Goodbye, award, it's been real

Advanced astronaut training.
I never made it this far

I'm supposed to pass on the award I got the other day, so it goes to Kate Lightfoot. Kate runs a warm and chatty blog from a village in Spain and she never fails to cheer me up, although her recipes are making me chunky. And no, those aren't her real ears.

I am reminded that a condition of the award was to reveal seven things about yourself. A deal's a deal:

1. I have been in a succession of bands with dubious names; The Flying Bogeys, The Sensible Jerseys, The Puffy Daddies, and these days, Hot Rabbit, to name but a few. The Sensible Jerseys gave Billy Bragg his first gig at some godforsaken college in North London. He blew us off the stage. I then left and they promptly got a record deal

2. I was turned down for astronaut training because of claustrophobia, and a nasty propensity for haemarrhoids in zero-gravity situations. Since that fateful day, I have never been on one of those free-fall rides at Thorpe Park, Six Flags, etc

3. Whilst attending the Bolshoi ballet in Moscow, as you do, I once stood at the next urinal to Peter Gabriel. And no, I didn't take a sneaky look at his manly parts, I was too busy trying to look nonchalant. This is tricky when you're peeing, even though Frenchmen seem to manage very well. We ran into David Byrne of Talking Heads in the hotel lift that very same weekend

4. I started a software company in the UK and US on the very same day (with some buddies, obviously). Its first name was 'Harlequin' which here means 'witty and sharp', but which stateside turns out to mean 'buffoon'. We quickly changed it to MATRA which everyone then mistook for MARTA, the Atlanta so-called public transport system

5. I drive a shiny Jag-wah supercharged turbo nutter bastard, and a really beaten up old Nissan Primera, and I think on balance I prefer the Nissan, even though it's a bit smelly from taking garden rubbish to the dump. This is mainly because it has more seats, and it doesn't have those ludicrous alloy wheels that cost you a bazillion quid to fix if you brush up against an awkward obstacle, like, oh, a pedestrian, or Sainsburys

6. I cut my own hair, apart from the awkward curly-wurly bit at the back which my wife hilariously pretends to do, but actually leaves so the kids can have a good giggle. Ha! Didn't think I knew, did you?

7. While revealing facts about myself I always tell one lie. Or is it two?