The 2016 British Soap Awards: Part I...

I'm not very good at doing events. I sometimes struggle with small talk, I sometimes don't play well with others and I don't really have the hustling gene necessary to get the most out of such things. I also don't do clothes. The whole dressing-up thing escapes me. 

However, I was invited to be a judge at the 2016 British Soap Awards earlier this year, and I thoroughly enjoyed assessing the entrants, then taking part in the panel day and discussing and debating, then voting for the high points of the last soap year. 

Then, this weekend, it was time for myself and the Missus to don posh clothes and head to the glitzy event itself. 

First up was a haircut, so it straight to the barber's shop for a No.1 all over. Coupled with massive Seth Armstrong sideburns, it was job pretty much done. I had a bit of a shoe disaster so had to improvise, then found I'd lost so much weight that my suits didn't fit properly. 

On the plus side, the lady hairdresser said I had lovely, strong hair and a beautifully defined hairline. I wasn't wearing my specs so I couldn't see if I could repay the compliment by pointing out that she had, too. 

On getting to the event, I met a few people I sort of knew and discovered the following: 
i) Telling the story about my injured penis and how it was held by a man who ended up on the Sex Offenders Register is still quite funny. 
ii) My fellow soap magazine editors are facing the same declining market problems and large corporate insanity that I am.
iii) My plumbing joke is still funny. This goes: 'I'm thinking of a career in plumbing when the world of journalism finally implodes. But that's because I've watched an unhealthy amount of 1970s pornography and it seems to offer a lot of fringe benefits...'