25 Things About Me

Friends on Facebook will have already seen this but what the heck it took me a while to rack my brains so I thought I would get maximum mileage out of it.

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to "notes" under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right-hand corner of the page), then click Publish.)

1. Sometimes I claim to be Cockney as I was born in the old Charing Cross Hospital. If the wind was in the right direction you might just have been able to hear the sound of Bow bells.

2. I have sworn never to wear blazers with brass buttons. Have me committed if I do as it will be a sure sign I have gone middle aged, middle England.

3. Mary and I were married in *the* St Paul's cathedral. Mary would have preferred low-key registry and send friends a postcard from honeymoon. However courtesy of Dad's MBE we had the option of the chapel in the crypt. It cost me an antique hand cut solitaire. Worth every penny.

4. I never suffer navel fluff. My navel is almost completely flat due to minor post partum surgical intervention when it everted.

5. My uncle was a one-armed paperhanger and a most unsuitable, picaresque role model for an impressionable young man. Excellent :-)

6. I can juggle and ride a unicycle badly and certainly not at the same time. I have even juggled flaming torches and only slightly singed my fingers.

7. At school I guess I was a bit of a swot. What the Americans might call a straight A student. I pretty much used to be top of the class every year in every subject except when Nigel or Daphne were there when we split the honours. After three grade A's at A level it all kind of went downhill and I scraped a third at Oxford.

8. My signature dishes are peppers with capers and creme brulee.

9. I have had hair variously half way down my back, permed, blonde highlights, and short gelled spiky. I was all set for the purple dyed phase when the need for professional appearance at work got in the way.

10. I used to run the school archaeological society and arranged some serious speakers to present. Looking back they were all very gracious to have done so in exchange for a free school dinner.

11. I cannot abide the Middle Lane Owners Club. Those plonkers who refuse to pull back into lane one when the overtaking manoeuvre is complete.

12. I have never "bunked off" school. It would never have occurred to me to do such a thing. Just call me "Mr Goody Two Shoes".

13. I consider myself omnivorous but I am not a great fan of raw celery, okra (aka ladies fingers), tripe or seafood with suckers.

14. I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.

15. I weighed 9 1/4 stone at 23; now I weigh 11st. People say I don't need to lose weight I beg to differ.

16. I have dreadful teeth. I must have had over 100 fillings in my teens. Now I have 13 crowns including several gold posts and two titanium implants.

17. When I fill out forms that ask my religion I put Jedi. Me and 390,000 other Brits can't be wrong.

18. About the only thing I really learned at college was that I learn by specific examples but understand and remember by general principles. Apart from that I have nothing but contempt for Oxford as a seat of learning.

19. I hate waste. I get great satisfaction from meals that use an assortment of leftovers in the fridge. I have cavalier attitude toward 'use by' dates.

20. I can't work with background music. I find myself sucked into the music and can no longer concentrate on the task in hand. Conversely I happily work with Radio 4 talking to me all day, be productive and remember and recount what I heard. Who says boys cannot multi-task.

21. I really dislike it when people eat with their mouth open. It must have been drummed into me as a child "it's rude to eat with your mouth open".

22. I once made a New Year's Resolution to drink more French White wine. I kept that one up.

23. One Christmas I decorated the underground with Tinsel. Commuting on the northern line one December I decided people were looking too glum. So for several weeks I would fill the pockets of my pinstripe suit with tinsel and decorate the straphangers over several carriages each morning.

24. www.mmenterprises.co.uk has one of the oldest Marc Bolan pages on the Internet - since 27 November 1996 in fact. That is postively pre-historic in world wide web terms.

25. I don't do memes. Well to be specific if tagged I do the meme but do not pass it on. So this one ends here.