Ges on the Box; There’s no time to chat, the telly’s on

HE says I never listen to him, Him Indoors. He swears I never hear a single word he says. I emphatically deny the allegation m’lord.

Of course I listen to what he has to say. I heard him when he popped the question didn’t I?

And I most definitely heard him when he told me how much his first (and unrequited) love meant to him. That’s something forever burned into my memory. . . I’ll have a word or two to say to you lady, should we ever meet.

But — though I wouldn’t admit this to him, and if you tell him I shall deny it — he does have a point. There are times when I only half listen.

However, in my defence, he does pick his moments. Like when Tony was just about to shove Liam down a great big chasm in Corrie. Him Indoors chose that very second to go through the fridge making a verbal shopping list.

I know having milk is important. Probably top priority when you want Weetabix for breakfast. But no contest when it comes to hearing what Tony Gordon has to say.

Then there was the nail-biting scene in “Holby City” as they struggled to save the Tam twins. Though I could quite clearly see that they were operating on a pair of dolls, I was so taken up in the battle that, with tears pouring down my face, I chose to almost ignore the love of my life telling me all about this huge bookcase-thing he’d had to piece together. Traumatic though flat-pack furniture making is, it isn’t a patch on deciding whether to share one liver between two or whip it all out of one and let the other doll fade away.

Fortunately, in case you missed it, both dolls survived.

It was probably during the “X Factor” judges choosing the final 12 that my best beloved decided to tell me what was in the newspaper.

Like the fact that it cost £50 million to make the Hovis advert. The one where he starts off before the suffragettes and brings home the bread 100 years later.

But the figure stuck in my head — £50 million seems an obscene sum to pay for an advert. Even a good one like that. (I bet the SCS furniture ads don’t even cost 50 quid). Though I don’t know where that little boy gets his uncut, unwrapped Hovis from in this day and age but, hey, that’s just me being picky.

I told everyone at work how much they’d spent. When I returned home, I told Him Indoors how surprised everyone had been.

He wanted to know who’d told me the Hovis ad cost £50 million to make. “You did,” I said. He shook his head, sadly. He’d told me, he told me, that the advert cost £5 million to make. “See Ges,” he said. “You never listen to a word I say.”

Five million? Oh, well. . . that’s all right then.

PS: In case you’re interested, the 300 million-part flat pack bookcase-thingy is finished. And he only had two bits left over. Remarkable.