Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Ask Me Ask Me Ask Me

My brother got married on a cruise ship this weekend. As of Sunday, I have my first official sibling-in-law. (All the rest of them are brother or sister-in-commonlaws.) The ship docked in Melbourne briefly so there was an informal lunch. I got to meet my Sister-in-Law's child who is Cherub's age.

Cherub got to share his toys (which he mostly did) and display his excellent table manners.

*********

I was really, really tempted to ring up a radio station this morning because they had one of those call us if this has ever happened to you discussions which struck a massive chord with me. The only reason I didn't was that my mobile (cell) phone is a pre-paid and I doubted my credits.

The topic was : have you ever felt insulted because of an unflattering comparison to someone famous?

And so even though I was driving the kids to school and it's illegal to use your mobile whilst driving, I got as far as locating and plugging in the dodgy hands-free attachment because I wanted to share.

Because YES!!!

Fortunately common sense got the better of me. That and the realisation I could share it with the internet! For free!

There was this English tourist called Mike who met a drunk girlfriend of mine whilst on the plane to Australia and she gave him my number (without ringing me up to say she'd done so) and he called me when he got to Melbourne. So after he'd explained who the hell he was and how the hell he had my number I met him for a drink. And we got on quite well. I was going through my Anglophile stage then. So we hung out for a bit and we kept in touch. During one of his Australian visits he dossed down in the grouphouse I lived in then. And we communicated variously over a few years, via letter and emails. He had a bit of a thing for me, which I half-knew but I was always attached and he was a bit ... uptight... and patronising. And needy. And he didn't really 'get' me. I remember sarcastically & jokingly telling him I'd learnt something at the school of hard knocks and his face dropped and he shook his head in admiration and said something like but you're so brave about it. But he was alright apart from that I suppose.

My main beef with him was that he always tried to fix things for me that needed no fixing.* Did I mention he didn't understand me? At all? So I told him this idea I'd had for a play and he went away and wrote a script (which sucked, may I say, and totally missed the point). I told him I was teaching tapdance and he sent me a mixed tape of 'good tap songs'. I told him my computer was old and out-of-date and he stole a disused computer (could have been broken, I never found out) from the storeroom at his work and posted it to me. From England. What can I say? I guess I just inspire this behaviour in men, I have this strange power...

Mike and I are no longer in contact (at his request) because I eventually said stop metaphorically waving your metaphorical screwdriver at my life and he got really insulted and probably cried and told me NEVER to contact him again. Ummm, okay.

But during one of our epistolatory exchanges which would have been over 10 years ago now, I sent him some pictures of me taken from a tapdance show. And his response to the photos was to tell me that I looked like Yootha Joyce. Whom I knew only as the nagging sexually-frustrated middle-aged housewife from Man About the House, and George and Mildred.


Oh.My.God. I was so insulted I think my mouth was hanging open for a week. One of my dearest gay friends nearly wet himself when he heard, he was rolling round on the floor laughing for days. He still occasionally likes to call me Yoofa. Just don't think the rest of you can get away with that.

But this is the sad part. Mike meant it as a compliment. A really subtle one, designed to show me what a sensitive and trendy guy he was. Because the image HE carried in his head of Yootha Joyce was the cover photo on a Smith's single Ask:

Which is not too hideous but I had not seen this picture.** I had only seen Man About The House and George & Mildred, and I can't think of any chick in her late 20's who would appreciate being told she looks like Mildred.


I hope you all went and followed the links. Poor old Yootha died from liver failure - apparently she drank half a bottle of brandy every day. I want you to see how I'll look the day after my birthday party.



*Unlike my Mr Fixit who is a legend with things that are actually broken
**I just googled it today so actually despite this diatribe I now feel slightly forgiving of poor old Mike.

PS. He also said I looked like Chrissie Hynde from the Pretenders. Which is just rubbish.

20 comments:

  1. I just came REALLY FRIGHTENINGLY close to peeing myself! Yootha Joyce, eh? Fancy that. I have to say, SG, she was pretty hot in her younger years.
    *choke* heh heh heh

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  2. Hey that just reminded me you have all my Smiths CD's dont you? and also that the words I was singing to that song was wrong, I didnt know the 'bomb' would bring us together - I always thought it was the 'bond'....?

    Oh well. Ive been likened to Ghandi, Nova Peris Kneebone and the 2nd tart who apparently slept with David Beckham. Yootha really aint so bad.

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  3. I loved Yoofa. But, having seen you in the flesh I'm just shaking my head. Poor deluded soul. He really hadn't a clue.
    I was mistaken (!) for Simone (or is it Rachel?) Beck, the Aussie actress in some plays (of which I can't remember the names), by a taxi driver. I look nothing like her.

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  4. I have to say you and Yoofa - not really twins. Did he take his specs off to impress you and forget to put them back on? And there is a certain type of very obsessive guy that LOVE redheads - I too speak from experience. Unfortunately they don't EVER look like George Clooney or Ioan Grufford (sp?) or Hugh Laurie :-(

    My perennial favourite (said with a grimace) is that apparently I'm the spitting image of Fergie, Duchess of York. Really, it would be nice if everyone just got passed the hair colour!!!!!!

    Enjoyed the song, by the way :-) So, I'm always a bit slow on the uptake - this means you wish to be married the day after your birthday?

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  5. Sniggering over Yoofa. And where the heck did she get a name like Yootha from anyway?

    This guy used to come into where I worked adn tell me on a regular basis that I looked like Judy Garland. Which clearly, I do not.

    Also, on a similar vein (being insulted by celebrities anyway), Vince Jones once sang 'My Funny Valentine' directly to me at a gig where I was near the front. I didn't know whether to be flattered or insulted. I went home and listened more closely to the lyrics and went with insulted.

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  6. So ask me, ask me, ask me
    Ask me ask me ask me
    Ask me, I won't say no
    How could I ?

    As soon as I saw your header in Bloglines, I clicked furiously to be able to write that, as I cared not what you had to say, as I was lost in Morrissey.

    You don't look like Yootha. But I loved her. I also loved Endora from Bewitched though, too.

    More about me: when we went to see Morrissey at the Forum not-so-long-ago, I stood in line behind John Saffran. It was a way cool concert.

    My son used to enjoy driving to work with me in utero singing "Suedehead" and "Sheila take A Bow" ( my slogan used to be: "Boot the grime of this world in the crotch, dear " )

    One of the original posts that made me want to read Auntie Cookie was a Smiths title..

    I could go on & on.

    When I was younger, a bloke in a pub used to always say I looked like Naomi Robson. He was a drunk, and considering what a walking scary corpse she's turned out to be ... noice...

    Oh - and a guy used to tease me heaps because I apparently looked like Andrea Zuckermann ( 90210 ).
    Sad thing was, yeah. At the time, yeah.

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  7. P.S. - Hint HINT, Fixit

    ( she won't say no, how could she ? )

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  8. So, Yoofa....

    She was actually stunning when young, she is a shining example how completely you can ruin a pretty face, if you just drink enough.

    And Suse is right, she doesn't look a thing like Judy Garland.

    She does, however, look strikingly like a young Joni Mitchell.

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  9. Oh goodness... Yootha Joyce?! I'm outraged on your behalf.

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  10. 1) I'm immensely pleased you've gotten over this.

    2) There are some advantages to residing in the more-or-less culturally hermetic American quadrant of the anglosphere.

    3) Good Lord, where do you find these damaged people?

    -J.

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  11. I can't comment on Joke's blog, so can someone please tell him that I loved his last post, the one about Disneyworld?

    It was hysterical.

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  12. I always had people saying I looked like Julie Andrews in her sound of music days. I hated that!
    Getting married on a cruise ship, how romantic!

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  13. Noone has the image of a young Yootha??
    You are nothing like her.

    And, yes, I used to collect a few damaged goods myself. None of them told me I was like Yootha, though.

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  14. No, I can see how that would p*ss you off..
    Poor deluded man...
    I HATE it when people asume I can't do anything because I've got tits.

    BTW I loved the whole idea of all those Smith covers - used to dream of looking like a young Diana Dors (which in reality would only be the result of VERY expensive surgery...) I was young, what can I say?!

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  15. Oh my, oh my...I am surprised that I can even type through my tears of laughter. You were SO right to be insulted and you are SO right to hold onto that feeling...for a long time!

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  16. I used to get "You look like Sigourney Weaver" ... A LOT. Not so much any more. Is it because she's not in much anymore or that I now look too old to look like her -- not that I ever really agreed, but I got the feeling it was a compliment? Anyhow, not familiar with Yootha, but you don't look like those pics now and I bet you never did -- her beauty regimen sounds frightening.

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  17. I've just cried myself into a place from which I fear I may never emerge.

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  18. Shula,

    You COULD email your fawning plaudits, y'know.

    -J.

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  19. Yes that guy had No idea!! Old Yoofa Joyce equals Mildred and that is it. I loved that show.

    I had someone call me Sally for years because she thought I looked like Sally Field. Mind you so many people ask me if I am related to so many bloody different people because "you look so much like....."

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  20. Yootha Joyce ...mmm.... I am thinking no! but i enjoyed the smiths-sing-along.When I had blonde highlights (so very late nineties of me) people said I looked like celine Dion, now she is a freaky looking lady.............

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