Memory Loss? If it’s good enough for goldfish it’s good enough for me

As long as I can remember the taste of beer......

My memory’s leaking. Every day another fact or word vanishes into the mist. These days I have trouble remembering….damn, what’s the word? Ah, that’s it – things.

It’s annoying. I keep having to change the subject because a name goes. Now what’s his name? Tall guy. Nice suit. Er…. Twenty minutes later, I’ve found it – Barack Obama.

I forget where I put my pens. If I’m lucky I might find them a month later piled up somewhere they shouldn’t be, such as under the spanner in the toolbox. I never use the toolbox. If I’m unlucky they go to the graveyard of words, combs, phone numbers and debit cards which have been lost in action in my life over the last decade.

I went to a Prom concert last week. Mrs K rang to say she didn’t have the tickets. I was entering my finest “Koh! Typical!” mode when it turned out it was me who had brought them. I later found them in a forgotten drawer, along with eighteen pens.

But who cares? I forget the names of annoying people. I don’t have to send them Christmas cards. If someone says something crass or boring, half an hour later – it’s gone. I forget to pay the bills. OK, I keep having to ward off the bailiffs but think of those extra weeks when my bank account is fat.

I can remember the important things. Like the names of all The Animals: Eric Burdon, Alan Price, Hilton Valentine, John Steel and Chas Chandler and no, I didn’t just Google them. I can tell you the storylines of all 13 episodes of “Fawlty Towers” with the full cast. No one can live a full life without those facts at their disposal.

I can even remember Mrs K’s birthday. OK, I admit, it’s tattooed to the inside of my lip.

Men's dress rant

Not a good look

I hate summer. It brings out the worst things in life. The new Big Brother series. Ice Cream vans. And, God help us, mens’ legs. Especially old mens’ legs.

If I was Prime Minister, my top priority would be to make it an offence for men over 50 to wear shorts. Varicose veins and knees which look as if they’ve been put through a rock crusher would be classified as a threat to public health and morality and showable only in darkened rooms to a private audience. Failure to observe this would be an ASBO offence.

The wearing of sandals with uncut toenails, however, would incur the death penalty. Men would not be permitted to make like Rosa Klebs. If that’s your method of mowing the lawn, fine, but step out of the house like that, then – chop. I mean heads, not nails.

T shirts would grudgingly be permitted for males over 50, but only if no flesh is visible between the bottom hem and the belt. Having a beer belly which forces the bottom of the T shirt to nudge upwards would not be deemed an excuse. Exposure of pubic hair would be classified as Aggravated Navel Exposure - maximum penalty fifty lashes.

Now to the gravest matter of all. Today I saw a man, who shared Bill Nighy’s age group but not dress sense, with sagging man boobs, wrinkled arms and an underarm crow’s nest, wearing, and my trembling hands can barely type this, a Bruce Willis vest. Everything was revealed.

There’s only one solution for men like that. Stick their head on a pole and display it over London Bridge. It won’t look pleasant, but at least we won’t have to peer at the rest of their bodies.

All this is making me retch as much as it is you. I’m doing it out of pure public spiritedness. Make me PM and I pledge to enact all the above.

And then I’d go on to the lesser stuff such as eradicating poverty.