Steve Litchfield

So I'm in the middle of the UK summer and a real 35 degree heatwave. As soon as you step out of your air-conditioned car or shady house, the heat hits you like a wall. Well, this is novel for the UK, at least. It physically hurts to be out in the direct sun in the middle of the day and you can almost feel the ultra-violet rays damaging your skin and kicking off all sort of mutations... Yeah, yeah, I know, an over-active imagination, but at least people all over the world are starting to realise that prolonged exposure to the sun for people with fair skin can be very dangerous. So why oh why do a significant number of fair-skinned UK residents lie down in the full sunlight for hours at a time? If they don't use sun-cream they'll burn to a crisp. If they do, it'll take hours and hours to get any kind of a tan and the damage is still being done to their skin in any event. I was stopped by a market research lady a year or so ago and chatted to her for a few minutes. My atte

Maybe it's a UK thing, but we have lots of TV shows where people dig up stuff from their attic and experts coo over them and then help them put them up for auction. Now, so far so good, it's marginally interesting to see what junk people have got and how much it's worth. BUT - then the auction starts and we see the highly paid presenter, arm round the shoulders of the featured contestant, going 'ooh, it's up to £15, wow, we made a £10 profit' and so on. Come on, this guy is being paid £20,000 an episode, I'm waiting for the programme where he (or she) says 'Stuff this, it's peanuts, couldn't you come up with anything more valuable in your loft?' and then walks off. Or maybe it's all just 'showbusiness'. It's certainly all rather false, anyway.