Stealing men's desserts vs Mick Hucknall

GOOD THING: STEALING MEN'S DESSERTS
Any man who has ever eaten out with a woman knows that his dessert is never safe. The evening usually follows the same pattern: man and woman eat main course, dessert menu arrives, man orders large cake/pie/sundae, woman says, "Oh no, nothing for me", man's dessert arrives, woman starts to eat it. I know, I'm guilty of doing this myself. Man then says, "But you could have had your own!" and woman replies, "Yes, but I didn't want a whole one - I only wanted a taste of yours", before she digs in with the biggest implement she can find, usually a soup spoon or a ladle. But I can present a strong argument in favour of this behaviour; namely, that it gives a woman an opportunity to assess the standard of the restuarant's desserts, it saves the man from becoming a total hog, and anyway, calories on someone else's plate really don't count. Men fail to appreciate that in the Recommended Daily Intake of calories, they are allocated an extra 500 than woman, which is approximately the calories in a dessert - women are thus deprived of pudding, and have to make do with a sample. Men should feel sorry for women and offer their desserts up more willingly, rather than sit there guarding the dish with their arm like a school pupil sitting a test. I have to admit, it isn't just desserts that this happens with - the other obvious one is chips, which I think is actually worse because you can't physically have just one chip (even though most women will say, "I just want the one", as they swipe the largest, most ketchup-drenched chip from the box.) Chips are addictive, and if you have one then it opens up the floodgates. My advice to men would be to a) choose a dessert without chocolate in it b) sneeze into your dessert as soon as it arrives and c) drown your chips in vinegar - it may taste unpleasant, but at least your food remains your own.

BAD THING: MICK HUCKNALL
I was a big fan of The X Files ten years ago, but one big unexplained mystery that Mulder and Scully failed to investigate was this - what is the appeal of Mick Hucknall? Let's set aside the fact that Simply Red are a crap, deeply uncool band, and the fact that millions of people inexplicably bought that Stars album (mostly mums, I think.) But how in the name of all things sane did Mick become a sex symbol? He was the antithesis of everything sexy (the photo above speaks for itself), with his ginger dredlocks, flowing, priestly robes and that horrible, horrible gyrating dancing. Mick's moves should have been enough to make any woman consider life-long celibacy, and yet there he was in all the tabloids with another beauty on his arm. I suspect that, after the multi-million-selling Stars, going out for an evening with Mick became a more bearable prospect for lots of famous women. I expect they thought he was 'poetic' , 'sensitive' and 'soulful', or at least that's what they told themselves (and their friends.) Some of Simply Red's videos are hilarious because he always seems to be surrounded by people much younger than he is. In the video for 'Fairground', when he's unconvincingly riding that rollercoaster, he looks like the leader of a Christian youth club, chaperoning the kids. Now middle age has really hit him with some considerable force - and it hasn't been kind. There used to be a great website called '1,000 people more annoying than Mick Hucknall', but it no longer exists - I suspect that the site's editors realised that they were fighting a losing battle.