Goodbye, Moyles, you fraud

A long discourse on being a lad

You can't acquire being a lad, you can't force it and you can't fake it. Neither, sadly, can you help it, nor can you turn it on and off. It isn't anything to be proud or ashamed of. It just is. Or isn't. For some strange reason, there's a lot of men who are not, and want to be.

The pretenders will be caught out. The female sports anchor confirmed she wasn't in post for her knowledge when she described a run out as a stumping. Not even a schoolboy error, as it's an error schoolboys won't make. Sooner or later even the best, most skillful wannabe will make a mistake. In the unforgiving lads' world, one mistake is enough.

I don't want to upset or insult anyone. I don't want to appear distracted, disinterested, or distant. I don't mean to be rude. It isn't anything I can do anything about. Here's an example. Breakfast networking meeting. Turns are called and everyone takes sixty seconds to describe and sell their business. Three of us are clustered around DB's iPhone watching the Pakistan v England test on SkyGo. I don't react when my name's called. Twice. I will, and I did apologise. But...I have no choice. You? Your computer repair business? You? Selling mortgages? You? Letting Agent? Or the cricket? There's no choice. In non-lad terms, would you rather be tortured then killed, or have the run of the cake shop?

At any christening, wedding, or similar Saturday afternoon function, sooner or later there'll be a guilty gathering at a telly or in the bog with one headphone radio between everyone, or now around a smartphone, catching up on the cricket or the football or the rugby or the Ryder Cup. It's like a phobia. There's no rationality involved. Like a phobia, either you have it or you don't.

There's something creepy about the don'ts who pretend. Again, no rational reason, just a vague uneasy feeling. Here's how deep it runs:

Paul Weller, The Jam, Saturday's Kids:

Saturday's kids live life with insults,

Drink lots of beer and wait for half-time results...

See? Paul isn't a lad. Half time results? Results are at full time. After ninety minutes. Half times are latest scores. I know that spoils the rhyme, but a lad wouldn't've been able to live with that.

Wait for the racing results.

Wait for the football results.

Either would be ok, and proper.

So, in his statement on leaving Radio 1 today the vastly overpaid plastic lad Chris Moyles accused everyone who didn't listen to his rubbish music in the mornings of “not getting it”. Well, Chris, well, Jeremy (Clarkson), well, chubby bloke off the sports quiz, you may be able to fool middleaged ladies and non-lads, but there's no way you are what you claim so hard to be. You creep me out. My radar tells me that at least one of the three of you (and probably Clarkson) will end up sharing a cell with Jonathan King and Gary Glitter. Nothing personal. It's just such an odd thing to aspire to, given the endless grief it can occasionally bring.