Thursday 23 September 2010

Reply - Jamie Oliver

Luke Angel is an amusingly ironic name for the potty-mouthed Bedfordshire youth who sent Barack Obama an email calling him a 'Pr**k' the other day and who has, as a result, been banned from America forever.

I thought that the US First Amendment enabled one to label others as the personification of the male genitalia, but evidently not.

I have a feeling that Luke isn't overly bothered about his new-found restriction of movement within the US borders, he's probably too busy learning how to hotwire cars or shouting down the phone at exploited Polish Domino's Pizza workers in Luton for putting to much pineapple on his thin-crust Hawaiian.

This country

I would never be so rude to President B.O. , largely becasue I'm still hoping that he'll agree to be interviewed for my book, where he can vent his spleen about British Petroleum and Luke Angel.

I've often found that Celebrity chefs are a great deal like London buses (they both use Oysters and are usually seen advertising things).

In other words, nothing for ages and then two come at once. I say that because just days after hearing back from Delia Smith, I now have a reply from Jamie Oliver. Well not actually from young James himself.

Bizzarely, I went to the extraordinary length of posting a letter in a post-box no more than 30 metres from his house (as it's also only several hundred metres from mine) - and yes I do know where he lives, and no, please no more emails from anyone asking me for "so-and-so's" contact details, do your own research.

This letter was presumably then whisked off to Mount Pleasant in Clerkenwell before being sent back to the same street where it was dispatched two days earlier.

Well I'd like to think that at the very least I'm keeping some poor member of the Royal Mail employed and so that's one extra postperson who's less likely to go on strike.

Actually yeah, you should all be thanking me for that.

Anyway an emailed response from no-one in particular, a.k.a 'The Enquiries Team', stated:

Dear Julian, Thank you for your letter. Jamie receives letters every day with requests for his involvement with many worthwhile causes, every one of which he would dearly love to support. As we are sure you can appreciate, unfortunately it is not possible for him to support them all.

He is currently involved with several charities, including his own; The Jamie Oliver Foundation, but due to time constraints from his busy schedule he is unable to meet with you with regards to your charitable organization.
I am sorry Jamie cannot help you on this occasion, but we wish you every success for your very worthwhile cause.

I was going to respond that I don't own a charitable organization, but considered that to be a bit facetious and so have left it at that.

In any case, once again I am simply grateful to have received a reply.

Meanwhile in other news, I've recently learned how to make a white wine and lemon sauce for fried chicken escalopes. True story.

I'm now learning how to boil peas.


Sunday 12 September 2010

Reply - Mervyn King

Mother mother, there's too many of you crying brother, brother brother brother.....etc

These lyrics written by Marvin Gaye have absolutely nothing to do with this post, nor with the letter that I today received from the bank of England, but you know how it is when you get a song stuck in your head.

Mervyn King is the name of the current Governor of the Bank of England who was ranked 389th out of the 3,000 odd individuals who voted for me on Facebook. Mervyn King is also the name of an established English darts player who didn’t feature anywhere on the list, but on the bright side, he did win the 2004 World Masters.

Hence the mocked up photograph above of the economist Mr King playing ‘arrers, as kindly photoshopped by my good friend Michael.

I was actually thinking to myself that running a bank is actually a bit like playing darts, nothing to do with pricks sitting on the board or anything quite as crude as that, but to succeed in both you need to have a steady hand, a keen eye and an ability to drown out the remonstrations of the general public.

I digress.

I received an email not three hours ago from a lady called Alexandra, basically because it was four hours ago. The email, which had an attachment, read:

"Please see the attached letter from Ed Drew.


Many thanks"


I opened the attachment which was a pdf adobe acrobat thing and it had a photocopy of a letter that was written to me by Ed Drew.

The letter read:

"Dear Mr Segal,

Thank you for your letter to The Governor regarding the Union Jack for Barrack which he has asked me to respond to on his behalf. He hopes your project goes well, but regrets he is unable to be involved.


With best wishes,"

This seems a slightly roundabout way of informing me of the Governor's decision but perhaps they are saving on stamps.

This reply to the negative from one banker does not fill me with much hope of receiving an affirmative response from the only other bank who scraped into the top 500, a certain Fred Goodwin......

Wednesday 8 September 2010

Reply - Delia Smith

Whenever I see an unripe banana I am reminded of Norwich.

Not because I once had a horrific dietary experience on a narrow boat as I floated past the glittering jewel of East Anglia but because its football team play in a citron and emerald strip.
Or yellow and green to the less pretentious.

As I’m sure that you already know, famous food-preparer and mouth-piece of Waitrose, Delia Smith currently acts as the Chair(wo)man of Norwich City FC, obviously a natural profession for a chef to go into.
As a result, since her mind is currently beffudled with the problems of ensuring that an under-achieving team find their way back into the top echelons of English football, I was delighted to receive a reply from her charge d’affaires courtesy of a letter that I had sent to the Norwich City Football Club.

I was convinced that the football ground was situated at Carrow Road until someone kindly informed me that the correct address is actually Letsbe Avenue.

A lady called Jane writes:

Dear Julian

Thank you for your recent letter to Delia, which I acknowledge.

Delia has recently returned from her summer break and now continues with her commitments to Waitrose, among many other things. Sadly this does mean that we are currently unable to turn to her personal correspondence until her diary allows.

With kind regards


I’m not entirely clear whether that means that her diary may allow us to meet at some stage in the future or not but I don’t want to labour the point so it is probably a case of don’t call them, they’ll call me.

Possibly

Friday 3 September 2010

Reply - Robbie Williams

Sarah is an Assistant to Josie Hill, who is an Assistant to Robbie Williams who is a world-reknowned singer who sadly can't assist me with my project.

But it was nice of team Robbie to reply.

He ranked 17th out of the 3,121 famous Britons who were voted for and I've got to say that he is my favourite of the former Take That members.

I've 'got to' say it because he's the only one who made the list of 500 and therefore is the only one who is likely to ever stumble across this website although that's probably unlikely itself.

Anyway the email from Sarah read as follows:

Dear Julian,

Thank you for your recent letter.

As I’m sure you can imagine, we are inundated with requests such as yours and therefore, charitable efforts (including autographs) are given only to raise money for 3 chosen charities; Unicef, Donna Louise Hospice and ‘Give it Sum’. ‘Give it Sum’ is an umbrella organisation of personally selected charities that Robbie wishes to benefit....

We are very aware how frustrating this must be, however we do hope you can understand our position.

We wish you all the very best in the future.

Kind regards,

So it was nice to know that at the very least, I got Robbie's contact details correct. I was much pleased to get the response, forgiving the fact that the words 'Dear Julian' were in a different font size to the rest of the email and hence were probably slapped onto an existing standard response.

Despite the fact that I was informed about the three charities that this young man of Stoke currently represents, I know that his fund-raising efforts go over and above this triumverate. I know this because I recently read that he's going to be performing a charity concert for Help for Heroes, the charity that I'm representing, later this Autumn and I have a feeling that he's likely to raise just a bit more money than for them than I do.

As for me, I off for a wet week in Italy. Quite literally 'wet' in fact, since the weather report of the US Airforce's 21st Operational Squadron tells me so.

Oh well, non è l'estremità del mondo.