Right, Said Fred

by Andrew Flintoff

  People were always going to be upset about the dickheads not obeying isolation and social-distancing guidelines, but the real miracle was that tens of millions of people obeyed the rules for so long. I didn’t drive for weeks and when I did take the car out for the first time, I really had to fight the temptation to cut loose, because I was champing at the bit and the roads were almost empty. There were more pushbikes on the roads than cars, and the only people on the pavements were joggers. People were pedalling up hills and pounding the streets who had never cycled or run anywhere in their lives, all because they’d been told they couldn’t do other stuff. It was all very weird, but as long as they didn’t get too close to me while they were huffing and puffing and spraying sweat everywhere, that was fine with me. It will be interesting to see if social distancing becomes a permanent fixture. Part of me hopes so, because I’m not big on people getting too close. When you’re on the telly, people often forget to respect your personal space. And in celebrity circles, you’re constantly being hugged by strangers. I’ll turn up somewhere and people I kind of know but not really will start chatting away to me like we’re best mates. Maybe we’ll all become like the Japanese and start bowing instead of shaking hands. That would suit me down to the ground.

  Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, no, I didn’t take up any hobbies during lockdown. Why would I? Just because I was suddenly in isolation that didn’t mean there were suddenly loads of things I realised I wanted to do. Elsewhere, people were claiming they were learning to crochet, play a musical instrument or learn a new language. I’m 42. If I’d wanted to learn an instrument, I would have done it by now. And language-wise, English is serving me just fine. When I was playing cricket, a sports psychologist kept saying, ‘Test yourself, do something outside your comfort zone. Maybe learn the piano?’ I never took his advice. I know I could learn the piano, but I’m quite happy to sit there for hours doing nothing. Honestly, it’s great, just switching off completely, like someone has taken the batteries out. I’ll suddenly snap out of it, look at the clock and think, ‘Wow, where did the day go? It’s five o’clock already.’

  Jigsaw puzzles seemed to be quite popular during lockdown. There were grown adults boasting about completing 500-piece puzzles on social media, as if they’d actually achieved something. I was thinking, ‘Of course you’ve completed it, you’re a grown adult. It’s not hard. You just have to be patient and find the pieces. It’s not black magic. You start with the corners, then do the edges, then start filling the middle in.’ And if they weren’t doing puzzles, they were out jogging. The streets were filled with joggers, people who hadn’t moved faster than a walk for years. Panting, spreading germs far and wide. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

  The one thing I did think about doing was writing some fiction. But I don’t really like writing, which is a problem. I’m good with ideas, it’s the putting it down on paper that’s the issue. I can’t type, so I’m a pen-and-paper man. Even if I have to write a longish email, I’ll write it out with pen and paper, take a picture of it and send it as an attachment. People might think that’s eccentric, but it makes perfect sense. Because I’m terrible at typing, it takes me so long to get words down that I lose my train of thought. But if I write with pen and paper, I can get my thoughts down quickly without forgetting anything.

  The best part is the reaction you get from people, they’re quite appreciative when they see a hand-written letter, even if it is on their computer screen. Who writes letters nowadays? But I don’t think I’ll be writing a novel anytime soon. As some wag said right at the start of lockdown, ‘A lot of people are about to find out that the reason they haven’t written a novel isn’t because they haven’t had time, it’s because they don’t have any talent.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  GUILT Y PLEASURES

  Like most people, I watched an awful lot of nonsense during lockdown. What else was there to do? Of course, I watched Tiger King on Netflix. Poor old Joe Exotic, he finally got what he wanted and achieved global fame and he’s in prison for 20-odd years. He probably couldn’t even watch it. There’s a lesson in there somewhere, although Donald Trump will probably pardon him.

  I actually thought Joe was all right, until it transpired that he drugged his lions and tigers and killed a load of them. Oh, and it didn’t look great when one of his staff had their arm bitten off and all he was bothered about was losing a few quid (the maddest part about that episode was the fact that she didn’t seem at all bothered). At the end of it, I came to the conclusion that Joe didn’t even like big cats that much. As for his arch-nemesis Carole Baskin, she got away with something. I’m not sure what it was, but she’s definitely a wrong ’un. But you know the really strange part about Tiger King? I thought it was going to be even more bonkers than it was, which may or may not be a reflection of where my head was at during the whole coronavirus madness.

  One lockdown phenomenon that I didn’t watch was the Michael Jordan documentary The Last Dance, because while Michael Jordan is obviously a legend, basketball is rubbish. I saw a game once in New York and left at half-time, despite having courtside tickets. You know what really annoyed me about it? The sound of the ball bouncing. I have an irrational hatred of balls bouncing. That might sound a bit weird coming from a former cricketer, but the ball doesn’t really bounce in cricket. Well, it does, but you can’t hear it. But if someone is bouncing a ball, whether it’s the kids in the garden or a bunch of NBA players at Madison Square Garden, I can’t handle it. It’s up there with doors banging. Big things, fine. Small things can really set me off. I’ll be sitting there thinking to myself, ‘You really should let this go.’ A few seconds later, I’ll lose it.

  Anyway, at this basketball game, it wasn’t just the sound of the ball bouncing that was annoying, it was also the sound of trainers squeaking. And I couldn’t understand why they didn’t just put the ball in the hoop, without all the showing off. For all those reasons, the thought of watching a documentary about basketball filled me with dread. It didn’t matter that everyone was banging on about it, I just couldn’t bring myself to put it on. I think I’ll watch and enjoy it once the hype has died down.

  I’m told that a lot of the footage in The Last Dance was shot in the 1990s, long before reality TV took off. At least that meant that there was less playing up to the cameras than you see in fly-on-the-wall documentaries today. It was the same with the famous documentary of the 1997 British and Irish Lions tour of South Africa, Living with Lions. But it doesn’t work any more, because the people in modern fly-on-the-wall documentaries know that they can become ‘inadvertent’ stars. For that reason, I can’t even watch cricket documentaries, because they’re not a true representation of a team. Plus, I always thought that the changing room was sacrosanct. When I was playing for England, the idea of inviting a camera crew in would sometimes crop up but I was always dead against it. I didn’t even like having TV cameras in the changing room after we’d won a Test match, although my lads love The Test.

  Gogglebox has gone the same way, in that the people on it now know that they can use it to launch a celebrity career. Saying that, I still love it and watched a lot of it during lockdown. One of my kids was a massive fan of it, they persuaded me to watch an episode and now I’m hooked. A few of them are scripted to within an inch of their lives, but there are some real belters on there, especially that grumpy Mancunian bloke with the dog. When I was in Australia recently, the first series of Aussie Gogglebox was just about to start and they just couldn’t get their heads around it. They kept asking me to explain it to them, I’d tell them that it was people being filmed watching TV and talking about it, and they’d be completely dumbfounded.

  What my Australian friends would have made of some of the TV ideas I’ve been pitched down the years is anyone’s guess. What usually happens is I’ll turn up at a meeting and someone will say, with a beaming smile on their face, ‘You’re really going to like this.’ Someone else will start explaining what the programme idea is and
after about 20 seconds I’ll say, ‘I’m going to have to stop you there. I don’t like it at all.’ One of the worst ideas pitched to me was ‘celebrity rehab’, which was like something Alan Partridge might have pitched to Tony Hayers, the fictional BBC director of programming. At first, I didn’t know whether they wanted me to appear on the show or host it. And when they told me that they wanted me to host it, I said, ‘Whoa, this is not for me. What is wrong with you?’ They couldn’t really understand why I thought it was a terrible idea, because these producers and TV execs are in a world of their own and always think that every idea they have is of major importance.

  Mind you, I’m a bit of a hypocrite, because some programmes I watch are, by most people’s moral standards, absolutely appalling. With Naked Attraction, the basic premise is this: there are six naked people hidden in booths and they gradually reveal themselves from the feet up. After each round, a fully-clothed chooser eliminates one of the naked people, until there are only two left, at which point the chooser also takes their clothes off before choosing who they want to go on a date with (presumably with their clothes on).

  Then there are the programmes you watch that make you wonder if you’re supposed to laugh or not. I watch The Undateables, which is a show about people with physical or learning disabilities trying to find a partner, and can’t work out if its heart is in the right place or not. Every time I watch it, me and the same group of friends spend the whole episode texting each other, but it’s difficult to know if I’m finding the right bits funny, or whether I’m supposed to find any of it funny. That’s the same as a lot of things in life now, you’ll see something or someone will say something and you’ll find yourself suppressing the natural inclination to laugh. But I think I watch The Undateables from a good place, because I also find myself getting a bit choked up, especially when someone ends up falling in love on a date.

  But it’s amazing how some shows stay alive, because they are so near the knuckle, exploitative and just seem to cause problems all the time. Take Love Island. Four people connected to that show have taken their own lives, which should set alarm bells ringing. Feminist groups have raised concerns over the portrayal of women and their treatment by the blokes on the show, mental-health charities have attacked it for the negative impact it can have on viewers who are insecure about their bodies, and it’s all just a bit tawdry. Personally, I think people should be allowed to watch whatever they want, and if that’s what the contestants want to do, then let them crack on. But I do worry about the messages it sends out and what direction we’re going in as a society.

  I completely understand why programmes like Strictly Come Dancing and MasterChef get millions of viewers, because they’re nice. Most people don’t want to watch programmes that pit people against each other and try to appeal to their baser instincts, they want to watch programmes that are a bit fluffy and make them feel good about humanity. That’s also why dramas like Call the Midwife and Death in Paradise get so many viewers, because they’re mostly lovely and completely unremarkable and unchallenging, like televisual weed. No one is going to go to bed angry after watching either of those, even if so many people have died on that Death in Paradise island that the human population must be teetering on the brink of extinction.

  I’ve seen the odd episode of The Great British Bake Off, which is about as fluffy as TV programming gets, but it’s not what got me into baking. I’ve always been partial to making cakes, although the opportunities nowadays are few and far between. I’m not one of those people who feels the need to take photographs and share them with people, but I can also make a decent spaghetti Bolognese, chilli con carne or curry. I don’t feel the need to make anything fancy at home, because I don’t even eat anything fancy when I go out.

  I’ve gone full circle. I started out with a very basic palate – what you might call a northern palate – before eating out at Heston Blumenthal’s place and lots of other Michelin-starred restaurants when I started earning a few quid, where they bring out loads of little portions and you have to pretend everything is the best thing you’ve ever put in your mouth, and now I’d sooner have a takeaway curry, fish fingers with chips and beans or, if I do go out, a Toby Carvery. I find all that Michelin-starred food a bit ridiculous. Starters made to look like desserts, desserts made to look like savoury food, main courses that don’t fill you up. I don’t think anyone really likes that stuff as much as they say they do. Most of it is down to snobbery and fashion. Look at Greggs, one minute everyone was taking the piss out of them, now everyone’s eating their food and saying how good it is. People really need to start thinking about things a bit more and go back to basics. It’s cheaper and it’s nicer.

  I like Japanese food. To a point. It’s fine. I don’t dislike it. But mainly because I’ve been told it’s healthy. But if I was on death row and the governor said to me, ‘The chef can make you two things for your last meal: either a delicate sashimi salad or a massive battered cod with chips and mushy peas. What will it be?’ you know what the answer’s going to be. It’s not really a choice, is it? That’s the ultimate test of how much you really like a certain type of food, whether you’d consider it as a last meal. And let’s be honest, you wouldn’t even think of eating anything that you would find in Nobu. Who asks for sushi on death row? I bet it’s never happened. I’ve read about the last meals they eat in America and it’s all burgers and pizzas and massive tubs of ice cream. And never once a sorbet.

  What even is sorbet? Who’s it for? It’s basically shit ice cream. Ice cream with all the fun removed. Don’t get me started on sorbet. My favourite dessert is Viennetta. The noise when the knife breaks the exterior shell, magnificent. Like the start of a miniature avalanche in your bowl. I wasn’t as big a fan of Ice Magic, that chocolate sauce that turned solid after you poured it on your ice cream. That was far too silly. And pointless. The whole point of chocolate sauce is that it looks all lovely and gooey. Why would you want it to go hard? It’s then an inconvenient layer between the spoon and the ice cream, rather than adding to the loveliness. Ice Magic was trying to fix a problem that didn’t exist, which is exactly what Peter Jones would say if someone tried to flog it on Dragons’ Den today. Liquid chocolate is liquid chocolate, that’s what makes it great. Why would you want it to cease being liquid chocolate once you’d squeezed it from the bottle? I don’t understand some people, I really don’t.

  When it comes to ice cream itself, I’m very much a giant-tub-of-vanilla-ice-cream man, but only if it’s on offer from the Co-op. I’m not paying £5.99 for a small tub of Ben & Jerry’s cinnamon and gingerbread ice cream. Vanilla ice cream is a strange thing. When I was a kid, that’s pretty much what ice cream was. That or chocolate or strawberry. Then it became a byword for boring, the flavour that was always chosen last in a Neapolitan. Now, everyone is trying to put a spin on it, to make it seem more interesting. Ice cream isn’t just vanilla any more, it’s Madagascan vanilla. No, no, no. I am not having that. I don’t care where they got the vanilla from – Madagascar or Grimsby – or whether the ice cream has got little black dots in it, it’s still just vanilla.

  While we’re on the subject, what the hell is gelato? I thought it was just Italian for ice cream until someone put me right. That’s the thing about food, you can be eating it and thinking, ‘Yeah, this is all right, but it’s basically just ice cream’, and someone will pop up and say, ‘Actually, it’s not the same as ice cream. It’s better.’ But if that person hadn’t said anything, I would never have known. And because someone at some point decided gelato sounded a bit fancier than ice cream, that meant they could make it more expensive. Now when someone asks if I want a gelato, I’ll get a bit snappy: ‘No. I don’t. I just want a Mr Whippy. Preferably with a flake in it.’ Or a Magnum, which was an absolute game-changer when it came along in the 1990s.

  While the Mr Whippy was co-invented by Maggie Thatcher, Roger Moore played a part in inventing the Magnum. Apparently, he happened to mention to someone at Wall’s that his on
e wish was for someone to invent a choc ice on a stick. Not an end to famine and war, but a choc ice on a stick. And someone did. The Magnum brought luxury to the world of sticked ice creams, blew the Feast (which promised far more than it delivered), the Funny Foot (nice, but not actually very funny) and the Fab (nowhere near substantial enough) out of the water. I’d even dare to say that the Magnum rivalled the Cornetto for supremacy in the ice-cream van’s freezer.

  But whether you ordered a Magnum or a Cornetto, the ice-cream man knew you weren’t messing about. You meant business. When he saw you approaching his van, he knew he wouldn’t have to be scrambling around at the bottom of his freezer for a Screwball, because you had graduated to more sophisticated things. The Magnum and Cornetto were aspirational, the ice-cream equivalents of an Audi Quattro and a Volkswagen Scirocco respectively.