SATC for Men

So here I am in the north of Thailand. The ancient city of Chiang Mai. Did you know it’s got a moat? Well it has. Anyway I’m kinda over the culture stuff so I booked myself a VIP ticket for some Muay Thai. Chiang Mai isn’t a huge place but there’s at least two ‘stadiums’ both of which seem to have fight nights every night bar Sunday.

I got a motorbike taxi to the Thaphae Stadium, basically a car park with some kiosks built around the edges flogging beer and Pad Thai to thirsty and hungry fight-goers. 

I’m fascinated at my lack of fear when it comes to transport in SE Asia. No way would I get on the back of a Honda 125 without (or even with) a helmet back in London, but from Goa to Seminyak, from Kuala Lumpur to Vientiane I’ve hopped on with nary a thought to what could possibly go wrong. I know that deaths from bike accidents in this part of the world are possibly higher than anywhere else in the world, but yet it’s so quick and easy to get around, not to mention cheap that I do it whenever possible. Maybe it’s cos they’re mainly Buddhist countries and I figure if I go out here, I’m coming back as a supermodel next time!

Anyway back to the fight. This is the second time I’ve been to a Muay Thai fight night, the first was in Phuket a couple of years ago, so I am hardly an expert on it all. I’m sure that if you saw it in Bangkok at Lumpini Stadium it’d be very different, but here it appears to be ‘Tourist’ Thai boxing. The majority of the spectators were Western, the Thais there were working or coaching it seemed.

Don’t get me wrong, I sure as hell wouldn’t like a kick off any of these fuckers except perhaps one of the two kids who looked less than 10 years old in the first bout of the night. I reckon I could take either of them, especially the one that started crying the minute his oppo touched him thus ending the battle. I could definitely beat him. 

I love the ceremony of it all, the way the fighters perform the pre-match ritual known as Ram Muay, the dances they do, the way they kiss each corner of the ring, all of that, but in my experience those rituals take longer than the majority of the matches. The devil in me watches thinking ‘if I was fighting, I’d wait till the other fella was on his knees kissing the canvas and kick his ass’. Not very spiritual of me I know.

They had a novelty bout where four fighters were put in the ring and blindfolded - a bit like the ‘Feel the Sportsman’ round on They Think It’s all Over. One of them was a chunky lad and it was very funny watching the ref trip him up so that he’d bring the other three down with him like skittles.

The bill for tonight promised two women Thai boxers but they didn’t show up, although in their place were two guys who fought like a couple of daft lasses. When it said “Lady Boxer” on the flyer these two took it literally.

Both times I’ve been there’s been a random Westerner fighting. On Phuket it was an English guy who’d barely got his robe off before they were lifting him out of the ring, but tonight it was an American who fought valiantly for five whole rounds, and while he had size and strength over his Thai opponent, we knew he wasn’t gonna win. He had no elegance. (Look at me, the instant expert!) Sure enough he lost on points. 

The whole night was fantastic fun, nobody fell out of the ring into my popcorn like they did on the other side of the ring. The whole thing reminded me of when I was a kid and my grandma used to take me to the Public Hall in Preston to see the likes of Mick McManus  wrestling. Everybody knew the moves were choreographed but my gran used to get caught up in the excitement and yell and curse like a docker. The mostly male crowd here were doing the same, especially as the night and the beer wore on. 

The few women who were watching -myself included - were less engaged, and I wondered why that was. Watching the fellas get so emotional I worked it out. I used to get like that when I watched Sex and The City (God rest it’s soul). That’s it, that’s why macho men love this kind of sport, cos they aren’t allowed to get emotional when Samantha gets cancer!

Ryan Fucking Gosling!!!!

EDIT: My research shows that this photo wasn't taken this morning at the market but taken a week ago somewhere here in Bangkok. It was originally posted on the site sundaymorningsareamazing.blogspot.com 

***********
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE ETC! This photo was allegedly taken at the market this morning - Not by me I hasten to add. He's changed his vest in it!


*******************************************************************************************************************************

So then, it’s my first full day in Bangkok and just like I do whenever I am here on a weekend I went to Chatuchak Market. It’s an immense market - the size of Hull - that I’ve blogged about many, many times so I’m not gonna go into major detail here about how brilliant it is. Safe to say, if you ever find yourself in this brilliant city on a weekend you owe it to yourself to visit.

Anyway, last week when the Golden Globes was on, I saw a clip where George Clooney said that Ryan Gosling couldn’t be at the awards because he was in Thailand ‘earning extra cash’ - the inference being he was working as a ladyboy in a Patpong bar here in town.

I read the comment and thought ‘how mad that my latest crush is in the country I’m heading too.’ I followed that thought with ‘it’s an enormous country, with millions of people and the chances of me seeing him are a gazillion to one’.

Nevertheless I joked on Twitter just before my plane took off ‘on my way to Bangkok to see Ryan Gosling. Hang on baby, I’m a coming’. I even had a little daydream about bumping into him and him realising he couldn't live without me and us buggering off to Phi Phi Island for mad rumpy pumpy.

So that’s the backstory. Here’s what happened at 11am this morning…

I was wandering in the covered bit of the market that sells all the old Levis 501’s, vintage t-shirts etc when I spot a blonde woman with a very professional looking camera filming in one of the stalls. Being a nosy old hag I look in and see this tall, blond-ish guy in nerd glasses looking at the t-shirts. He had a bunch of them in his hand. 

My camera was in my hand because I was taking photos of the market for a little Sabotage Times piece, and this Thai woman said ‘no photos’. I started to explain and then I spotted that tattoo on the man’s upper arm (he was wearing a beige-y coloured vest). All of time slowed down. As I stared at the tattoo, he turned around to face me (and the camera), it was him! It was Ryan Fucking Gosling!!!!!!!

I spoke to the Thai girl who said he was here ‘doing a big production’  whatever that means, then the woman with the camera turned it off and stepped to one side. Now was my chance. 

I walked up and without drawing breath said ‘Hi Ryan, I’m JoJo Smith, a comedian from London and I’d really love to get my photo taken with you’.

He smiled and said ‘Naw, I’m not doing pictures cos I’m on vacation’. Thinking about how nobody who’s listened to me blether on about him for the last 3 months would believe me without a photo, I gave it one last shot saying ‘it would really mean a lot to me’. But he didn’t weaken, saying ‘if I do one, then I’ll have to do more’. I said ‘fair enough’ and he said ‘thanks for understanding JoJo, good luck’ and stroked my right arm!

The weird thing was, apart from his ‘people’, me and a couple of stall holders nobody else had spotted him, so the photo wouldn’t have really been a big deal but I guess he gets it all the time. Whenever anyone asks me for a photo I always say yes, cos why the hell not really. Now of course part of me wishes I’d just snapped one before anyone realised what I was doing, but I wanted to be in the picture with him, so there ya go. 

I’m here till Monday morning...in case you’re reading this and wanna make it up to me Ryan. 

A Crying Shame...

So then in the midst of packing and sorting out my life both home and away I took a couple of hours out today to go and see the new Steve McQueen (not that one, the artist bloke who makes films now) movie “Shame”.

It stars Carey Mulligan who got to snog Ryan Gosling in Drive so I’m already jealous of her, and Michael Fassbender who to my knowledge hasn’t be that close to Mr Gosling so he’s ok.

There was a really mixed bunch in the cinema (Odeon Camden). A few young couples, one or two older women making use of Pensioner’s Monday discounts, a couple of random guys and me. I’d read up on the movie and was surprised at the couples, it’s not what I’d consider a ‘date’ movie! The single men didn’t surprise me at all, I guess they were expecting a shagfest - boy were they gonna be let down.

I was a bit apprehensive about going alone to see it cos I’d heard there were a few full frontal shots of Mr Fassbender nekkid and I didn’t wanna look like an ‘old spinster wankmonkey’ as I put it on Twitter. 

Sadly an early menopause put paid to my wanking days and indeed my sex drive completely and this was driven home to me today when practically the opening shot is him wandering about with his todger flapping about. 

He’s an attractive man, he has an ‘attractive’ knob - inasmuch as any knob can be attractive and even flaccid it’s a decent size - but all I could think was ‘nice apartment’.

I did have a good look at it though, and even if I wasn’t a dried up old wretch, his bush would’ve put me off. He had so much hair around his cock it looked like Angela Davis. If you gave him a blow job you’d be coughing up hairballs like a cat for weeks!

In case you weren’t aware, he’s meant to be this soulless sex addict, but from what I could see, he didn’t seem a whole lot different to most of the guys I’ve known in my time! It was a really bleak, depressing movie - beautifully shot mind you, you can tell the director is an artist - but not one to see if you’re already on a downer.

By the way, any men reading this, if you see it and don’t think he has too much pubic hair, then your bush needs trimming too!

The Biggest Tits of All...

So for the last week or so I've kept my trap shut as assorted "reactionaries" have kicked off in the media and on the social networks about PIP breast implants. The gist of their arguments seems to be that if women are vain enough to get implants then they should not expect to have them removed on the NHS. Today I could bite my tongue no longer, as the latest fuckwit blethered on about women wanting big tits to get a man or a career and therefore it's their own fault if the implants explode and kill them.

Several of these people have been saying that if women had better self esteem they wouldn't feel the need to have ginormous tits and that we should all be happy with the way we were born. What I find both fascinating and repulsive is that most of the people making these comments are women.

Women who regularly bleach their hair, wear make-up (often way more than necessary), women - one of whom I know for a fact had a pretty extreme eating disorder in her youth - who spend a fortune on clothes, handbags, shoes etc etc to look the best they can. And yet they have the audacity to tell me that I was a vain, stupid bimbo because I had breast implants? Fuck right off Missus!

I didn't have them to get onto Page 3 or Stringfellow's pole, I had them because when I lost weight I lost all of my tits, so I had the smallest implants known to man inserted and paid a fortune for them. Luckily for me they are not the ones that are making headlines, but they just as easily could be and I too would be at the mercy of these sanctimonious bitches who claim sisterhood but hate all women.

When I was 14 I discovered a lump in my right breast. I was scared and terrified of having cancer so I stupidly said nothing to anyone for close to a year. My silly schoolgirl thinking was that I would rather be dead than walk around with one breast. In those days if you had a mastectomy there was no reconstructive surgery. Eventually I told my mum and the next morning we were at the Doctors and within minutes I was told it was a lymph node. Luckily for me it went away of its own accord so I had no surgery. My GP at the time said something that turned out to be really prophetic, he said 'you're one of those girls who will always have lumpy breasts'.

When I was 17 and living in London I got another lump, this time in the left breast. It was right behind the nipple and the size of a pea, again I was stupid and kept it quiet for longer than I should've done for the fear of it being cancer. My other thought was it that was just another lymph node and therefore no need to be making a big old fuss. I eventually saw a doctor who referred me to a breast specialist. This one wasn't a lymph node, and so the tests began. I must have the luck of the Irish cause it was a benign cyst and it was removed immediately. I was in hospital only a few hours and that was that for me. On that ward were several women who weren't so lucky, and the fear of breast cancer grew in me.

Around 10 years ago another lump came in my left breast, this one was different to all of the others, it was sore, it was deep inside the breast and it was making the whole breast hot and red. It seemed to flare up overnight almost, so there was no hanging about this time. I took a cab to St Mary's hospital and went straight to A&E. It turned out to be an abscess that was on the verge of rupturing.

Luckily for me I'd caught it in time to avoid any major repercussions. I was kept in hospital and the abscess was monitored and eventually drained of the most disgusting looking pus I've ever seen. I'd been given a huge shot of yummy morphine and I remember lying on the bed watching the doctor drain this thing using ultrasound. On the monitor I could see the abscess and looking down at my boob I could see the green yucky poison coming out.

Because I was off my tits (almost literally) I felt no pain and was just fascinated by the whole thing. For several weeks and months afterwards I was kept under observation by the breast specialist at St Mary's to make sure that it wasn't cancerous and that it didn't return. I can still remember how scared I felt as I went in to be told whether it was cancerous or not. At the back of my mind though was the thought that even if I had to have a mastectomy, I could have the breast rebuilt and this was a great comfort to me.

Everytime I went to that clinic I sat there with women who had all kinds of breast problems, but it was easy to spot the ones who had the biggest problem. They were the women sitting there with headscarves on, they were the ones who seemed to be on first name terms with the nurses, they were the ones who had this 'look' in their eyes, a look I couldn't begin to explain. Brave, amazing women.

To hear these self-righteous bitches on Twitter and Facebook, as well as in the media, banging on about vain women getting implants when there are women out there with implants for a multitude of reasons makes me so angry! So five years ago I had my implants done. My surgeon - Mr Jan Stanek - was made fully aware of my history of 'lumpy tits' and he assured me it was fine to put these implants in. My GP also said there was no problem with having this work done. Touch wood, there never has been a problem with them - so far.

But that left breast, the one where the abscess was? Well that has been a problem. The abscess has returned twice and now, because I paid privately to have my boobs done, I am no longer eligible to have any treatment whatsoever on the NHS. As regards to the "taxpayer" footing the bill for our "vanity", well here's my take on that... The first time I got a lump - post boob job - I went to the breast clinic, the same one that had treated me 10 years ago, and they refused to even look at it because I'd had work done. They had the notes there, they knew this was something that was pre-boob job, but they still sent me away.

I ended up having to pay £2000 to get it removed privately. Mr Stanek did the surgery for free but the anaesthetist and the hospital wanted paying! The second time was while I was travelling last year and again I had to turn to the private sector. So anyone who says that women who get implants are vain, stupid, a drain on the nation's purse etc, think first you have no idea who you are judging.

The whole point of these PIP implants is that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (http://www.mhra.gov.uk/) passed them as fit for purpose in the UK. So here's a thought, how about all the women who were mis-sold these impure implants pay to get them removed themselves then sue the government to fuck for not doing their job in the first place.

Would that make you feel better? Or should these"bimbos" just leave them in their bodies and wait for them to explode? Shame on every single woman who has taken the stance that those with implants are 'getting what they deserve'.

Shamelessly Begging....

All of my readers to vote for me on the following website so that I can win a trip to Tibet! http://www.chinaodysseytours.com/community/currentevents/memory/My-Grown-Up-Gap-Year.html

As usual I'm rubbish at making the link thing work so you might have to cut and paste the above to get to the website. Voting opens on 1 February.

2011 What A Year!!!!!!!!

So then I’m fully aware that I have a ton of posts to add to my blog, and I will get around to it. I’ll be honest there’s a couple that I’m waiting for the dust to settle before I post all about my experiences with incompetent promoters, and the rest, well I’ve just been too damn busy doing Xmas shows! Thinking back to this time last year, I wouldn’t have thought I’d have written that last sentence. I was facing what I genuinely believed was my last ever gig - NYE 2010 - and looking forward to finding (or losing) myself in India. I was excited and fearful at the same time. Mentally I wasn’t in a great place at all, the deaths of my Dad and Jason Wood in February 2010 were still making it difficult for me to find joy in anything, and what I really wanted was to join them. So the trip to India was really about finding a reason to carry on. Of course I do depression in style, so I arrived in a sweltering Mumbai mid-January and proceeded to the Taj Palace hotel for a couple of nights before heading down to Goa. One of the best surprises was bumping into Camilla who 20 years earlier had sold me assorted bags, beads and god knows what else. She recognised me after all this time and I her. We both had tears in our eyes as we caught up on what’d been going on in the previous two decades.

From Goa it was onto Delhi for a fabulous trip spent with Rames, my driver and guide as I explored the delights of Delhi, Jaipur and Agra. I was speechless at the beauty of the Taj Mahal. I remember the last time I was in India saying that I would come back one day and see this place, now here I was achieving that. It was a really emotional moment.

Rames was concerned that I was heading off to the Osho Commune in Pune. Needless to say Osho doesn’t have a great reputation in his own country, even 20 years after his death. I wasn’t sure what to expect at all, every Indian person I mentioned it to referred to the old reputation he had as the ‘Sex Guru’ and seemed to think it was still a shagfest. If they were right, it was gonna be a dull old three months for me! I won’t go into all of the details of my time there (I’m sure if you scroll back it’s all here somewhere) but things did change, not least of all I turned 50 in March! Not in the way I wanted or even expected them to of course - life doesn’t work like that. Suffice to say that after 10 weeks in there I was reminded that I love doing comedy, and that I’m nowhere near as fucked up as I thought I was! Once that realisation had dawned I fired off a few emails to my favourite promoters and booked up a summer of gigs. My first one back was MC’ing Up The Creek - a perfect place to re-start. As I waited to walk up onto the stage, it suddenly hit me that it’d been more than five months since I’d done this and I got a frisson of nerves I’d not had for years. Within 30 seconds of being onstage it was like I’d never been away and I loved it! Sadly offstage I was dealt a pretty massive blow health-wise. It turned out that my aching and swollen joints are slowly succumbing to both osteo and rheumatoid arthritis. I cannot begin to tell you how much this has devastated me. Five years ago when I had the gastric bypass and lost half my body weight, the main incentive was so that I wouldn’t have too many health problems in my old age. Likewise I gave up smoking for the same reasons. Now here I am at 50 with Lupus and rotting bones and it really stinks. I’m on medication that is making me gain weight and most days my knees are too sore to do much to stem that. In what was an otherwise pretty crap summer for me there was one huge highlight. I was incredibly lucky enough to be able to go to Wembley and see Take That - all five of them for the first time since the 90's! It was a terrific experience.

Take That aside, it’s no wonder that I quickly booked a ticket to bugger off again in October. I decided to fund part of this trip by booking myself in for some gigs in Singapore and Indonesia during November and my return was planned for next summer. After a few weeks of doing gigs I was made an offer that was too good to refuse which resulted in me changing my flight to allow a six week trip back to the UK in December. It was 18 months since I was last in Bangkok and I’d really missed the place. I love the energy, the dirt and the gloss and the craziness. The first thing I did when I landed was head down to my favourite travel guy on the Khao San Road and book a return trip to the Tiger Temple. My goodness! If it was magical the first time round it was moreso this time! I handed over the extra cash and got to play with fully grown tigers in their swimming area, followed by giving one of them a shower and some dinner. Yep I hand fed a grown-ass tiger and felt no fear. How freaky is that?

From there I flew to Ho Chi Minh City and began my love affair with Vietnam and their delicious Pho Bo. I hadn’t planned it, but what with the floods in Thailand and the fact that it’s such a brilliant place I spent almost a month there. I did have a little side trip to Cambodia, a place I definitely want to see more of in the not too distant future. Angkor Wat was mindblowing!

Singapore was pretty much as I expected it to be, clean and shiny and the gigs were great fun, as was spending time with my pal Johnny Candon. Bali was a delight, so much so that I ended up spending longer there than I’d originally planned. It was also the place where different parts of my world came together - I was so lucky to be able to meet up with Aussie Tridzia whom I’d met in Kuala Lumpur the year before and also with my best pal from the ashram Danielle. It really meant a lot to see both of these amazing women and it brought home to me just how small this planet is.

On what would’ve been my Dad’s 85th birthday I flew back to the UK and hit the ground running as far as gigs were concerned spending most of December at Birmingham Highlight in the company of the fabulous Jackie Frost and a roster of some of my favourite comedy chums - and I got paid for all that fun. Christmas was what it was, I spent it in Hamburg in a very nice hotel that had a spa that was open on Christmas Day which meant I could experience my very first hot stone massage - it felt good but nowhere near as amazing as the Wat Pho massages I had in Bangkok - that’s a proper Thai massage! Now here I am on the day before New Year’s Eve and unlike this time last year, there’s no big life or death decisions to be made. What I have learned this year more than anything is that life isn’t Black or White, or Right or Wrong. Sometimes life just is and 2012 is gonna be full of all kinds of things I have no control over or even stuff I’ve not yet thought about, and that’s what keeps me going. Happy New Year!

My Christmas Present To You All....

Don't worry all the sordid details of my experiences in Singapore, Bali and Jakarta will be posted before long, but in the season of goodwill to all men I give you this... http://fuckyeahryangosling.tumblr.com Enjoy xx