Is Brad Pitt the pits?

I know Smellorama has been around for donkey's years but I was quite intrigued by the fact that they now call it Odorama and that an Odorama version of cute 80s comedy Gregory's Girl was recently screened in Edinburgh and that some of the smells were bad ones.


In the Odorama screening of Gregory's Girl (check out the mullets!) cards with eight smells on them were handed out. The smells of freshly cut grass, sweaty socks and teenage aftershave then wafted out during the screening.

I would have loved to have been there - it would have brought all the memories of teenage snogging rushing back. Remember ladies if you will the amount of aftershave some teenage lads used to wear - remember going in for a snog and finding that your eyes were watering because your date was drenched not only in acne medication (which I must confess to this day has peculiar erotic associations for me but that's between me and my therapist) but also in a full bottle of either Old Spice or Brut the smell of which was as pungent as cat pee?


Remember the tagline for Brut: "Apply a little Brut Force." You'd never get away with that today. How the mighty have fallen eh? Now Gazza drinks the stuff.

Have you ever wondered what the world would be like if eventually Odorama became ubiquitous and TV and movies smelt as if you were there? Now that would be great in a film like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which would have me licking the screen and later making frenzied love to a (consenting) Mars Bar.

But what about the actors in the movies? Wouldn't it ruin the fantasy if we actually knew what they smelt like? If you were right up there in Brad Pitt's armpit while he was shagging some willing lovely would you gag at the scent of his terrible BO? I reckon Odorama would be a turn off because Brad Pitt is someone who always looks like he reeks of pheromones - in a bad way.

Other stinky celebs include Matthew McConaughey a self confessed stink bomb and beach bum who sees deodorant as the enemy. He wouldn’t even break the ban when his “Fool’s Gold” co-star, Kate Hudson, complained about his body odor. “She always brings a salt rock, which is some natural deodorant, and says, 'Would you please put this on?’” But her efforts were in vain. “I just never wore it," said Stink Boy McConaughey. "No cologne, no deodorant.” In fact, Matthew defends himself by insisting no other co-stars ever mentioned it!

Here is a list of other stinky celebs and their signature scents:

Colin Farrell: Stale Guinness, fags, vomit
Amy Winehouse: Ashtray, crack pipe
Bono: His shit stinks like everyone elses
Bruce Springsteen: Stale sweat, cheesy foreskin
Johnny Depp: Dead man smell on a musty thrift store coat
Kate Moss: Fags, morning after sewer breath



So do you think we are ready to see more movies in Odorama? What about the 2009 movie Manure featuring Billy Bob Thorton about a manure salesman in which "every surface, from the crops in the earth to the clouds in the sky, has been carefully color-graded and painted the appropriate shade of excrement." Just think if they could have just added the scent of fresh shit too, it would have been a big shit at the box office I'm sure.

And now tell me this: Which celebrities do you think smell the worst and also what movie done in Odorama would make you gag or tremble with delight?

Feck Off and Show Us Your Cankles

If you are bald you can wear a hat or get Elton John style hair plugs. If you have love handles you can become an anorexic. If you have a face like a pug you can get surgery. If you are 600lb you can get your stomach stapled.

But what do you do if you have CANKLES??? (for those still living in 1965 that means when your calf runs into your ankle and has no definition).

Now I don't have cankles, in fact I have very nice ankles. But what exactly do you do if you have cankles?

Do you just ignore the fact that you have lumps of meat attached to your knees? Or do you wear flared trousers year round? I'm really interested in this and urge any cankle sufferers to let me know how they deal with this problem.

July is Cankles Awareness Month and Gold's Gym has taken this special opportunity to offer pointless classes that will get rid of Cankles on their rather daft site, Say No To Cankles and offer this rather silly fashion advice for Canklettes:

-Look for pants in soft fabrics like cotton or poly blends that drape loosely around the ankle. Skinny jeans, which bunch at the ankle, are a no-no.

-Choose cropped or slightly tapered pants that cuff just past the fullest part of the ankle. These will draw the eye to the thinnest part of the ankle.

-Avoid shoes with ankle straps; these only make the ankle look bigger and the leg shorter. Opt instead for wedges and platform sandals that will create a long, lean silhouette. For fall, invest in dark-colored and tight-fitting boots.

-At the gym, wear bright sneakers to draw attention away from the ankle. Sports socks that reach only to the rim of the sneaker will create longer leg lines.

They may as well tell women to wear a burka!

Feck Off you Fecker!

And what about the new physical problem 'the Feck' which is the merging of the words 'face' and 'neck' to describe someone who has little or no chin/jawline definition. Are you a Fecker?

If so, I'm pretty sure you can get fleeced for only a few thousand for a Neck Lift to cure this problem. I read some plastic surgeon's site recently that said that "a neck lift can make a dramatic difference in facial appearance. Small-incision surgery allows recontouring of the neck with minimal downtime under twilight anesthesia. The neck lift is ideal for treating people with conditions such as turkey wattle neck and excess fat, but who are not bothered by jowls and cheek contour problems."


Does your wattle wobble when you waddle? We can help for $5000

Sure I'm laughing at the misfortunes of others but seriously doesn't it make you feel better that you don't have a feck, cankles or a turkey wattle neck? It makes me feel like Heidi fricken Klum let me tell you!

So have I cheered you up and made you feel more physically blessed or do you have one part of your anatomy that you would happily take a chainsaw to?

Fagged Out

Hello, my mother is staying with me and I am now Fagged Out.

Does anyone else have a mother who:

1. Starts talking at 6am in the morning and keeps going until ten at night in a piercing Austrian accent?

2. Gives me a blow by blow detailed description of all the boyfriends I have ever had and what was wrong with each one. For example "I am glad you are not dating that Russian guy anymore I am sure he was part of the Russian mafia." "He was as skinny as a reed, did yoga and was about as violent as a pansy." "Oh no, I can tell you those Russians they are all the same. Violent."

3. Tells you you really need to lose a few pounds

4. Gives a detailed description of every friend you ever had in childhood over and over again. "Do you remember that little black boy Mohammed who was your boyfriend when you were five? You always joked that if you had kids they'd come out like dalmations, all spotted black and white." "Yes mum I do remember him you've only talked about him about a hundred times."



5. Gives you a book called 101 Ways To Drive Your Man Wild In Bed with certain bits underlined such as something about mushing up a banana and putting it up your vagina before intercourse? "I just underlined some of the things that might work for you and John." "Oh thanks so much mum."

6. Tries to get some grease stains out of some chair cushions with nail varnish remover ruining the cushions in the process?

7. Reduces you to a mental wreck after three days.

8. Tells you your father was a chronic masturbator.

9. Goes through your sex toys.



10. Is a good cook but uses all your pots and pans and leaves the kitchen in a bloody mess so that ants are already crawling all over it?

Or is that just me?

Zen and the Art of Mother Maintenance

Well it is the calm before the storm around here because my Austrian mother is arriving for a soujourn on Saturday. We usually end up having a blazing row by day three but this time I will suck Valium and try and generally stay very Zen and not react and generally be very mature. Last time she asked our 68 year old neighbor Lottie if she and her husband still had sex to which Lottie replied, "Oh gosh no, we don't do that anymore!" Apparently Lottie wasn't offended. Maybe she is deaf and thought my mother had asked her whether they still played tennis. In any case, there are sure to be lots of swings and roundabouts on mama's visit. I have given her a project to organize Sausage's sixth birthday party so no doubt it will be a big event. I am hoping for the Alice in Wonderland theme so I can have plenty of magic mushroom tea but other party themes are welcome.

Any ideas how I can stay calm and collected amongst much nervous tension which don't involve firearms?


In other news my romantic comedy Confessions of a Cake Addict is to be published on July 31st by Agora International in English and Spanish. Initially it will be published as an ebook but they may do print later. If you do only one thing for charity this year do this, reach deep into your pockets and buy this book. It will make you laugh! It will make you cry! It will make you hungry.

What's the book about you may ask? Well...

When she's down, Londoner Kate Pickles reaches for cake. While she piles on the pounds she loses hope that she can ever find love. Until, on a whirlwind trip to Vienna she gets involved in the filming of a Bollywood movie, meets the man of her dreams and loses her heart and the pounds in the process. The inspiration for the novel came from actually watching a Bollywood movie being filmed in Vienna, which set my imagination in gear to create the tale of a plump girl who conquers her fears and her dependence on cake.

Mainly, it's hilarious! So buy buy buy. Do you like the cover? It has made me hungry.

Tango Time

Now back in the USA and what a strange sensation. I feel exactly like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz when she segues from the black and white start of the movie and wakes up in technicolor Munchkin Land. Because in Buenos Aires most people wear black, the vast majority of people have black hair, the buildings are mostly black and white, the smog from the traffic grimes everything dark, and it was winter and thus foggy and rainy. So it was a real shocker getting back to the USA and everything so clean, colorful and sunny, a dazzling assault on the senses. Buenos Aires is a slightly melancholy place it is true but I still love it.


On our arrival in Buenos Aires there was the slight indignity of being handed facemasks as we got off the plane. "Who do you think I am, Michael Jackson?" Emma asked which now seems like a joke in stunningly bad taste. After that the tour of Argentina hit all the right notes with Emma ....

This was the beautiful apartment we stayed in:



Going up in the funny lift:




Great cookies


Lots of jews so you need a Kosher McDonalds in Buenos Aires


Sausage as Bluebeard says: "I demand to have a kosher Big Mac or I will put a curse on you!"


Doing the tango



Girl drinking matte









Beautiful buildings and street markets selling funny junk


Dog walkers take twenty dogs at a time


Went to an artist's atelier and painted a portrait of Scarlett





Boat trip on Delta del Tigre river

Don't cry for me Argentina ...I'll be back. SOB.