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Six jobs you wanted to do when you grew up, and how things turned out

YOU had big dreams back at primary school. Vet, Chelsea striker, palaeontologist: which would you be? Let’s see how that worked out: 

Footballer

A pretty decent player for your local youth team, you were once invited for a trial by a scout from a top-flight club. But the night before, you joined your friends for some illicit snakebite-and-blacks in the park, causing you to vomit in the youth coach’s parking space the next morning. Now you do Sky installation.

Hollywood star

You imagined yourself shooting scenes for a blockbuster in the backlot of a Hollywood studio. Your California dreaming came to an end when you were caught nicking a crate of scotch from round the back of Budgens, a conviction which precludes you from entering the USA. You were kicked out of your local am-dram society for fighting.

Astronaut

Inspired by Blake’s 7, you thought going into space would be a realistic career option and that you personally would be a crack shot with a laser rifle. Maths, physics and remaining in peak physical condition didn’t seem relevant, so you didn’t bother. Now you’re a security guard working night shifts who trolls Tim Peake on Twitter.

Pop star

You loved singing and worshipped Westlife, so when the chance came to audition for the X-Factor you went for it. And the next year. And the next. Eventually you got on as a brief comedy segment because you tripped up on the stairs. Sometimes people remember it when you take your van of karaoke stuff to pubs.

Paratrooper

An ambition severely hampered when you discovered a pathological fear of flying on your first foreign holiday to the Algarve. Plus your inability to read a map led to four of you being airlifted off Dartmoor with hypothermia while doing your Duke of Edinburgh.

Prime minister

You wanted to make a difference. You believed that people could be better. You ran for school council and head girl and won the vote. But your primary school wasn’t a feeder for Eton so you never stood a chance. Now you don’t even watch Newsnight. 

Boris Johnson's guide to Hartleypool

HARTLEYPOOL is a smashing little seaside resort, a true jewel of the north-west. Here’s an unprompted article detailing what I love so ruddy much about it.

The culture

Naysayers on Wikipedia claim it is just ‘a port town in County Durham, England’. I say it’s so much more than that. Hartleypool is a veritable Athens of modern times, housing such beacons of cultural life as the Battery Museum and an art gallery, which I imagine is a great place for using Latin pick-up lines on posh women.

The people

My favourite thing about Hartleypool is, without a shadow of a doubt, the 93,000 people who live there for whom we’ve created 180,000 new jobs. They scorn the Islington elite. They’re not interested in handouts but real, sustained British investment in their British future, and their children’s British future, and their grandchildren’s children’s British future.

The monkey hanging

I simply adore Hartleypool’s xenophobia, to the extent of hanging a monkey because they thought it was a Frenchman spying for dastardly old Napoleon Bonaparte. A good example to us all. Rest assured I’m not at all unnerved by their football team’s monkey mascot H’Angus, who no doubt Labour would eliminate as a ‘racist hate crime’.

The illuminations

Hartleypool is, of course, most famous for its gorgeous light show every Christmas time. Like moths to a lambent flame, easily-delighted Northern folk trek hundreds of miles to visit the stunning seafront and take in the Vegas-like glamour, enjoying ballroom dancing in the famous tower and a tram ride off the end of the pier.

The monkey mayor

In 2002, the people of Hartleypool elected a monkey-man as mayor. And whether he was a man in a monkey suit, as people claim, or a time-traveller from an ape-ruled future as I believe, I respect any electorate that votes for a novelty candidate for mayor as a laugh, then re-elects them because why not. Such people are the backbone of Britain.

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