Dom Joly

Dom Joly: My low-altitude air rage

Published: 08 October 2006

I'm very tired and arrive at Heathrow on my way to Australia. I've got a business-class ticket, for which I'm very grateful. I get to the queue for Club and a British Airways man steps in front of me. "What class are you flying, sir?"

Dom Joly: Horsing around with a load of bull

Published: 24 September 2006

I'm not really a horsey person. Living in the Cotswolds, you'd think I might have taken up polo or hunting, but I'm more of a lying-in-front-of-the-television man. That's not to say that I can't ride. When I was young, growing up in the Lebanon, I even had my own horse, called Calamity Jane, and I spent a brief period rather fancying myself as some sort of Levantine cowboy. During the Lebanese Civil War, when petrol was very scarce, I even rode to school on a couple of occasions. This would have been very cool if my mum hadn't insisted on accompanying me, leading Calamity Jane on a rope. You wouldn't have found Billy the Kid doing that sort of thing, and my interest quickly dwindled as I became the butt of many a joke.

Dom Joly: Drinking games down Mexico way

Published: 17 September 2006

I'm in Mexico City. As I read that first sentence it actually sounds like quite a cool place to be but, trust me, it isn't. It's the world's largest city size-wise and it's absolutely enormous. As you fly in, the place just seems to go on and on for ever. It seems impossible that anyone could ever get a handle on this city. Maybe no one ever does.

Dom Joly: My close encounter with American gorillas

Published: 10 September 2006

I'm off on my travels again. I'm flying to Mexico on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 - should be a breeze. I'm sure that there won't be any excessive security ramming inquisitive medical gloves up where the sun don't shine. I'm off to do another programme on alcohol. In this one I'm going to get a PhD in Tequila Studies - honest! It's lucky that I checked the costumes for the shoot in the office. We're headed for the desert, the Wild West of Mexico, and there are two cowboy costumes for Pete, my best friend who accompanies me on these taxing work outings. I was just checking the quality of the costumes (I recently had an unfortunate incident with a shoddy morris dancing costume in Russia) when I discovered two holsters complete with imitation revolvers in the bag. No one seemed to have thought that these might present something of a problem at airport security.

Dom Joly: An advert for slumping in front of the telly

Published: 03 September 2006

Ithink that I might be watching a tad too much TV at the moment. I emphasise that I think I am as I'm also spending quite a lot of time asleep on my sofa. Everything's getting a bit jumbled up - I'm not too sure what's real and what is the product of my heavily medicated grey matter.

Dom Joly: My tumbleweed moment

Published: 27 August 2006

I knew that there was something I wasn't looking forward to doing when I got back from Canada. I couldn't quite remember what it was until I happened to come across it in my diary. I don't normally put anything in my diary as I then have an excuse for forgetting it. For some reason I'd put this particular thing in there. There it was staring up at me: "Saturday - open Steam Fair", straight out of an Alan Partridge episode.

Dom Joly: Strip me naked and strap me to a metal seat

Published: 20 August 2006

So here we go again. I'm flying days after another major terrorist alert. At least it's from Canada back to the UK as opposed to the hell that is travelling anywhere in and out of the States. Canadian airport security are generally recognisable as human beings and don't seem to feel that a smile and a little politeness are any hindrance to their effectiveness as spotters of explosive-laden loonies.

Dom Joly: Wet'n'wild in Canada

Published: 13 August 2006

I had a slight communication problem with my in-laws as I was giving them directions to come up from Toronto. We're renting the place from a family called the "Hartvikssens". I gave a detailed description of how to find the place as it's quite off the beaten track. I finished by telling my mother-in-law to simply ask for the Hartvikssens when she got close, as everyone knows everyone round these parts. They were an hour late to arrive and we were just getting worried when their car rolled down the dusty track to the cottage. The problem turns out to have been my accent. For the last hour my in-laws had been asking all of the neighbours where the "Hot Vixen's" cottage was? They didn't get very much help, more a general sentiment that this wasn't that kind of area. One old boy did suggest a cottage down by the lake where the lady owner likes to sunbathe naked on her deck. I'm going to take the boat down that way tomorrow, just to check out the area, you understand.

Dom Joly: How Canada became my dirty little secret

Published: 06 August 2006

Bill Bryson was recently asked what country he'd like to write his next book about. He replied that he wanted to write about Canada, but when he mentioned the place to publishers they ran a mile. Unfortunately for you, I'm back here for my annual three weeks' lounging around Lake Muskoka, three hours north of Toronto. It's one of my favourite places and I spend all day zooming around in my boat getting lost in the myriad of islands.

Dom Joly: Dazed and confused at the circus

Published: 30 July 2006

When I was little, I was constantly faced with that annoying grown-up question - "what are you going to do when you grow up?" Sadly, I wasn't sophisticated enough at the time to reply with something casual like, "I'm not sure, it's a toss-up between serial killer and working the bolt in an abattoir." Apparently, I normally used to announce that I was going to run away and join the circus. I'm sure I never actually wanted to do anything of the sort. I think I'd seen an episode of Eight is Enough (a terrible US show broadcast on Lebanese TV in the 1970s) in which the tomboy daughter of a family took off and joined the local carnies. She seemed to have a great time hanging out with the acrobats and clowns. And, as it was only TV, the police were never called and no mobs descended on the show folk burning down their tents and killing their animals as punishment for kidnapping young children.

Dom Joly: Beirut's war comes to the Cotswolds

Published: 23 July 2006

It's 34C in the soothing shade of the large copper-beech tree that overhangs the rose garden's ancient dry-stone wall - the calm inner sanctum of my Cotswold abode. It's normally the place where I get away from everything: curl up with a good book and a pint of Irish cider, and crank up the iPod.

Dom Joly: I'm what's wrong with this bloody country

Published: 16 July 2006

I don't think I'll ever fit in down here in the Cotswolds, thank God. Take the other night: Stacey and I went to our favourite gastropub. As always, the place was fairly packed and we were put in a corner between two other tables.

Dom Joly: The trouble with Harry

Published: 09 July 2006

I'm aware that this column has been a tad anally fixated of late. I apologise and promise it won't happen again for some time - but, first, I need to offload this one, so to speak.

Dom Joly: Ah, the sweet seclusion of summer

Published: 02 July 2006

I don't get it. I'm really not into sport at all. I don't have a football club that I support. I've never worn "sports clothing" as casual wear. Sport and Leisure is my weakest triangle in Trivial Pursuit. I even turned down A Question of Sport the other week - it would have been embarrassing. Basically, sport's just not my bag; I am, after all, an ex-goth.

Dom Joly: Danger - unidentified floating objects

Published: 25 June 2006

From The Maldives to West Somerset - we'd promised the kids a holiday when Stacey and I got back from ours. So we took them to visit their great-aunt in Minehead. I know, The Maldives was probably the better deal, but I do love West Somerset and I wanted my kids to see it. In a single day, I took the kids up on to Exmoor to look at the wild ponies, down to the seaside for a spot of sandcastle-building, into some beautiful woods for a picnic, off to swim in clear rivers, and finished the day off with a cream tea in a picture-perfect garden overlooking the village of Dunster and its beautiful castle. It was heaven, well, apart from the river-swimming bit. Allow me to explain.

Dom Joly: How I faced my mortal dread of the massage table

Published: 18 June 2006

I'm in heaven, in the Maldives, on an island called Baros, with Stacey. I've been spending the week scuba diving, harassing manta rays and pestering water-weary old turtles.

Dom Joly: How I became a high-flying assassin

Published: 11 June 2006

To the Maldives for a week's scuba diving with Stacey. I love starting a column with the words "To somewhere..." as it sounds very international jet set. Whenever anyone writes a diary column for a magazine such as The Spectator, say Joan Collins or The Duchess of Kent, it always starts with something like: "To Villa Este for Count Borginose's 60th birthday celebrations. Paolo De Montiforte was there, looking not a day older than he did at Jonny Morgan's legendary bash in Naples in the summer of 1958."

Dom Joly: It's OK, Mr Cowell - I can feel your pain

Published: 04 June 2006

It's not easy being Simon Cowell. I know it's annoying that he's making millions of dollars a year, owns enormous houses round the world and still can't dress properly but, trust me, he's earned it. And for once I'm speaking from a modicum of experience: last week I made a rash decision to agree to judge a World Cup stand-up competition on Radio Five.

Dom Joly: Down on the marijuana farm

Published: 28 May 2006

Middle age continues its unstoppable colonisation of my life. I'm now so fully entrenched in two of the three Gs (golf, gardening and gonorrhoea) that have always represented middle age to me that whether I eventually achieve the third is becoming mildly irrelevant. It was mine and Stacey's sixth wedding anniversary last week. She gave me what I think was my best present ever: a top-of-the-range, personally fitted driving iron. The fact that my heart skipped a beat when I unwrapped it says all you need to know about the sad state of my life.

Dom Joly: I'll never gate-crash a book launch again

Published: 21 May 2006

Never go to award ceremonies unless you're getting an award. Never gate-crash a book launch unless you really care about the author. Simple rules for a simple life, you might think. I fell foul of one last week. Having been stuck in a tiny, sweaty editing suite all day, I staggered out on to a fire escape to see it was one of those beautiful, sunny days that occasionally grace spring-time Albion.

Dom Joly: My dog will never look me in the eye again

Published: 14 May 2006

As I dragged my suitcase over the gravel in the courtyard towards my front door, I began to have an unsettling feeling that something wasn't quite right. It wasn't an aesthetic thing: sure, the flash cars are now gone to make way for my pick-up truck (a beacon to my new downsizing coda), but everything else seemed the same. The graffiti on the main gate was still visible despite several lengthy attempts to get it off.

Dom Joly: The naked hairdressers of Moscow

Published: 30 April 2006

I'm driving through miles and endless miles of the middle of Russia. By car you appreciate the scale of this country and the problems that previous, more aggressive invaders must have faced here. At least the winter is nearly over. Spring is just making her first attempt at a counter-attack and seems, for the moment, to be winning.

Dom Joly: A voyage around my (very English) father

Published: 23 April 2006

At the moment, I'm down in the South of France visiting my dad. This morning, we played the first round of golf that we've ever played with each other. Fortunately, I didn't totally embarrass myself. He's 83 years old and he still beat me, but he's not the type to rub it in.

Dom Joly: Need a friend? Take the dog for a talk

Published: 16 April 2006

Two weeks ago I was the proud owner of a seriously flashy Porsche and an Alaska-destroying Range Rover Vogue. Two weeks ago I used to play the occasional round of "fun" golf with a mate. That was two weeks ago. Now the cars are gone, I'm a fully paid-up member of a golf club and I've been wandering around the forecourt of a local Mitsubishi dealership looking at estates and pick up-trucks.

Dom Joly: Raise a glass (or two) to Mittel Europe

Published: 09 April 2006

Just back from 10 days touring round Europe in a very fancy Jag. This was the second trip of my "investigative" TV series on alcohol. This time, we were focusing on beer and the ample consumption of it throughout Mittel Europe.

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