This week Danny spoke about visiting clowns with his son and the problem of being the only man there in a room of mums, children and clowns.

The problem with doing this blog is that I have to read DANNY WALLACE IS A MAN. The problem with reading DANNY WALLACE IS A MAN is that you have to read DANNY WALLACE IS A MAN.

As previously mentioned, I’ve been avoiding reading this article in shortlist for some months (if not the whole thing). However, this week I eagerly took a shortlist off the bloke in the street and turned straight to read Danny’s insights for the week. I was bored after 2 paragraphs. We live in a world where men not only pay for expensive haircuts and carry man bags, but also enjoy spending time with their children. Danny just knows Dads spend a lot of time with mums- would we ever have guessed? Not having a child, by that I mean with my girlfriend, not that I am recreating the Arnie pregnancy in the film Junior, its difficult to identify with this weeks article. I once tried to work out how many girls would need to father my child for me to go on continuous paternity leave, it wasn’t economically viable as it tuns out.

Reading the article I noticed tricks used to make the article more chatty.

Using poor English in a sentence to give it a funny meaning, then correcting it so people get the joke. I take off my son’s coat, by that I mean I take it off him. I don’t go round wearing his coat. Cunning use of dropping a him and moving an off

And the use of brackets to make funny comments (note to self: this would look terrific on a T-shirt)

Those are the examples in his article but special prize for spotting them in this blog! This use of email language makes it read like an email from your mate, but English teachers must be rolling in their graves.

I realise that in my last blog I didn’t really comment on the article about park benches and instead elaborated on a couple of funny incidents. This time I’m going to talk about cinema because its oscar week and It made me think of the sort of ‘isn’t it funny moment’ that Danny would use (it’s easy to quickly switch tack when you are writer, editor and number one fan).

Cinemas create a natural conversation starter that is almost impossible to avoid. Much like eating a doughnut without licking your lips, it is impossible to not utter ‘what did you think’ after you leave the cinema. It’s on the same level as ‘busy night mate’ to a taxi driver. I’ve attempted to not talk about a film when leaving the cinema but its near impossible to do and also quite rude. However, it seems odd for that many people to have the same conversation at the same time, personally I don’t like to have conversation topics shared with nearby strangers.

The cinema would probably be placed fairly high on survey of people’s favourite places to go on a date.

“Hi, I really like you and want to get to know you, would you like to sit in silence in the dark with 100 strangers and watch moving images?”

It doesn’t add up as a place to get to know someone, unless you are gauging their pre or post dinner snacking habits. I concluded it must be a good date for people who don’t have much to say (wanting the post cinema ‘what do you think’ insurance), or a good one to ‘kill’ two birds and see a film that will soon be on DVD.

Kate will tell you we didn’t go to the cinema until we’d been going out for 6 months as I didn’t want to be branded a ‘what do you think’ coward.

Kate thought I could also write a blog about what the female Danny Wallace equivalent writes in Shortlists sister magazine Stylist. I could do this, but it would be difficult to comment on pretty patterns, bright colours and shiny things.