Readers of Benny's eye on the streets pedantic corner

Good morrow eye on the streeters. I was having a think recently and I thought you're always reading me talk a load of twoddle about my gripes at the world, and I wanted to know what other people find annoying. I thought it can't just be me, Charlie Brooker, Karl Pilkington and Jack Dee that moan this much so I mailshotted my email address to see what other people thought.

Got my first reply today so I thought I'd use this section of my blog for people to get whatever it is off their chest

Here's the first then. It's anonymous but I thought just generally due to it's highly Benny style and character that it was worthy of publication.

The Capri Sun dilemma. 

Dear Benny,

I have been following your blog with a keen interest for some time now and have found your posts highly educational, amusing and liberating. However, I have felt for a while that there has been one key area that has grated at me, yet you have felt no haste to blog it to the nation. This key issue is the simple, yet intensely annoying, Capri Sun packaging. 

I am going out on a limb here, Benny, in hoping that your vast readership agrees with me, but Capri Sun packaging is possibly the worst designed and most exasperating packaging ever born to man. There are two key problems; firstly, and most obviously, the ridiculous angle of the straw hole, and secondly the bizarrely small amount that you actually get when you finally penetrate the hole (not a euphemism). For means of this correspondence, we shall deal with each of these core problems separately. 

The main, and lasting, problem is the harrowing ordeal that you are faced with when having to pierce the inaccessibly- designed straw hole. I am an able-bodied young man with perfectly good dexterity and motor control, so much so that I can seamlessly take the annoyingly spikey, individually-packed straw easily from its packet (which I have seen some struggle even at this early stage of the Capri Sun experience/ordeal). The process of piercing this absurd hole can take minutes of my precious time and the end result can vary from simply accessing the drink inside the foil container to varying degrees of spillage on myself and the surrounding area. I have wondered whether it is my approach to the process of straw hole puncture that is at fault, so have tried many angles and differing methods. For example squeezing the top of the container to create a ridge where the straw hole is exposed seems sensible, but this can guarantee spillage and I have known as much as a third of the Capri Sun be displaced by this method. An alternative is to try and angle the straw but just insert it point down. This can pierce straight through both sides of the container and a similar loss can be experienced. At a loss, I even tried holding the container upside down and piercing it upwards…It goes without saying that this was an abject failure. I am at a loss.

 This is not something that I have experience with other soft drinks in cartons, so I just can’t understand why the people at Capri Sun insist on this outrageous packaging. I despise it, and it is made so much worse by the fact that the juice is so good.

 Most other juice brands (Ribena and Um Bongo) aside don’t even have a scratch on Capri Sun. This is further annoying as in my workplace the choice is Capri Sun or Happy Shopper (I kid you not, they still make it) cartons which taste like bad Spar squash that has been under diluted and left on the side for at least a month for the water to go stale. The Capri Sun is the only decent and thirst quenching option. Why do they not just use a normal carton, or serve it in a can (it works for Rubicon!). 

This brings me to the second point. Perhaps it is again a design issue, but there seems to be, when the hideous and traumatic events of the straw hole piercing are over, there seems to

be so little to actually drink

 This is also truly odd because in the average Capri Sun there are 200ml whereas the average normal carton (Ribena aside) is 125ml. It always seems however, that you are done within three slurps of the delectable stuff. Why is this? Is it down to straw design, I mean admittedly they are outrageously spikey, but they seem pretty conventional. Or is it once again down to the absurd and thoughtlessly designed packaging which encourages you to squeeze, and gives you a shorter drinking experience? 

I am not sure what I aimed to achieve by this letter Benny, but I just needed a way by which to voice my concerns. I hope there are others out there that are suffering like me. I am a simple man, and just want Capri Sun to realise how much of the national time they are wasting and equally how much better the national mood might be if they changed to conventional packaging. Perhaps it is time for us to lobby for a Capri Sun Bill or even boycott the infernally packaged beverage altogether?

Have you any advice Benny? 

Yours Sincerely, 

Disgruntled of the web 

P.S. I recently asked a Congolese friend whether he liked Um Bongo. He said “What is that?”. It turns out we’ve all been lied to for years and it was actually just an advertising ploy. THEY DON’T DRINK UM BONGO IN THE CONGO. I am appalled and haven’t bought any since. 

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I agree entirely. That straw through the back shit. Can't be arsed with that. I remember it well from my childhood, if you go through the back you just have to suffer all the way down the drink. Cartons at the best of times are annoying though. It's like they have a thing now with this foil shit so they won't lower themselves to cans or proper cartons like normal people do. There should be the option. I had one burst in my bag once as well when I sat on it. Not good. You are right though the juice itself is sublime!!

Thanks for the email! Hope you like my pictoral additions. Fair play like the first one doesn't really fit but you know it had to be done.

Cheers, 

Benny.

(Anyone wishing to add their letters/emails to this feel free to forward me your gripes to bongobenny@hotmail.com, any I think worthy will get posted here and I'll get back to you with a little bit o' writing, thanks)

Walkers Crisps

Just a quickie today while I'm in the mood.

I've always loved Walkers crisps, I think they are a fantastically British institution and I often indulge, even though in recent years they have jumped on the 'trying to be healthy' bandwagon and have started reducing sat. fat and making their crisps so thin that they are about as filling as a lettuce leaf these days. And also despite the fact that their multipack bags are so small to reduce the amount of crisps they give away that it's always an insult when you open the packaging,  because the cheese flavour they bring out on occasion as a limited edition is the principle of evil made crisp and the smoky bacon ones are always slightly soggy. Otherwise I'm a fan.

However....I'm finding it hard to keep up my love for Walkers because of their bloody adverts. How much can one company over milk the cow? Argh. I used to like Gary Lineker!!!....Anyway, I sent them this. Hopefully I'll get a response better than the one I got for saying their crisps are too thin and how much I despise it when bad food companies make lame attempts to become more healthy. I want some bad food. Bad food is good sometimes. Anyway, hopefully they'll reply.


Dear Walkers,

I am in no way trying to be harsh but don't you think that the Gary Lineker crisp adverts have run their course? They've been running since 1995 and I don't think I'm alone in saying I think they are becoming more than a little tired.

I must admit that the original adverts were a genius concept, the first few were excellent, but it's just too much now. I think they are actually putting me off buying walkers.

I'm in no way a marketing expert, more of a portentous pedant, but I'm just getting fed up of the same old adverts from you. I thought maybe it was just me, but I've asked quite a lot of people and I've not met one yet that doesn't agree that it's time you moved on. I really wish I was a marketing/advertising expert because I'd have far more swing with this but I don't really understand what the team that comes up with the ideas for these adverts actually does. It's starting to look lazy. 'let's get Gary to sit behind some celebrity and steal his crisps' or 'lets throw a song into the ad and change one of the words to sound like a particular style of our range' being pretty much the only two themes that seem to run. You are becoming the 'Go Compare' of snack foods!

I assume you pay Gary a vast amount of money for these ad's and you will reply saying that you have conducted a 'tremendous amount of research' ,that sales are increasing, and that you are the leading crisp manufacturer in the U.K, but I think you owe it to your ever loyal customer base to come up with something new. I'm sure that a new angle would be equally as effective as the Lineker adverts were originally. In fact I think the brand is so established that I doubt Gary Lineker personally makes that much of an impact, especially if you consider how much he gets paid for it! I may be wrong, and as I say I'm no expert but surely for the amount of money thrown at Gary you could probably send huge teams of walkers uniform wearing reps promoting new flavours or doing little 'guess the flavour' (something you recently seem to have put a lot of Gary time into) campaigns in every major city in the U.K? Maybe you have done this as well but I've not noticed it so perhaps Gary is getting all the spoils?

I do some work for a small media company, and run a small blog, (Benny's eye on the street) so I'm tempted to go out and see what the people on the streets of the U.K think about the 'over milking' of the Lineker theme. Could be quite interesting to see what real people think face to face. I'll try to work it in.

Anyway, apologies for the rant. I hope you've read it. I think it's important, and despite my  pedantic demeanour I do really honestly think that it's time to ditch Gary.

Kind Regards,

Ben Greaves

People: Collectively less intelligence than a house brick

I've met loads of intelligent people in my life. Some of them too intelligent! Unless you are Stephen Fry you're always risking coming a cropper with someone that knows more than you about the things you thought you were pretty damn clued up about. You see most people are pretty knowledgeable about at least one thing.


Even the thickest person at the world has an interest that makes them good at something. That something is probably utterly useless and embarrassing like the rough ex prostitute/beggar at the end of my street that is definitely an expert on where to get the most hideous velour tracksuits, but at the end of the day she's still damn good at tracking them down. Almost as good as her boyfriend is at going out with his clothes inside out.


 If someone is too clever though it can be a bit frustrating. I went for a drink with a girl once that knew far more about every subject I'm good at it just made it impossible to have a conversation. It was ridiculous. She picked me up on absolutely everything. Fair play I do tend to lean more toward the school of 'know a lot about something but if you get stuck loosely base the rest on fact' but this girl was amazing. She knew everything about everything. She was like a walking Google. Every time I see that Eggheads program I always think they proper need her on there to re-address the goon to attractive balance. What an ugly set of bastards. Have you seen that Chris?

 What a goon. You know when people have one of those faces you just want to smack. That Chris is one of them. It's annoying me just typing about him. He looks like one of them things out of Fraggle Rock that nick the radishes, Gorgs, but he's actually more goonish. Look at Chris, then look at this Gorg fella. He could go double dating with Chris and Gorg would be the looker.

And that Judith Keppel.Well I've always been suspicious. Remember when she conveniently won that million quid on Who Wants to be a Millionaire when noone had won it in about two years, and she just strolled in there and walked the million? Turned out she was a millionairess anyway and related to Camilla Parker-Bowles and had Royal connections..Hmm, we'll leave that for another rant.


Anyway, this girl was smart. When I end up being pulled up on facts I thought I was accurate on regarding the 16th Century Tudor Court I knew I was more than meeting my match so I kind of gave up on trying to talk about anything and that was that. 


Ok, so we've ascertained that some people are intelligent. How come then, if there are so many people that are intelligent is the 'Human Race' as a whole is such a set of dribbling idiots?


Collectively we are absolutely useless. If an alien came down and looked at us they'd probably just wipe us out and start again. Hold on, this brings another angle to the 'Great Flood' again. (I always end up on religion at some point)


"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." (Genesis 6:5)




could well have been...


" And the Aliens saw that the thickedness of man was rife in the Earth (capital letter surely, come on Bible, you stick one in 'He' so surely a fucking planet gets one), and that every imagination of the thoughts of his and her (see mine's more PC) hearts was fille'd (they put stupid pointless spellings in like that for no reason I've noticed in most Holy scriptures, never understood why) with emptiness 'xcept the patronising meddlings of Jeremy of Kyle, and banality Danceth on Ice." (Benesis 6:5)




People are absolutely pathetically dense as a whole. So many people believe exactly what they hear it's just embarrassing to listen to.


 I think the only reason we don't hunt witches, burn heretics and believe in things that should only exist on Iron Maiden album covers is because these people in the modern world are distracted by time wasting technology (like er..blogging, Facebook, mind-rot TV) so don't have as much time to worry that someone may be 'The Harbinger of Evil'.


 I don't think we've actually progressed from as the telly calls it (on channels I watch) 'The Medieval Mind'. 


You can pretty much prove this by looking what people collectively want to read about when they run out of stories about Cheryl Cole going back to a complete knob that cheated on her or what presenter has snogged some little boy that can't even shave from some reality TV show boy band. Between episodes of Dancing on Ice and X Factor middle England reverts back to the Medieval Mind before you can blink.


 It's slightly more hidden in social culture these days as the tabloids seem to have cunningly disguised their 'Dark Ages' ways in this 'pretending to be a friend of the everyday man/woman' way they do but it's still there. Only the focus has switched from witches, demons, and general heresy to paedophilia, governmental tax dodging, and immigration. I'd add religious hatred to that one as well, but the whole thing is so old hat I'm surprised there's not a couple of WMC's clubbing together, nicking the flag off their bar wall,chucking some chainmail on and booking a couple of 40 seaters over to Jerusalem for a ruck.


The collective mind is thick as two short planks. Why else would anyone within their right mind in the lower middle classes vote Conservative? It's obvious to an individual that the logic behind their general 'idea' is to let the rich get richer whilst the poor suffer. Why else would they put a tax on pasties? You can see how collectively thick people are just by the way that the government went about showing people they were down with the kids when it came to pasties. People are so thick collectively that politicians from both sides of the commons actually know they can convince some of their voters that they eat pasties like normal people do and can do this in a no way 'staged or false manner' Hmm..Did you see that footage of MP bigwigs going into Greggs surrounded by cameras? It was actually embarrassing but I bet it made a few collective pockets of middle England believe it was actually real and not staged. Because we are collectively stupid of course!


 We saw David Cameron make a right plum of himself when he exclaimed that he was a 'pasty lover' then went on to say he'd had one at Leeds train station at a pasty shop that's been closed a couple of years. There's been a lot of talk about this on telly but there's one fact about this that's sorely been missed out. Everyone focused on the fact that the shop has been shut for a couple of years which invalidates the story, however I have a different seperate qualm with our Dave. That pasty shop is a terrible example of him having a pasty to be 'down with the working classes', one of us, a normal every day guy. This is because the chain in question is a fucking rip off. 


Normal people can't afford pasty time at the West Cornwall pasty Company. According to 'What's for Lunch' on the Londoner website (it doesn't say on the WCPC site as far as I can find) the prices of their pasties range between £2.50 and £3.20 on the standard menu for the pasty alone. I think the large cornish traditional variety is £4 just for the pasty!! if you start adding in little extras like drinks and snacks it's getting ludicrous. If you then think that for a Wetherspoons beer and a burger it ranges between £3.99 ( the cheapest I've seen it at 'The Stick and Twist' in Leeds to around £7.00 (for the gourmet burgers with all the trimmings), for this you get a sizeable burger, chips and best of all a beer!!!!A big one too. Not a girly half or a bottle of pop. 


back on pasties for a moment, this is why I think most comedians and media surrounding the Cameron pasty gaffe missed a trick. I think not only did Cameron put his foot in it by saying that he had a pasty at all, but his choice of pasty shop makes him look more like a fucking Tory boy than he already did!! Also, as someone who lives in Leeds I know it's a shame Dave didn't venture one minute up the road to Albion place because he would have been struck with this horrific choice!! Does he choose Tory boy £4 a slice, or does he slum it with Mr Five knuckle shuffle there outside Greggs?

People, have a fucking word and remember,


One man invented the telephone

A group of people invented the telephone dumbell!

Information on prices taken from following sites:

http://londonist.com/2007/06/whats_for_lunch_4.php 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/poll/2012/mar/29/store-wars-pasty-shop-west-cornwall-pasty-company