SubscribeI’ve long suspected that staying in is the new going out. Not so much round here, you’ll understand, where we have so many bars and restaurants of all sorts, but for much else of the country which is either anonymous dormitory suburb or even faux countryside. People like to go on about their ‘busy lives’, but in truth it’s too entertaining at home. When you can pick up an okay multi-region DVD player for less than £30 and a pile of DVDs for less than a tenner each, its not that people are really busy it’s that they’ve only time to sit around. And I don’t think that’s healthy. It makes me wonder how people can know much about the world they live in when they don’t properly interact with others.
And of course singles now face added risk of ridicule. I’m on about Scott Mills Flirt Divert. For non-Radio 1 listeners the idea is that should you find yourself on the receiving end of unwanted attention, you offer the Flirt Divert number instead of your own. When the amorous stranger thinks they’ll calling you, they’re actually leaving a message for broadcast. People arrange dates, stand-up the victim, then laugh when their ‘Where are you?’ call’s broadcast to the nation. That’s a little too cruel. I think someone taking an interest is a complement and suspect those who succeed in humiliating people this way probably deserve to be single and shut in their boxy homes watching DVDs while growing fat on ice cream.
