throughout, the penultimate tune that opens the encore, North Dakota. Unrequited painful border brooding. Cue moist glass eyes etc.
In this former church, it was a religious experience.

just like a ...

So it was 1982 and the legendary Rolling Stones were playing some “intimate” British shows, work their way back into the British public’s affections ahead of a European stadium tour.
That meant appearing at venues such as the Capitol Theatre in Aberdeen, legendary Glasgow Apollo and newly refurbished Playhouse in Edinburgh, the latter accommodating over 3,000 punters.
By default I had befriended the seasoned manager of the Edinburgh venue, a wily old operator called Ted Way, a professional brought in to ensure the place was properly run after years of less than diligent stewardship.
The Edinburgh cognoscenti viewed Ted with suspicion, a London connected guy pioneering the balding grey mullet look, with the air of somebody who knew what he was doing.
As a comparatively young independent radio buck, I was regularly invited to his office to enjoy the A list acts for whom the Playhouse was one of the first venues penned on any tour itinerary.
Ted was to be late accused of improper practices in the way he ran the theatre, but hand on heart I never witnessed anything to support those accusations. Although he was prone to ask what you wanted to drink, and if you said a Becks German lager, four bottles would be opened and lined up in front of you.
He was an indominatable character whose proudest possession was an oil painting of The Stranglers, with him in the frame as the fifth member of the band. The indestructible Shetland fiddler Aly Bain was a regular dinner guest chez Ted, and you needed to be indestructible to survive at his table.
Getting an interview with Mick Jagger had become Radio Forth’s top priority, and therefore mine.
Ted called me and suggested I come over and interview the promoter Harvey Goldsmith, with a nod and a wink on arriving at his office. Nothing said, just a wave through to the back office where the man who would mastermind Live Aid sat casually at a desk.
Harvey was accommodating and friendly, but I was uncertain how this fitted into the “get Jagger” plan, or how I would explain it back at base. It was the means to an end, a concept alien then, but much clearer with hindsight.
On the day of the show I was drinking IPA in the magnificent Café Royal, drowning my embarrassment at the Jagger failure, and hoping that seeing the Stones in such an “intimate” setting would be some recompense.
Suddenly a breathless Tom Bell, then Radio Forth’s Head Of Music, burst through the swing doors in West Register Street. He was clutching tape machine and said that if I went that minute Mick would grant an audience backstage at the Playhouse.
There was no time to think about it. A whirl and there I was in a dressing room deserted but for the Stone’s singer and some blonde woman.
“Jerry, go and get us a couple of beers darling,” drawled the sexiest man alive.
Only later did I realise that Mick had just asked Jerry Hall to go and get this 24-year-old a Budweiser, which was not as common as piss back then. Still tasted like it though.
He was loquacious, warm and friendly, I was overawed, nervous and full of 5 pints of the Café Royal’s finest.
All appeared to go well. As it turns out, the most significant thing on the tape was the distant sound of Edinburgh’s TV21 playing their final gig, having landed the opening slot through their record company Decca. They of course released all the really good early Rolling Stones material. And turned down the Beatles.
Mick had in the words of David Byrne been talking a lot but not saying anything. Possibly I was mesmerised by those legendary lips and imagining where they had or hadn’t been, but there was nothing of substance in those 15 minutes, Then again the buzz phrase in commercial radio at the time was ‘it’s all about the sizzle not the sausage’.
This was all facilitated by Matt Donald, the Eighties EMI radio plugger and one of the funniest human beings to grace the planet.
I learned that getting the big name interview was not everything after all. Unless you are prepared to ask the tough questions and listen to the answers.

Evidently John Cooper Clarke's Bus Pass

So John Cooper Clarke has just turned 60. The barely bantam-weight Salford bard middle-aged spread appears to have affected only his remarkable hair, still coloured dark as raven’s wings with approximately the same span.On Saturday night a very respectable crowd partial to iambic pentameters in a Mancunian punk rock style crammed into Edinburgh’s Cabaret Voltaire – surely the most appropriately named venue for such a literate performer.And the local literati were littered throughout the crowd, including the redoubtable Paul Reekie, another man of words who seems to improbably improve with age. The long greying hair giving him the look of a craggy Celtic Iggy Pop, but most definitely not that of an insurance salesman.(For the unfamiliar, check his early piece Lovers on the impressive compilation of Scottish post punk Messthetics No 5.)Johnny was due on stage at 8.30 but didn’t make it until 9.00pm, his taxi driver apparently unsure where the Cab Vol was situated in the heart of the historic Olde Towne. Next to the Blair Street Sauna, from where many a promoter of shows source the dressing room towels for the appearing stars. Freshly laundered, obviously.And to think JCC could have hopped on a bus for free, if he remembered to bring the pass. Sporting a heavy red tint rather than the old black wraparound shades of old, he drinks whisky with a bottle of water chaser. Class. His are one of the few shows where the cry of “Twat!” is a request not a heckle, although the occasional Czech lager fuelled hollers from the more drunk and confused are deftly despatched out of the park. There are more yarns and gags than poems, but no complaints on that score.The highlight is Beasley Street being restyled as Beasley Boulevard, with all the accoutrements of 21st century living. Back in 1982 or so I committed the broadcasting faux pas par excellence of deciding to play his single at the time, I Married A Monster From Outer Space.It was during a show called Forth Street at tea time, on curiously enough, Radio Forth.In my defence Forth Street was the station’s actual address.Being disorganised as usual, only the album was to hand, and not thinking about the single edits so popular back in the day, slammed on the LP version.“I mean it’s bad enough with someone from another race,” says Johnny, “But fuck me a monster from outer space.”Cut things short before the next refrain but fell short of an apology. How many of the sizeable drive time audience rang in to complain? Not a single one.Admittedly, I only played a record, but it will come as no surprise that profanity failed to be quite the boosty woosty to my career as it did for those of Ross and Russell all these years later.

Hicks

So I was going to interview Bill Hicks at Radio Forth. He was appearing in a tent on the Meadows as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, in a circus tent. Regular Music were taking a chance on the new enfant terrible of American stand up comedy. Because William Melvin Hicks was ferociously anti anti-smoking folks were confusing him with the better publicised “No Cure For Cancer” comedian Dennis Leary. The two having had a war of words not dissimilar to the early Eighties contretemps between Jerry Sadowitz and the Bing Hitler character devised by Craig Ferguson.
In fact Hicks was entirely magnanimous with regard to Leary. I watched the latter perform his impressive routine while UK producer Lisa Meyer (co writer of the Young Ones and then beau of Rik Mayall) ran a stop watch on his performance. Afterwards we adjourned to the Beau Brummel boozer on Edinburgh’s Hanover Street, where Dennis proved to be one of the most genuine and affable performers you could encounter on the Edinburgh Fringe. “I have kids, and just want to secure them a decent future” he said over a couple of beers.
Hicks was incredible. I had concocted a transparent Desert Island Discs rip off called Getting Personal, where guests would select their favourite tunes to play during an hour (commercial or course) or conversation.
He agreed to participate, and insisted that all his selections were by either The Beatles or The Rolling Stones, because, he said, everything else was shit. Including presumably his own band The Marbleheaded Johnsons. It was of course provocative.
Bill was captivating. Others participating in the pre-recordings often wanted the music to be cut in after the recording to save time. Not him. He leapt around the studio during every tune, playing air guitar as if his life depended on it. He was the courteous Texan gentlemen throughout, while expressing some of the most trenchant views to leave the lips of any stand up of his generation. He also refused to be drawn into any discussion or debate regarding Dennis’s act, other than arching his impressive eyebrows and smiling sweetly.
Up to that point all I had heard was a cassette of his live performance ‘Relentless’, and been captivated. Seeing him perform in that tent on the Meadows, incorporating the lurid carving on the poles that supported it into his act was unforgettable.
He launched into his splay thighed porno routine and the collective expulsion of breath from the audience could have launched the world’s first Jumbo glider.
They were seasoned ‘alternative’ comedy observers but nothing prepared them for such an uncompromising onslaught.
Two years later I was on a train from Edinburgh to London and read that Bill was dead. He had quit smoking but cancer sought him out through the pancreas.
That was 15 years ago yesterday. Few have been so missed and horribly misunderstood.

I Will Follow

So I am sitting in the back seat of Tony The Greek’s Ford Granada with Bono Vox out of U2. We are in the car park opposite Clouds, or Coasters as it soon be known, and doing a location interview for Radio Forth in Edinburgh.
On the last occasion, Bono and the rest of the band had come into the station, along with NME journalist Gavin Martin, and indulged in one of those octagonal table interviews that are unnecessarily democratic and usually disasterous.
But now with a few more records sold and tickets bought, the mountain happily goes to Mohammed. We talked and talked, then rejoined the band for a meal in a Chinese restaurant. Little did that establishment know that in the not too distant future it would be selling enchiladas and fajitas as the Grove, in its time possibly the third most popular Mexican food emporium in town.
Little did Bono know that in 5 years time U2 would make a huge global impact at Live Aid, and 20 years after that he would make poverty history, glad handing world leaders until their palms stung with his sincerity.
As we six sat round the table prodding egg fried rice and assorted glutinous MSG heavy accompaniments, guess which personality emerged as the most memorable?
Apart from Tony obviously. Well it was not the amiable Bono man, nor the still hirsute quiet charmer, The Edge, or indeed the cherubic tub thumper Master Larry Mullen.
Rather, it was the gregarious and twinkly-eyed bass playing Adam Clayton. The young Irish band had by accident or design acquired a God bothering reputation. Adam’s more hedonistic inclinations had earned him more of a rock and roll bad boy name for himself. He was told to behave or else. Little did he or they know that he would go on to date glamorous and exotic women such as the feisty nutter Naomi Campbell, and become the musical rock upon which U2 is founded.
That night the band played Electric Co, I Will Follow and those other simplistic chiming stompers which made their name.
In addition to The Edges distinctive guitar playing and Bono’s mullet extraordinaire of course.
In 2009 U2 have made No Line On The Horizon, their first studio album in 5 years, and enlisted the production help of the distinguished men – Eno, Lanois and Lillywhite – who helped elevate them to superstar status.
It returns to the basic premise of those chiming stompers, with additional technological twists, happily forsaking banks of TV screens and giant lemons, if not the wearing of leather trousers.
There are some good whoah –oh – oh –ooooh moments, and some frankly embarrassing lack of lyrical profundity.
Jim Kerr must look on wondering how Simple Minds came to downscale so spectacularly.

And The Winner Is....Dieing To Be Famous

So Mickey Rourke won best actor at the Golden Globes, The Independent Spirit Awards and the BAFTA’s for his astonishing performance in The Wrestler. Does it matter that Sean Penn pinned him for the big one by picking up the Oscar for his portrayal of Harvey in Milk?
Not really. Just like the real WWE, the awards ceremonies are intricately calculated marketing carve ups, and while Rourke was deservedly the hip crowd’s champion, the Hollywood establishment has never truly forgiven him. Not for the wayward excess blighting his work since Angel Heart, nor the crappy movies he made to pay the rent as a consequence.
Yet what is more Hollywood than his story, snatching a victory from the jaws of defeat against all the odds? Darren Aronofsky’s film put Mickey in the middle of the ring, and he took the audience on a painfully inspired ride.
It was brutally honest in the depiction of the U.S. small town wrestling circuit, populated by the has-beens and wannabes who dream of making it to the pay per view Vince McMahon run circus. Or by some small miracle returning to it.
This so-called “live sports entertainment,” commands big arena audiences paying substantial ticket prices. Stunt men performing impressive athletic feats, punctuated by story lines that would make a hack soap opera writer wince and performances more wooden than a forest. The Wrestler was art imitating this life parody, with WWE superstars like The Undertaker (aka Mark William Calaway) well on the wrong side of 40-years-old.
Back in the suburbs, to keep the costs of the production down Aronofsky enlisted a number of players on the scene as extras. Just days ago, Scott Siegel who played the part of a drug dealer in the film was charged with real thing, having been arrested for allegedly possessing substantial quantities of steroids.
But at the fatally damaged heart of The Wrestler is a far more damning indictment of our celebrity culture, where 15 minutes of fame are eked out into an entire lifetime.
Those who have tasted a life less ordinary, normality becomes an alien concept.
Just as Rourke’s character Randy The Ram finds going civilian working behind the counter of a deli counter impossible to maintain, so do many of our reality television stars struggle to recover from being famous for being famous. With no discernable talent to sustain them beyond this fleeting public recognition.
Yet we continue to poke them through the bars of this 21st century Bedlam, savouring the tastier moments of their fall from grace.
I remember talking to the musician Bobby Gillespie in an Islington café at the time Primal Scream released the XTRMNTR album in the late 1990’s. He speculated that the logical extension of the then comparatively new reality phenomenon would be live executions on television, like a futuristic nightmare imagined by JG Ballard.
Now that is perilously close to coming true.
Jade Goody is the ultimate reality television personality. By finishing no higher than 4th in the third series of Big Brother, the Essex girl who thought Rio De Janeiro was a person and East Angular somewhere abroad, built an improbable career.
Her ignorance was bliss for many, the British public loved a “celebrity” they could patronise in every sense of the word.
She launched an autobiography and a fragrance. She had two children by another serial reality television personality, Jeff Brazier, a relationship which did not last.
The reality career has more staying power, with a succession of shows featuring the word “Celebrity” in the title and even a keep fit DVD.
Returning to the scene of her celebrity crime just over 2 years ago was a disaster on all levels. She took her mother Jackiey and toy-boy-friend Jack Tweed with her, neither having her peculiar charm, and displaying an altogether less palatable ignorance.
Jade became embroiled in a racist bullying row with Bollywood actress Shilpa Shelty, and had neither the wit nor diplomacy to fire fight the career implosion that followed.
Out of the house where she made her name 5 short years before, Goody faced a completely different set of circumstances.
Villified for the ugly public television performance some thought revealed her true colours, she embarked on a PR firefight.
Unfortunately Tweed’s immaturity led to altercations others may have had the experience to walk away from, but he just landed in jail for assaulting a teenager with a golf club.
And no, you could not write this shit.
Certainly not the cruellest plot twist of all which took Goody to the Indian version of Big Brother where she discovered her cervical cancer. The timing was deadly as the voracious nature of the disease.
Years became months became weeks. She swore to spend her last days earning as much cash as possible for her two boys future security. Laudable and sadly laughable in equal measure. Your mother then gets married for television, and to all intents and purposes intends to die on television. The chances of you having a trauma free childhood are virtually nil. Your dad and boy step-father are to be locked in a battle for custody with your maternal granny and great grandparents.
Your mother also wants you to be baptised. She believes God will make it easier to stay in touch once she is beyond the grave. May He help all of you.

Radio Radio

Born To Be Wide is a monthly happening, a club that is not a club, an informal gathering of the ill informed and inquisitive in and about Scotland's musical and artistic goings on.
Orignally devised by strangely European music journalist Olaf Furniss and rugby enthusiast/record company talent scout Brodie Smithers, it has taken place in The Venue, The Street, and now The Voodoo Rooms in Edinburgh.
The pair have been aided and abetted by video director and facial hair pioneer Martin Smith, but currently Olaf is flying the flag solo.
Last night he staged the latest in the new BTBW development, industry panels preceding the mild hedonism and card swapping the inevitably follows.
Walking into the upstairs former ballroom at the old Cafe Royal, where Princess Margaret was alleged to have favoured for her under the radar trysts back in the day, was extraordinary.
Under the broad banner of how to get your music played on the radio, the fearless Furniss had put together an on stage line-up of wireless movers and shakers.
The venerable Vic Galloway, BBC Radio Scotland's walking talking outlet for all things nouveau who also does his Radio 1 in Scotland thing. Duncan Campbell, programme controller of Forth 1 and 2 in Edinburgh, John Paul McGroarty of Leith FM, and Tallah Brash of Fresh Air.
Vic, who must only buy jackets with multiple pockets to accommodate all the CD's and pen drives that get thrust in his face when attending such events, clearly represented the best chance of exposure to a wide audience.
John Paul could not contain his passion for both his station and the music it plays. "There is not a band in Leith that I have not seen or heard," he said, and you would not doubt him.
The station's connection to the Leith Festival provides a platform to showcase this relationship with local musicians.
Aussie born Duncan Campbell is a big fish - programme director at GCap Media no less - who moved to Bauer Media as their regional programme head honcho across Scotland. But his nominal responsiblity is the relatively small pool that is Radio Forth.
Since arriving in May last year, he has been responsible for removing the one programming area which offered a slight glimmer of hope to the audience gathered here tonight.
Rather than Bauer's Scottish stations running their own dedicated programming from early evening to 6am, all now take one syndicated show originating from Glasgow.
A move incidentally which also wipes out a day part where new broadcasting talent has traditionally cut its teeth.
Duncan plays the straightest of corporate bats, telling it like it is. Unless you are on a major label, forget about a playlisting at Radio Forth. If this news comes as a crushing blow to all the independent music makers in the room, they mask it with stunned indifference.
Duncan tells them Katy Perry is the sort of artist the station likes, and will playlist her singles until the cows come home. And probably even after singles stop being physically released.
Their extensive research tells them it is the right thing to do. Not listening to the song or anything silly then deciding if it will make the station sound better.
Research conducted while standing on a street corner and asking folk what they think of absurdly tight rotation of a limited number of songs might reveal even more interesting statistics. They don't like it. They switch off. Has RAJAR not given a glimpse of that?
American and Australian commercial models swear by playing the most popular hits more than once every couple of hours. UK audiences have never been comfortable with that.
The irony is that the venue for the seminar is the self same place where Radio Forth RFM (as it was absurdly called) staged some of the best radio musical moments in the history of commercial radio here or anywhere else.
Listeners could obtain free tickets to see the likes of Tori Amos, Evan Dando, Boo Hewerdine or Hue & Cry play the Cafe Royal's 150 capacity room in the early 1990's. Then listen to the event captured on the station's Live On Tour series.
The goodwill generated by such a promotion far exceeded any holiday or cash giveaways.
Maybe I am biased having been the station's music controller at the time, but the playlisting policy reflected a similar sense of adventure.
Revered radio guru Richard Park remarked that he was amazed Forth got such good audience figures playing such edgy diverse songs.
But that was then, and this is very much the corporate now. Leith FM is an imperfect diamond in that dustbin of networked uniformity, and has a much closer connection with its modest audience as a result.
It is what real radio is all about. It has the personality which has been drained from what were formerly known as Scotland's local stations.
As a footnote, Olaf Furniss used to be a regular listener to the indie music show I presented on Radio Forth in the Eighties. What he is doing now suggests the programme was doing something right.
Keep touching that dial.