YOU will be thinking that the headline above is no surprise.
You knew that anyway, you only have to look at what I wear to know that.
Well, I can’t don a Michelsberg tailored suit everyday. (I have asked, but he seems to prefer paying customers.)
The headline actually refers to my loss of taste and smell last week.
I’d had what I thought was a summer cold for a few days and, by Thursday evening, thought I had shaken off the worst of it.
Then I sipped a glass of wine and ate a crisp and couldn’t taste a thing.
That was the first time I thought that I might have Covid, despite being double vaccinated.
Rather than lovingly crafting this blog last Friday morning, I was driving into one of the Government’s mobile Covid testing sites in a rainy pay and display car park behind ITV’s Emmerdale studios on Burley Road in Leeds.
You have to first pull up and let them scan an emailed QR code on your phone through your car window.
Heaven help you if you try to wind the window down – a chap in mask and overalls flinched and shouted at me to put the window up.
Then you have to park in a space and take the PCR test handed to you by swabbing the back of your throat and up your nose and then alert the staff you have done it by putting your hazard lights on.
I’m told that late evening visitors to the car park at Golden Acre Park in Leeds operate by similar protocols.
I put my hazard lights on because I couldn’t locate the zip lock bag it said should be in the test kit.
A member of staff came over, I told him there was no zip-lock bag, and he replied: “Don’t worry, there isn’t one, we aren’t double-bagging any more.”
That’s a good thing. I haven’t double-bagged for a while.
It was a simple and smooth process, followed up with an email which arrived early the next morning confirming I had tested positive for Covid and telling me and anyone I lived with that we needed to self-isolate for 10 days.
It meant missing out on a lunch with friends at Sous le Nez I was really looking forward to but having read about how ill some double jabbed people have been with the virus, I think I’ve been pretty lucky.
I’ve taken antigen tests in the last two days which have returned negative results and my taste and smell are slowly returning.
Although red wine currently tastes like Ribena and white wine like mouthwash.
So if you want to invite me out for lunch and tell me you are serving Puligny Montrachet and Brunello di Montalcino when it’s actually Barefoot Pinot Grigio and Casillero del Diablo Cabernet Sauvignon, I won’t have a clue.
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IT was nice to catch up on the phone with veteran stockbroker Keith Loudon OBE last week.
The chairman of national stockbroking firm Redmayne Bentley is recovering after suffering a stroke last year and, after an extended stint convalescing in a nursing home, is now back home.
While he works hard with physiotherapists to get full movement back to his body, Keith’s brain is still as sharp as ever.
He is in a unique position to provide informed comment on the recent offer for Morrisons by a US-led investment group as Redmayne Bentley were brokers to the grocery business when it listed on the old Northern Stock Exchange back in the 1960s, before it floated on the London Stock Exchange.
“It’s going to run for quite a while,” Keith predicted, just a couple of days before the supermarket chain’s biggest shareholder said it wasn’t minded to back the offer from Fortress, despite the Bradford group’s directors recommending the £6.3bn bid.
“Morrisons owns a large percentage of its shops and an asset-stripper would sell them. The property angle is the one the other supermarkets haven’t got,” he told me, saying that’s why other UK supermarket chains aren’t interesting foreign investors as much as Morrisons is.
“I quite like the UK to own its own assets, which is a bit old fashioned,” reflected Keith.
He said that the recent £278.9m takeover of UK stockbroking and investment firm Charles Stanley by US rival Raymond James was another example of a well known British name being bought by new foreign owners.
“We are not going down that route,” he said of his own firm’s future.
After the lengthy chat with Keith I reflected that I hope I have his levels of energy, ingenuity and gusto when I’m his age.
But I don’t actually think I’ve got them now.
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I WAS going to leave commenting about Andrew Neil’s fledgling TV news channel GB News until September.
But given its iffy production levels and limited audience, I think I better do it now as it might not still be on our screens by the time autumn arrives.
The former editor of the Sunday Times and big beast BBC political interviewer heralded the arrival of the new channel which he said would champion robust, balanced debate and ”a range of perspectives on the issues that affect everyone in the UK, not just those living in the London area”.
It was suggested that GB News would address the perceived gap in the market for “the vast number of British people who feel underserved and unheard by their media” and be a counter-balance to the increasingly woke approach of the BBC and Sky.
But then when presenter Guto Harri “took the knee” live on air during a discussion about racism towards England’s black footballers, he was suspended shortly after when the channel apologised and said the gesture had “breached its standards”.
The episode was all over social media and did more to highlight the existence of the new channel than all its pre and post launch publicity combined.
GB News then underlined what direction it was heading in by bringing in former UKIP leader Nigel Farage to present a regular programme and he wasted no time in confirming he “will not be taking the knee for anyone” on his new show.
Which was not exactly a surprise.
Guto Harri has since confirmed he has left GB News.
I first met Guto over 20 years ago when I was London Editor of the Welsh national newspaper The Western Mail.
He was one of many young, ambitious Welsh-born professionals, artists, entertainers, musicians and actors who used to gather at social events in the capital including Wales in London dinners at the Reform Club in Pall Mall and Social Welsh and Sexy or SWS (Sws is the Welsh word for kiss) at All Bar One in Leicester Square.
I had to produce a 1,500-word column every week called London Diary and these events were manna from heaven for a journalist with space to fill.
Guto then worked for the BBC where his roles included presenting The World At One, Westminster Live and Straight Talk and he covered the collapse of Communism in Romania, Czechoslovakia and East Germany before reporting on the Gulf War from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and northern Iraq.
After stints in Rome and New York for the BBC he left the corporation to become a PR and policy adviser and later was communications adviser to Boris Johnson when he was Mayor of London.
When I knew him, Guto was going out with Gaenor Howells, a BBC World Service presenter.
Gaenor came from well known Welsh stock: her father was the late Lord Geraint, a Cardiganshire sheep farmer who became a Liberal MP before being elevated to the House of Lords.
Her manner was as clipped as her diction and I remember Guto telling me she disapproved of his habit of only ironing the front of his shirt when he was due to make an appearance on BBC TV.
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FORGIVE me if I don’t descend into the over-enthusiastic mush-fest that represents most of the coverage of the Olympics on BBC TV.
If you don’t subscribe to the opinion that gymnast Simone Biles combines the qualities of Joan of Arc, Mother Teresa and Maya Angelou then the BBC coverage might not be for you.
The obsession with the US gymnast by our national broadcaster meant that viewers were restricted to watching only part of the bouts involving British boxers competing for medals because the BBC switched to full coverage of her return to the gymnastic competition.
Someone at the BBC has also decided that this Olympic Games should be the TV breakthrough moment for 5 Live radio presenter Nihal Arthanayake.
From listening to his radio programmes I know he likes the sound of his own voice, thinks he’s pretty clever and supports Tottenham Hotspur – which is probably an oxymoron.
But from his appearances on the Beeb’s Olympic coverage, he also now believes he is a comedian too.
And as for the “bantz” between presenters Clare Balding and Alex Scott, pathetic, awkward and embarrassing doesn’t begin to cover it.
At the last Olympics I complained about the over-enthusiastic, semi-articulate commentary in some of the BBC coverage.
It seems that has now entered the studio too.
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FOR the last 12 years comedian Mark Steel has travelled across the UK visiting 57 towns where he has presented a stand-up show about each one.
Mark’s Steel’s In Town has become a popular show on the BBC and he’s been reflecting on his experiences.
I particularly enjoyed his memories of visiting Hull, which was City of Culture in 2017.
Of the many artistic projects that celebrated this milestone, one was a machine installed in the city’s docks area that picked up everything said as anyone walked past it.
Those words were then immediately shone in light on a tower a little way down the road.
As you might expect, thousands of people took turns at swearing into it and giggling as those words were beamed from the tower.
This was dealt with by changing the software, so it didn’t recognise foul language.
When he visited Hull, Mark Steel asked the audience what was the rudest swear word that it would still light up.
Without a pause one man shouted “Leeds.”
This blog is taking a break for the rest of August so enjoy the rest of your summer and I’ll be back in September.
Have a great weekend.