TV blog: 16 reasons why Top Gear and Sons Of Anarchy are the same programme, only different

ENTERTAINMENT

One is a tale of rogues blasting rival gangs in violent street brawls and the other is Sons Of Anarchy. What are the other themes the two programmes got in common.

An alarming time

There were a number of fiddly cross-matched plans I was due to execute the next morning, all reliant on there not being a sticky white meringue atop the railways of southern England.

So it was unsurprising that, come the middle of the night, an alarm sounded in my head. Or so I thought.

Once I had cleared my mind of buzzing Plan Bs, it turned out the alarm was real, emanating from a neighbour's flat.

My first thought was "drunken midnight sausage sandwich".

I never thought fire. Who ever thinks fire? I think heartless snack makers, marinated in Mackeson's, drifting off to Poker TV as sausages blacken in the grill.

(It is to the credit of the London Fire Brigade that, despite the cuts, they do not assume likewise.)

A sleepless night ensued. The sound was only lessened by toilet paper in the ears and a pillow over the head - not the way I dispatched the stout-infused sausage scorcher, you understand, but how I eased the pulsing irritation.

The day's plans thwarted by snow, I made myself at home. As did the alarm, which nestled irksomely in the aural milieu like a herniated fox at the breakfast table.

Contacting the estate manager, I kept silent about my sausage theory, which was unlikely to promote the door-splintering response I required.

Instead, I played upon the vision of smouldering corpses lying undetected while flames probed and prodded at neighbouring walls.

Someone should investigate, I said. He would see what he could do, he said.

By early afternoon, the alarm stopped. Silent applause. For it is a remarkable task, stopping a smoke alarm intent on alarming - requiring tenacity, guile and, generally, a hammer.

Alarms are connected to the mains and back-up batteries and yet when yanked violently free from both they continue to chirrup, like a beaten boxer who won't stay down.

It is as though the ready flow of electricity and dustballs of DNA have shocked into life a new species of highly-strung yelping roof turtle.

After the bomb, it will be the cockroaches and these nervy shell-topped terrors inheriting the earth, gorging on immolated pork products.

So the alarm stopped. Or did it? The high-pitched tone had now smuggled its way into the bandwidth of my tinnitus, acquired by years of nightclubs, rock gigs and roller coasters.

I couldn't be sure. I applied toilet paper and pillow again and still it was there, just above the hum left by Noel Gallagher at Knebworth sometime in 1996.

I hear it now. Real or imagined? I shall investigate once I've made myself a nice sausage sandwich.

The king of solo dining

I misread a headline today and came up with an idea and a business plan. The idea was OK, the business would be catastrophic but in case anyone pulls it off, you read it here first.

The headline read "The King Of Soho Dining" but, perhaps with Freud on my shoulder, I read, The King Of Solo Dining.

Now there's an idea, I thought (only mildly miffed because, by dint of the article, it was already out there, earning column inches).

Solo dining. More particularly specialist establishments for same. What would such places look like? Who would they attract?

The crude entrepreneur untutored in the ways of the cheerily non-gregarious would perhaps configure the place like a networking event. Or operate a "dining partner by happenstance" policy.

He would see singles events. He would run happy hours and operate a gaudy menu of cocktails. He would run the place like a double-glazing convention in Sutton Coldfield.

The wise entrepreneur (me, inevitably, in this scenario) would make tables for one not tables for two-with-one-missing. Crescent shaped tables with no empty docking points.

He would place distance between these crescents and ensure they were replete with all the necessary condiments (no leaning over to your neighbour for the salt). But he would pack in the numbers to avoid the sense of cavernous desolation. There would be the soul and individualism and a sense of exclusivity.

The wise entrepreneur would ensure the menu was exquisite (why bother otherwise) but comfortable (no forking a slice into a companions mouth with a "try this") and inexpensive (our "meh" threshold is low).

The tables would be fitted with wi-fi and the walls lined with books and pictures of obsessive, irascible high-achievers, like Isaac Newton. The service discreet. Tablecloths and silverware. Dim but not candlelit. Bustling but no waiting.

The idea, as stated at the outset, would be a disaster. Better off at home, of course. We crave solitude. We're a terrible target market for anything other than elasticated outerwear. It's self-evident.