On Disappointment

On Disappointment

Last Friday, I found myself in that there London, meeting a nice gentleman in an office in Hammersmith. Arriving far too early, I found on a highly unauthorised tour of the establishment that the company I was visiting shared the building with the top quality public service broadcaster The Poker Channel. Naturally, I had to go in and have a look.

You can imagine my surprise, then, that I found not a hotbed of gambling, debauchery dancing girls and assorted knavery; but an office full of respectable young men and women working away at computers. NOT ONE OF THEM was playing poker, shooting craps or betting with a near neighbour on a pair of flies running up the wall. Talk about a disappointment. I bet the people who work in the Top Trumps factory play Top Trumps ALL THE TIME, and there are penalties for not having the time of your life.

Poker Channel: You're a disgrace.

But then, life is just a dreadful series of disenchantments and disillusionments strung together between brief periods of hope and anticipation.

It's like rushing in from work every evening to watch The Simpsons on Channel 4, but you know full well it's only going to be a badly animated repeat from the first series.

It's like meeting your favourite footballer, only to find they are a complete twunt. You know who you are, Paul Merson.

It's like shelling out a tenner for your favourite band's latest long-player, only to find they've become shit, and the going rate for unwanted copies on Ebay is £0.01. You know who you are, Radiohead and far too many bands I could mention.

My biggest disappointment - now that you're asking - came in the mid 1980s on my return from a rather excellent summer holiday with all my college friends, to discover that I had failed my A-Levels quite spectacularly, and that not even Essex University would have me. I then repeated the same trick exactly a year later, learning the hard way that I am not as clever as I like to think I am, and listening to ropey New Romantic bands is no substitute for actual learning when trying to pass exams.

It has, coupled with the trauma of Ultravox's 1986 album 'U-VOX' (which resulted in the further disappointment of learning that I - nor anyone else for that matter - would never have sex with Debbie Lucas), only taken the best part of twenty years to get over this.

Midge Ure: Ure a bastard.

In this world where even the likes of TV's Nick Knowles are far more successful than you'll ever be, what, then, has been your greatest disappointment? Plz to note that I will personally search out anyone who says 'This blog post' and give them a good, hard punch on the conker.