Chris Tarrant has been responsible for many things – including a few rich pub quiz bores and a boot-shaped hole in Guru’s television – but perhaps nothing as bizarre as this. It appears he may be behind a dramatic expansion of the job market for private detectives.
Apparently, professional investigators are now used by up to half the total number of people in the UK who suspect their partner of having an affair. The numbers using private eyes to snoop on their partners seems to have risen sharply since the infuriatingly cheesy Who Wants to be a Millionaire? TV show host was caught cheating by a detective hired by his wife, Ingrid.
Before we think about the ramifications of this trend, let us imagine the glee his wife must have felt in confronting him with the evidence. “Have you been phoning a friend, Chris? No? Is that your final answer? You did have a wife and kids… but I don’t want to give you that…” and so on until his perma-grin was well and truly on the other side of his perma-tanned face.
But back to the detectives. Apparently, they can earn up to £200 an hour snooping around in other people’s business looking for hints of mischief. It should make a good career opportunity for Mrs Guru if she ever gets tired of being the best ‘domestic engineer’ (see below) this side of the post office.
Executives? Don’t make me laugh
HR professionals who scoff at their plain and honest job title being changed to strategic business partner or director of organisational development, should spare a thought for ‘vision clearance executives’. These tradesmen, perhaps better known as window cleaners, came top of a recent poll to find the most laughable job titles in the UK.
Looking down the list, Guru was about to apply to be a ‘media distribution officer’ -until he found out it was paying £3 an hour and involved lugging copies of the Sun from door to door in his local neighbourhood. Surely that used to be called paperboy.
Mrs Guru also found herself on the list, superb ‘domestic engineer’ that she is. Just the other week, Yours Truly gave her a very positive assessment of her tea-making and vacuum cleaning skills in her annual review. He is now using her full job title rather than calling her a housewife.
Victoria Wood is unlikely to be tempted to change the name of her sitcom to ‘Education Centre Nourishment Production Assistants’ – but this is what dinner ladies have now become, according to the poll, carried out by video recruitment website www.jobs2view.com.
‘Space consultant’ sounded like the sort of thing that would earn Neil Armstrong an astronomical fee – but actually the first man on the moon would find himself with a hefty bill for hair gel as the role is more commonly known as estate agent.
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If you were hiring for a ‘head of verbal communications’, would you be happy to see the gum-chewing, boyfriend-phoning, vowel-dropping chav from your local dentist apply? She would be well within her rights to do so, as the job is otherwise known as receptionist.
Flabbergasted, Guru is off to practice his skills as a waste removal engineer – after all, the bins need taking out.
