Dom Joly

Dom Joly: (Minor) heroism on the riverbank

Published: 28 January 2007

We've got gorgeous river-paths right behind the house that stretch on for miles and miles should the need arise. My dog Huxley, now his testicles have been removed, has only one desire in life: to repeatedly fetch a stick until he can't stand up any more. He starts getting excited at the prospect of a walk at about 5am when he jumps on the bed and licks my face repeatedly.

Dom Joly: Face to face with my own mortality

Published: 14 January 2007

I've now passed the two-month, no-smoking barrier and really feel that I've kicked the filthy habit. I've tried to give up before but I always secretly knew that it would only be a matter of weeks before I was back on the cancer sticks again. (Look, I've already started calling them "cancer sticks", I am definitely so over the whole smelly thing.) The problem with giving up is that no one actually believes you as they've heard it all before so many times.

Dom Joly: A new year, no resolutions

Published: 07 January 2007

January... what a depressing month. The New Year's started, Christmas is over. It's time for some form of restraint. I've recently had to watch myself on television and have decided that the svelte young man that exists in my mind is not actually the same person who appears on the box claiming to be "Dom Joly".

Dom Joly: In search of some self-restraint

Published: 24 December 2006

It doesn't much feel like Christmas. I'm sitting on my balcony on the slopes of Table Mountain overlooking the beautiful city of Cape Town. It's quite difficult to get the old Yuletide spirit going in 30C. Still, I've had worse problems: back in the day, when, for some curious reason, I was a vegetarian (it's a long story, I was an animal-rights activist until I actually met one of them and then changed my mind), I spent a Christmas with a friend's family. The mother had really put herself out to cook the whole festive shaboodle. Then I turned up, announcing that I was a vegetarian. I remember sitting in the corner of the room glumly munching on a packaged vegetable curry from Waitrose as the rest of the party tucked into turkey and all the trimmings. I didn't last much longer as a vegetarian after that.

Dom Joly: A serious case of cabin fever

Published: 16 December 2006

I'm in the Arctic Circle. I really wanted to say that, as it sounds great. It also happens to be true. I'm in the northernmost part of Sweden. Unsurprisingly, it's bloody cold - about -20C - and there are only around three hours of daylight a day. This does unbelievably weird things with your body clock. For the three hours that it's light everyone frantically runs around doing strangely pointless things, like racing reindeer and being pulled around snowy woods by packs of huskies. It's quite fun, I suppose, but ultimately it's all a hideous form of heritage tourism as the actual locals all roar around on "electric reindeer", otherwise known as snowmobiles, my new favourite toys.

Dom Joly: How iTunes took over my life

Published: 10 December 2006

I'm in a state of total obsession. Following four changes of laptops and a complete hard-drive crash, my iTunes music collection is severely corrupted. For you Luddites out there, that doesn't mean that I have loads of Take That and Boney M in my music library (although I do have some of each and will defend my choices until I die, "Back for Good" and "Sunny" are pop masterpieces). It means that when I start to play songs, lots of them cut out halfway through, usually just as I'm reaching chorus climax in my car and I'm left screeching out loud to an ambient soundtrack. This has recently persuaded several unfortunate occupants of cars neighbouring me, in the perpetual traffic jam that is the M40, that I am a nutter.

Dom Joly: A lightning-quick getaway from the fair

Published: 03 December 2006

I snuck down to the turning on of the Cirencester Christmas lights this week. I went incognito as I didn't want to have a fuss made over me. Oh, and also because the local council has an arrest warrant out for me over some ridiculous demand for non-payment of my parking tickets. I made it very clear to them last year when I graciously agreed to turn on the Christmas lights that this would be on the understanding that all of my 53 tickets would be cancelled and that the planning consent for the rooftop effigy of myself would sail through. Apparently this was too complicated as there are now at least three policemen in the Cotswolds area that are actively trying to locate me. One of them spotted me three days ago as I was leaving the Daylesford farm shop. I was actually about to stop him and complain that I'd just been robbed. I'd had to pay £21 for a steak and £9.20 for a potato and I wanted something done about this. I stopped when I noticed that he was getting the cuffs out. I hit the accelerator and gave him a rigid digit as I roared off. You'll never catch me alive, copper!

Dom Joly: A local exhibitionist's bare-faced cheek

Published: 26 November 2006

Great excitement in the village - we have a man loose in the woods who bares his bum at passing walkers. The gentleman concerned chooses vantage points that are high above a couple of the more popular walks down here. When he spots somebody approaching he jumps up and down in an excitable manner and then pulls down his tweed trousers and wiggles his buttocks before running off laughing hysterically. When I was first told of this I couldn't believe it, but there have now been at least 10 sightings and he's become something of a local celebrity. This is deeply disturbing. In this age of instant fame, it could be only a matter of weeks before he starts being invited to open some of the local fêtes, fun-runs and, with Christmas fast approaching, he could even muscle in on the prestigious Christmas lights events.

Dom Joly: Fighting for sanity in a mad world

Published: 19 November 2006

Every Remembrance Sunday we all troop up to London to watch my dad march in the Veterans' Parade. He used to be in the Fleet Air Arm and fought against the Japanese in the Pacific. Fortunately there was a war on, so this was legal - otherwise he could have got into trouble. I found being a goth frightening enough at that age, so God knows how he managed to keep it all together. I have an enormous respect for the fact that he did.

Dom Joly: Brainwashed by the hippies

Published: 12 November 2006

I'm not feeling well. If you read last week's column, then you'll know that I've been in close contact with hippies in India for about three weeks, and I feel unclean. I really hope that I haven't caught anything, but you never know.

Dom Joly: Battling with the Bumshanka Brigade

Published: 05 November 2006

They say that you hate India for your first three days and only then do you start to love it. They, whomever "they" might be, also say that you'll always loathe the particular place you first arrived in. For me, it was Bombay and "they" were right. The city is a seething cauldron of humanity - insufferably hot and humid after the monsoons, and it takes two and a half hours just to go downtown. I'm sure that there's loads to experience and appreciate, but I couldn't wait to leave.

Dom Joly: A holy parrot told my fortune

Published: 29 October 2006

My arrival in Bombay... sorry Mumbai. When was that meeting held about changing the name, and why wasn't I present? Must be something to do with ducks. Peking has gone the same way, but I digress. Where was I? Oh yes, my arrival in Mumbai on an elephant. It was bedecked in swastikas, while I sweltered in the 40C heat in full period Raj mufti. I'm not really sure why. I think I'd thought it would be funny when I was back in London and a little tipsy.

Dom Joly: Crocodiles, elephants and unnerving Aussies

Published: 22 October 2006

I made it out of the outback. There were times, specifically when I had to sit on a crocodile, when I really thought that this was where it was all going to end. As usual, I was predicting the headlines: "Minor pom comedian eaten by crocodile, no Australians harmed" (The Darwin Gazette); "Five-metre crocodile calls in chums to help eat porky local comedian" (Wilts and Glos Standard). But, the leader writers must wait as all was well in the end. I'm now in Melbourne, waiting to catch a plane to India, my next destination. India, of course, has her own particular dangers. My six-year-old daughter Parker, who's just helped her school raise some money for a leper colony over there, is now convinced that I will catch the disease and was most curious on the phone.

Dom Joly: Campfire stories and wallaby tails

Published: 15 October 2006

I'm sitting under a corrugated roof on the terrace of the remotest bar in Australia. It's 45°C so forgive me if this comes out a bit weird. The thing is, it is all a bit weird up here in the "top end" of Australia. I'm in the Northern Territories, an area that can easily fit Great Britain into it 10 times but has a population of only 200,000.

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.

Oct	JAN	Mar
	29
2005	2007	2009