I’M not proud of myself. Every time I hear something about Covid restrictions lifting, my heart sinks a little.

This has nothing to do with concern for public health. No, it is because things rather suit me the way they have been for a while.

I can work from home easily enough and, if I have to go into the studio, the journey in is fine because public transport is still fairly quiet and so are the roads.

Before and after work I can generally find something to eat without the fuss of queueing.

If there’s shopping to be done, the shops tend to be quiet. If I fancy a drink, pubs will be nice and peaceful for me.

I don’t even mind wearing a mask — it reduces the number of times I get stopped and asked about whether West Brom are blowing their promotion chances.

Talking of football, I almost miss the days when I wasn’t allowed to be at the matches to suffer there in person.

It all suits me rather well. But it would do, wouldn’t it? I’m all right, Jack.

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It’s all made my life rather easier but that’s fine for me to say when it’s not my livelihood that’s been under threat.

My outlook, it dawns on me, has been disgracefully selfish. Every quiet road, empty bus, peaceful pub or queue-less café is all good for me but someone, somewhere, is paying a price for each of these things.

The roads and buses are only quiet because the people who would have been using them aren’t doing so because they don’t have jobs to go to and/or haven’t got the money to do much with their leisure time.

Quiet shops, cafés, restaurants and pubs mean fewer people getting paid to work in these places.

And they, in turn, therefore won’t have money to spend in any of these places themselves.

Yes, someone’s always been paying a price and it’s not been me.

I was jolted out of my smugness this week when I was away on the coast for a few days. There’s a pub in the village I popped into early each evening for a pint.

There I sat, enjoying the drink and the peace and quiet. Why, there was hardly anyone else in there, just how I like it. Lovely.

But on my last evening when I sauntered down for my peaceful pint in the all but deserted pub I found it was shut. The boss had obviously decided it wasn’t worth his while opening, and who could blame him.

Pubs will start buzzing again

This reminded me of a story told by the playwright Arthur Miller. As a teenager, just before the Wall Street Crash in 1929 which ruined so many people, he happened to take the pocket money he’d saved out of the bank and bought a bicycle.

Phew, he thought, when everything collapsed, I didn’t lose my money and I have a nice bike. Clever me. But the following day someone stole his bike.

The point being that if you’re fine, but most people aren’t, sooner or later your world will come back to bite you.

So now everyone needs to start getting busy again.

Working from home has been fine for some, and might well be the way things need to go to help the environment, but it has had its price — probably not one paid by those able to do it.

More of us getting into work results in more of us having work in all the shops, cafés and pubs which will start buzzing again. Grumps like me will have to like it or lump it. I will choose to like it.

Not so long ago it was our duty to stay at home for the protection of us all. Soon the opposite will start to apply:

For the good of our countrymen and women it will be our duty to be back out there getting things moving again.

Let’s do this.

LOAF, LAUGH, LOVE

IT’S going to take me a while to get over the death of Meat Loaf at the age of 74.

Forty years ago, as a teenager, his concert was one of the first I went to. I sat halfway back, to the right of the stage, slack-jawed in awe at this man mountain belting out Bat Out Of Hell.

A quarter of a century later I was presenting The One Show and Meat Loaf was our guest.

To my horror, one of our more, er, imaginative, producers thought it would be a good idea for Meat Loaf and I to race each other on mobility scooters. No, me neither.

His scooter had a bat stuck on the front of it so he could be, you know, like a bat out of hell.

I was mortified that the great man was going to be demeaned in this way.

But my man Meat was as good as gold and seemed to enjoy the whole thing.

The race was declared a draw, though I felt sure he’d cheated.

Meat Loaf was everything a rock star should be: Big, flamboyant and, best of all, someone capable of not taking himself too seriously.

PUTIN IN DOG HOUSE

GEORGE W BUSH, the former American President, tells a troubling story about Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin.

On a visit to the White House, Putin noted the small size of the Bush family’s beloved little terrier, Barney.

A year later the President and Mrs Bush went to visit Mr Putin in Russia.
“Vladimir says, ‘Would you like to meet my dog?’” recalls Bush.

“And out bounds this huge hound, obviously much bigger than a Scottish terrier, and Putin looks at me and says, ‘Bigger, stronger, and faster than Barney’.”

How do we deal with someone whose mind works like the worst kind of dog owner in a park near you, but is currently massing troops at the Ukrainian border?

I wonder what he thought this week when Liz Truss, our foreign secretary, told him to behave himself.

Can’t imagine him quaking in his furry winter boots any more than he was when Gavin Williamson, then defence secretary, once told him to “shut up and go away”.

Just who would he listen to? I suggest a few choice words from Roy Keane, flanked by one of his really big dogs, might do the trick.

As a footnote to the Bush-Putin small dog-big dog story, someone who knew Putin well is supposed to have said to Bush: “Just be grateful it was only the size of your respective dogs he was comparing.”

Spurs’ injury time miracle at Leicester this week, going from losing 2-1 to winning 3-2, put me in mind of one of my worst ever days as a West Brom fan – and believe me, that’s a very competitive field.

It was nine years ago. We were 2-0 up at Reading and cruising. It wasn’t even close. Some of the home fans started to file out. We chanted, “Is there a fire drill?” at them.

Then, with eight minutes left, Reading scored. And then scored a penalty.

And then, at bang on 90 minutes, scored a winner. Three goals in eight minutes.

Reading 3 West Brom 2.

We didn’t bother hanging around for injury time. The Reading fans chanted, “Is there a fire drill?” at us as we sloped away.

Funny old game.

DON'T BE FOOLED BY TOURIST SIGHTS

AN interesting thing happens in the BBC’s brilliant thriller series The Tourist.

In it, the extremely handsome Jamie Dornan has not one but two love interests.

Nothing unusual in that for a good-looking chap like him.

The thing is, though, that one of his love interests, Luci, played by Shalom Brune-Franklin, is drop-dead gorgeous.

But the other, Helen, played by Danielle Macdonald is, well, rather overweight. Certainly not your classic beauty.

But as the story progresses, it all subtly changes. His feelings for them change, and so do yours.

Well, mine did anyway. I know who I found the more attractive.

The pretty one was also a copper in Line Of Duty, and I’ve stopped trusting anyone in AC12 now, so she never stood a chance with me anyway.

LOANS THEFT SHAME

I CAN’T believe the absence of rage at the £4billion worth of fraudulently taken Covid emergency loans which the Government has said it will never get back.

No one comes out of this story with any credit. I know the Chancellor was in a hurry to help, but in the Treasury’s haste the scheme was plainly poorly designed and administered for it to be so easily fiddled.

And I can’t understand why Rishi Sunak and others aren’t spitting furious feathers at the people who stole from us all to the tune of £4billion.

A pox on them all, these thieves.

One day their grand- kids will want to know what they did in the great Covid crisis of the early 2020s.

“Oh, I stole a fortune from my fellow taxpayers,” they’ll have to say.

Shameful, really dreadfully shameful.

I'M ON A SCROLL

A COUPLE of things I’ve seen on Twitter. One made me wince in recognition, another made me laugh.

• US writer Delia Cai tweeted: “Another evening of staring at the big screen while scrolling through the little screen so as to reward myself for staring at the medium screen all week.” Ouch. That’s me. Stare at my computer all day then watch TV while scrolling on my phone at the same time.
• From something called Fesshole: “When I dry my dog’s paws after he’s been in the garden, I pretend I’m the 4th official checking a player’s studs. After I’m done I give him a pat on the bum and say ‘have a good game son’.”
• Love it. That’s what I’m going to do from now on.

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