What would men in middle age do without Jeremy Clarkson?

Here’s my latest column for Eastern Daily Press, it covers it all from ironing to Jeremy Clarkson. Have a read.

The Yesterday Effect
It’s amazing what goes through your head when you can’t sleep.
The other night I spent quite some time pondering whether, when Donald Trump washes his hair, his comb-over (minus gallons of hairspray) would hang down low enough to skim his shoulder? My guess is it would, but I suppose we’ll never know. As I say, it’s weird what goes through you head when insomnia strikes.
Have you seen the movie ‘Yesterday’? It’s a brilliant concept: what would life be like if the world forgot The Beatles? How would things change if they’d never existed? I got thinking about that. As a huge fan of the fab four, I can see their absence would be a sad thing: life without ‘Let It Be’, ‘Hey Jude’ & ‘Come Together’ would be terrible. I could, however, cope if ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ & ‘Octopus’s Garden’ disappeared into the ether (sorry Paul).
In my annoyingly wide-awake state I started thinking about was The Yesterday Effect more generally: what would be the impact on our lives if other things (or people) had never existed?
My mind, as it usually does, first turned to food. The humble chip, imagine if that didn’t exist! I’d be about 40 pounds lighter for a start! Our high streets would be filled with ‘Fish ‘n’ __ ‘ shops. Maybe something else would have been paired up with battered cod? Pasta maybe? Or, God forbid, Quinoa! It doesn’t bear thinking about!
Then my thoughts moved to ironing. What if ironing just didn’t exist? Imagine how much time would be gained if we agreed it was perfectly normal to wear clothes in their crumpled state. Billions of hours are put into the futile process of making our clothes smooth, without ironing all that time could have been spent… sleeping!
As you can see, in my insomniac state, I have sleeping permanently on the brain. Then there’s Jeremy Clarkson. Imagine what life would be like if he’d never been born. So much would be different! For a start, men of a certain age would have no role model during their midlife crises! Sales of ill-fitting jeans, artificially distressed leather jackets and ridiculously impractical gas guzzling cars would plummet in a Clarkson free world… or, as he’d put it, ‘If there was no Jeremy Clarkson IN THE WORLD!’
It’s a funny one, trying to imagine history without certain elements. If double glazing hadn’t been invented, would we have been spared the irritation of salespeople calling us all hours of the day and night? Perhaps something else would have taken their place? They do say nature abhors a vacuum; which puts nature at odds with James Dyson. Using the same rationale if James D hadn’t existed I’d never have had to cringe on hearing someone say: “I’ve bought a new Hoover, it’s a Dyson.”
All of this was troubling me in the early hours. Then it struck me that qualifying for The Yesterday Effect is a sign of importance, that (for good or bad) these people and things have touched the lives of others.
That’s why I chose to share my thoughts with you, to create an impact. If I’d never existed you’d never have wasted a portion of your life reading this.
Deep eh?
Don’t worry, I’ll keep you all informed what happens next on my The Long and Winding Road to sleep.