Where's Wally

The other day England were playing a footie match and I decided to go and find some students...see how many you can spot in this post


Are they here???


How about here???


Hmmmm....not in here


Nor here....





Ahhhhh....there they are!

I’ve had ‘H’ from steps in my ring

The story goes I have a friend. Helen from Newcastle. She has a friend with an unusual name. Lets call her ‘Ermintrude’ for the sake of her privacy.

I go to a party. At Helen’s house. In 1999. She introduces me to ‘Ermintrude’. We have a drink together. We chat. We never see each other again. Such is life.

Every so often I ring Helen up and chat about things. Some times I ask after her friends. I remember ‘Ermintrude’ because she has such an unusual name.

‘How is Ermintrude?’ I ask, in early 2001. ‘Fine’ she replies ‘You know "H" from Steps? She’s dating his brother.’ That’s the kind of fact you tend to remember about someone.

And there, dear reader, our first story ends.

Our second story starts with my sister studying fashion at the UWE. She graduates and instead of going into the fashion industry she decides instead to get a job making costumes for a local theatre and her busiest time turns out to be panto season.

One day near Christmas 2005 I go home to see my mum. I give my sister a lift to work and we end up chatting in the laundry room. That’s when one of the cast members comes in to the room to pick up his costume. Its Chester the Jester played by ‘H’ from Steps. So I turn to him and say

“Whatcha H! Is your brother still dating Ermintrude????

Now ‘H’ might have said “Whoa! Get away from me you psycho stalker.” But he didn’t. Instead he said something quite profound about the interconnectedness of all life on this planet:

“There is seven degrees of separation between us all”

There you go ladies and gentlemen, this has just become the only blog to quote a member of Steps as a philosophical source slash life guru.

So go along a chain of people by 7 places and you could meet anyone…like ‘H’.

Then I realised that actually ‘H’ is only 5 degrees removed from me:

ME -> Helen -> ‘Ermintrude’ -> ‘H’ From Steps’ Brother -> ‘H’ From Steps

So just imagine who could be at 6 degrees of separation. After all it’s ‘H’ from Steps we’re talking about here. He must have loads of friends. At 6 we obviously have Fay Tozer, Lisa Scott Lee and the rest of Steps as well as Pete Waterman and an awful lot of Welsh people. At 7 degrees of separation sky’s the limit! Even better than that if I start with my sister then ‘H’ is only two degrees of separation away from me.

Then it hit me, like a rocket.

5 and 2…that’s sodding 7 isn’t it?

You see I’m not 7 degrees separated from ‘H’ I’m 7 degrees separated from myself. It’s not a chain. It’s a ring with ‘H’ from Steps in it. Look:

ME -> Helen -> ‘Ermintrude’ -> ‘H’ from Steps’ Brother -> ‘H’ from Steps -> My Sister -> ME

Now I know what you’re thinking. “I can do better than that. I know popular people. I’m going to ring them up.”

FINE! If you want to slam the gauntlet down like that. OK! Go and find your friends and get them to phone their friends and then take their friends down the pub and get them to call their friends and meet them as well.

But I bet you can’t beat me. Because clearly with seven people I am the record holder.

You obviously need to make your ring as small as possible. Did you go to school with Jimmy Carr’s Brother? Does Jimmy Carr know your cousin Pete? Clearly while your ring doesn't have to have 'H' in it. You only win if you can get someone bigger.

What are you still doing sitting here?

You have phone calls to make.

Steps Chaplain Church of England

I have nothing to say

I’ve been looking back over my last few posts, and I re-read the one titled ‘What is a chaplain for’. I think I’m asking the wrong question. Maybe the question is what is a professional Christian for? Indeed what is a Christian for?

Chaplaincy has had an odd position in the University in the last decade or so. The University likes having a chaplaincy but actually most students have rejected the Christian faith outright. Is our job about reversing that? Am I here to recruit as many students as possible into Jesus’ sunbeam business? Because if it is then I have a slight problem: I don’t like going round hassling people about religion all the time.

No one likes someone who is only having a conversation with you in order to turn it round into a sales pitch.

“How about that England game? I found that having a faith in Jesus really helped me to get through it…how about you??”

Nope!

The word gospel you know means good news, but among most people I meet the gospel has become really bad news.

The fascinating thing is that your average student is quite liberal. In fact very liberal. Most students are definitely ahead of the national average when it comes to being tolerant. However when you look at student religion it often the most conservative kind. This has a knock on effect on the rest of the churches in Southampton. There are several ‘liberal’ Churches within walking distance of the University, by rights they should be full of students but when it comes to students they are empty. Whereas the conservative one down the end of the road has literally hundreds. Of course those who represent conservative religion would say this is because they haven’t compromised on the truth, which is why God has blessed them with members but is it that simple?

Ironically enough once upon a time Chaplaincy was the ‘liberal’ CU and that was what it did. But now liberals don’t want anything to do with Christianity. So pop goes Chaplaincy. But it’s not all bad news, is it?

I suppose in my more insecure moments I see myself as someone who has something to say and it’s just a shame no one is listening. Then sometimes I worry that I haven’t even got something to say!

And blogging is a bit like that!

Fundamentalism Liberals Chaplaincy Church of England

This is what TV is Like

So I went off to London to take part in a television programme. There I met Stewart Lee who is a comedian and co-wrote and directed 'Jerry Springer the Opera'

Stewart has spent most of his time since the BBC decided to screen JSTO receiving hate mail from people who love Jesus. So he decided to make a programme about whether or not it was Ok to offend Christians and he interviewed me.

We spoke about JSTO, we spoke about the Da Vinci code. We chatted about favourite comedies we both shared in common. We had a long, long natter about Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’. All while standing under some really hot lights and with two camera people, a sound man and the producer stood there listening in. Which was of course remarkably surreal.

Stewart it turns out is a lovely person, I hate to use the word ‘Christian’ of a committed atheist (lets just call him moral and leave it at that), but he was thoughtful and it seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say. It struck me that an awful lot of people have decided that he is somehow utterly sinful without ever even wanting to meet the man himself. Which having met him is obviously quite judgemental.

Its too easy to condemn.

The programme is called "Don't get me started' and is going to air on Channel 5 in August. I may be in it.

Stewart Lee Jerry Springer Chaplaincy

Everyone has had more sex than me.

During bored moments I like to download flash media, I discovered one of the catchiest tunes ever the other day "Everyone has had more sex than me" by the Australian Band TISM (This is serious Mum)

I love this song so much and the animation that goes with it, that I decided to play it out at full volume while working in the chaplaincy.

That is until someone came and told me they were trying to have a quiet catholic mass downstairs.

Whoops!

Offensive language.

Reading the comments on this blog it seems that I've sparked off a bit of a debate about the use of bad language...

Should Christians use 'naughty words' or should they just cut that sort of shit out?

Does my blog offend you???

Does it make you wonder about the beliefs of the man who wrote it???

You see Jesus himself actually said 'Do not swear' but what he was going on about was the process, by which people who are not normally truthful, can make what they say more believable, by swearing.

'Honestly I was in the same pub as David Beckham last night I swear it, on my mother's life'.

But when Jesus said 'Do not swear but let your "yes" be "yes" and your "no" be "no"' I think he was setting the standard for ethical communication: Transparency and truthfulness rather than the absence of four letter words. I have never heard Tony Blair use a four letter word. But I on the subject of WMDs I am fairly sure he lied to us and we're still picking up the pieces on that one. That is unethical.

Indeed I would go one stage further and argue that since I fail in this area as much as everyone else perhaps by making my words seem more ethical by not swearing I'm actually being more deceptive.

But I don't want to say I'm right...I want to know what you think

Don't Get Me Started

It seems I'm off to London on Thursday. I'm going to take part in a recording for a programme on Channel 5 which is going to be called "Don't get me started" it seems that this one is going to be on Jerry Springer the Opera and Religion.

The only details I have so far is that I'm going to be interviewed by a comedian.

I've never done TV before so I'm interested to see how this one will work. I'm sure you are too...so I'll keep you posted.

401 and counting

So Boldrewood Tunnel Soc, the society I started when I was bored one day now has 401 members.

As of about a hour ago when I met Maria Hemming (hereafter forever known as member 401) and convinced her to give me her student number.

Imagine that! One chaplain’s joke in an e-mail ends up being one of the largest (if not the largest) society of the University and manages to buy Dave Gorman £207 worth of charity pints as well mind you. Not bad for an afternoon’s work!

Feels a bit like the end of an era. And now I’m going to see if I can get 40,100 books out of the library.

Not everything has gone so well this year. My plan to move Warwick University to Warwick brick by bloody brick, just fell on its arse. Here we are nearly 8 months later and it’s still there in bloody Coventry. But when I sat down on the 13th December 2005 and wrote the stupidest e-mail ever, on the subject of re-opening the tunnel. When I received numerous e-mails back asking for hoodies. When I received over 40 text messages demanding a society be set up, I realised I had tapped into something.

Mr Blair might think of Universities as little economic power houses. The engines of the economy. But I made it about absolute crap.

I feel proud. That in a University with a world ranking for research. A University leading the way in Oceanography. A university which invented fibre optics and has one of the best Computer Science Departments in the world. There in that University are two students, even as we speak, sitting in a bar somewhere, debating the existence of a pointless burgundy carpeted tunnel.

Truly I am the King of Bollocks.

Boldrewood Tunnel soc Dave Gorman

Shadowing

Last night I decided to experience student culture. This entailed going to the stag's head (the SU Pub) and shadowing a drinking student.

Every time he drank I drank the same.

The early part of the evening was spent drinking pints and Baileys in tandum.

This morning I woke up with three things.

1) A Hangover

2) An unfathomably large quantity of regret

3) The names and student numbers of 10 people I have no recollection meeting.

Things I have done when I’ve been bored…

Watched a lot of Weebl and Bob.

Base ball batted a penguin

Downloaded flash animation

Talked an awful lot of shite (to students)

Talked an awful lot of shite (just generally)

Started a tunnel society

and

Invented ‘Air’ Fencing

As you can see I have a lot of time on my hands. Still the woman from Liberty Bell phoned today. She wants to know if I’m free next week. I’m not sure what this is all about. But I’m certain its not a date…

I’ll keep you posted.