via Steve Case’s New Ventures – CNBC.com.

2. You get on with an ex. Cerebrally this is known as A Good Thing. Let’s be honest, your DNA contains this person – you wouldn’t be the person you are today (tortured or otherwise) if this radiant addition to you life, hadn’t been. Sure, they’re obviously a slag or a dog, but that doesn’t mean to say you can’t at least be vaguely humanistic in their direction. Disregard this if you’re still infatuated and the slightest thought of them with another person has you parking your Toyota Yaris sideways on a railway crossing.

3. You enjoy your own company. This is especially useful if the most recent example of number 2 is very recent indeed. But let’s be honest, you know you best – and if you can’t figure out what you want then don’t expect anyone else to be there. Your determination and passion are an ever-critical component of your success, and that counts for relationships of a business or intimate (or both, you lucky bastard) nature. If you struggle to understand what you really want, take yourself away for a long walk. Just don’t do it by the edge of a cliff if you’re more desperation than seeking salvation.

4. You’ve closed the door on a loved one. Taking myriad of forms, this relates to the departure of someone close to you, in any context. Remember how you got here – and remember how you’re going. We’re all capable of independent means and it’s important you realise that, despite emotional entanglements and mental reliance, in the scheme of things we can thrive without leaning on A N Other. Spend a while understand the basics of Buddhism – Prince Siddhartha got it right, and if you take a minute to read between the lines, you’ll learn a whole lot more about yourself.

5. You love your mother. Love and attachment: big difference. Through the highs and lows and peaky troughs, she’s been there. Always. Whether or not you realise it, she loves you dearly and would walk the earth to be sure you’re safe and well. We all have our rows and discords. But be sure that in times of pain or pleasure, she’ll be doing all she can to make sure you’re never a mile away from a smile.

6. You know how to make it right. Argue all you like, but wisdom tells you how to bring it round. There’s a tiff round every corner – if you can be proactive and avoid it, so much the better. But even if you can’t, there’s a feeling inside of you – instinct – that drifts along your thought sequences to take you back to where happiness was. Don’t sweat if you have some cheeky banter and can’t figure out how to make it right, just spend some time talking to the other person and find out their point of view. Between the two of you you’ll figure it out naturally.

7. You’re following your dreams. We all have them, but few of us understand that dreams are simply goals. What makes the dream an achievable goal is setting actions between now and achievement that will take you there. Start now – don’t waste a minute. What do you want from life? Make it a challenge. And make sure to believe in yourself. Everyone knows you’re a special kinda person, so why don’t you? Write down your dream, take action now by setting some steps to achieve it. Give yourself a deadline. Did I say don’t miss a heartbeat? Get to it – make yourself proud. Once you start on the journey, you’ll realise delight you never knew existed. And you’ll be the best you can be.

8. Watch a Michael Moore film without smashing the telly. Granted of all the ten this might be your biggest conquest, but stick with it – I guarantee with perseverance you’ll get there one day. And in the meantime, Samsung will be your best friend. Talking of corporations, you should start your Moore spree by watching The Corporation. With the shock factor of Fast Food Nation, The Corporation reveals how your friendly everyday brands are poisoning you and your unborn children with a Frankenstein’s monster of negligence and grotesque greed. Every living system and life support system is in decline, and the world is only now waking up to the consequences of capitalist avarice. Behind the mask of idiocy Michael Moore is a natural genius and despite the negatives he unearths about the way we exist, he’s a clarion call to humanity and one we should all aspire to unite behind. And when we all work together? Behold the happiness of humankind!

9. Love your squeeze. Through good and bad, football and cooking, you made it to now. Who’s the one you wake up to each morning? Is there an axe in your head? To put up with you and your raging peculiarities, there must be something pretty damn fine about this partnership. Go and give him or her a hug. Buy him an iPhone. If my other half is reading this (especially the last sentence), I love you, honey!

10. You’re here. Not only have you reached the end of this saccharine set of cheery lines, but you’re not dead yet. You’re already ahead of umpteen billions of dearly deceased. Smile, cheer, spread some euphoria. Thanks for being you – keep at it, and you’ll be surprised at how much fun is in store. Now go pay someone a compliment and enjoy the weekend!

You see, habits can be good. Habit-forming needn’t be recklessly applied to the squalorous activities in life. You needn’t be a nicotine or narcotic junkie to be in the throes of habit.

Turn to that little angel on the opposite shoulder. Ask her about habits. She’ll tell you one thing: If you set your mind to something good, and apply yourself unswervingly to achieving it, you’ll be there sooner than you think. Your dreams will come true, if only you make a habit out of getting there.

I’ve discovered that anything is possible but you have to believe and have faith in yourself. That’s point number one. Second up, you have to write down your objectives, dreams and goals. Have them somewhere easy to find – I don’t want it flung into some far-away drawer. Stick it on the ceiling of your bedroom, on the bathroom cabinet (who wants to look at your ugly face anyways, hee hee!), or laminate it and stick it on the kitchen table.

Read it twice a day, and make a conscious effort to achieve your goals. Set yourself some realistic ‘next-step’ targets to get there. Don’t believe you’re going to achieve it in one step. Every journey consists of a sequence of movements, right? So get together some baby steps, and get yourself moving.

With faith, confidence in yourself, and unwaivering belief, you will be a success. Make a habit of believing in yourself and what you can achieve. Then – and only then – will you become what you deserve to be.

Now I’ve filtered out anyone remotely normal from reading on, I have to say I’m furious about my surfeit of creative abilities. The fact that I’m cleverer than I thought I was. Although on the flipside, this has fostered increased confidence and I now know that I’m the dog’s cajones.

Eh? Let me explain.

Just the other day I mentioned to a smattering of folk my plans to devise a smart marketing strategy for SMEs around the concept of creativity and innovation. My plan was to call the internet proposition, creativation.co.uk.

Well guess what? Before I had chance to register the domain (I’m still on Indian time) someone went and swiped it.

Bastards. Actually, I just found out that I spelt it wrong when I first searched for it. It would seem that this domain was actually bought on the 24th April 2000…

I always see glasses half full, unless they’re actually full, so I’m flattered that someone has taken up my idea. I’m sure they will execute it half as well as I could have done, so the world is missing a trick. However one of the benefits of being an optimistic genius is that the ideas don’t stop. Ever. creativation.co.uk was a mistake. The next one will be the killer.

Mark my words, kids. Something special is being hatched. And you will be able to say you were there when davethackeray.com made it happen…

I tore headlong into this mission today in a spasm of effort and concentration, beginning with an aborted effort to run (pavements = slippy; even a lanky northerner in size 13 trainers couldn’t provide sufficient ballast against the frozen wastelands of the north succeeding in crushing my new year fitness regime) and subsequently being driven forward with a calendar busier than a Wetherspoons.

Which reminds me: Why do disc ‘knob’ jockeys get off on dissing big companies giving us plebs a rare treat? Mr Spoons’ 99p pint is NOT going to lead us into a greater spiral of cirrhosis. For one, Greene King IPA has all the alcohol content of filtered water, and if you put prices of beer up, you’d only drive people to other cheaper thrills, like smack or one of my exes.

The exodus from laziness began by polishing off multi-trillionaire (now dead?) John Paul Getty’s How To Get Rich. A great book to read if you were looking to start up a business in the 60s. In America. But also quite handy if you fancy grating some of your amassed wealth into the stock market, fine arts, or oil mining.

The work began in earnest with some InDesign sparring, just to get the fingers dirty, you understand.

Then things started getting a bit messy. A LinkedIn endorsement came in from a colleague (nameless, you’re a star) evidently beleaguered by the ‘first day back after Xmas’ blues. So I was only too keen to mete advice on how to vanquish corporate puppetry from her life and pattern her life for future success.

So I said:

The four things most critical to you achieving your goals are:

1.       Set them. Don’t waste a second. Understand what you enjoy doing the most, and build your career around it. Don’t do marketing because ‘it’s where I am, it’s all I know’ – you must have stacks of hobbies and passions that would make work fun. If fun is work, then work is fun. For god’s sake, get out there and figure it out. Because all too soon this life will be over and you’ll have missed your big chance to be happy and fulfilled. Once you’ve identified your own personal goals you must work out micro actions you need to do to get there. It’s a journey, each action or task is a step towards achieving your dreams. And a dream is just an opportunity met… perfectly achievable! So once you have decided on your goals, write them down and make sure to check them out every freaking day!

2.       Stop thinking like an employee. You and Shellsuit have the chance to make it big, but you have to stop thinking like an ***. You have to think like someone who is using their talents, all of them, to make a success of themselves. Goals aren’t about the ‘what I have to do to meet my objectives’ BS – it’s about what you want to achieve in life, from your career.

3.       If you’re not ready to give yourself a break, give yourself a break. I mean three things: focus on your extrinsic profile. Update and spend hours on linkedin.com, monster.co.uk, and create yourself a new 3d cv atvisualcv.com. Then tie them all together. And start getting your message out there. Why should people employ you (if you insist on continuing to be an employee with an employee mindset) if they can’t see how bright and sparkly you are? Get these three things right (and there are thousands of tips on the web) and you’re 50% there. The balance you have to achieve by networking and deciding where your true strengths lie as an employee

4.       Two books that you and your partner in crime should buy immediately that I swear will completely change your life:

Millionaire Upgrade by Richard Parkes Cordock (buy here)

Getting Things Done by David Allen (here)

Total cost – less than 15 quid. Total value = priceless. Come back to me in a couple weeks and tell me they didn’t completely sort you out, and I’ll buy you a beer and give you a free mentoring session (valued at £995! Hurry – act now!)

I thought this was fair game. Eventually I will start charging for adding pixels to screen space in this way. For now I am happy to simply be labelled benevolent and altruistic.

A pie and soup lunch with a sprinkling of Anthony Bourdain and David Allen presenting at the Googleplex in SF to follow, and I’m where I am now. Except to mention that Matt Moody, you’re a genius who constantly inspires – thanks for a soupcon of your time today, as ever!

I missed a ton of stuff off the list, demonstrating that Getting Things Done is gonna take a while yet to grow on me.

Hopefully my calendar will go the other way for the rest of the week, as dead as a turkey factory. This will enable me to conduct an experiment to see if I can get pissed at Wetherspoons for a tenner. If you’d like to sponsor me on this epic adventure you only need drop me a line.

I couldn’t give hoot(enanny)s about the work of the creative pyromaniac, and for one night only I care even less for le soir dans le pub. See, I’ve had a perfectly fulfilling day today comprising a little shopping, a lot of eating and a yet greater amount of soul-searching. It’s the time of year where the gardener contemplates a new landscape, the butcher focuses on a new and business-changing cut of meat, and I try and figure out what happens after midnight when I start my first year since ever, as a self-employed guy.

I’ve had literally a ridiculous amount of fun today. It all started like a bouncy castle with a puncture, the car’s flat battery instigating a variation on the popular World’s Strongest Man event substituting pulling the car with teeth, with pushing the car with a grunt and a sore elbow.

But it all turned out marvellously thanks to PC World and its daft sale. I’m happy that I bought a Freecom MusicPal Wireless Digital Internet Radio/MP3 Streamer (the link is for demonstration purposes only – I know it’s out of stock, silly!) because nine seconds after it was first injected with power, I realised it was about to become My New Best Friend Gadget.

You can’t beat stuff that gives you a giggle of delight like the first Christmas where you actually understood you were going to get a big stocking (and pillowcase; spoilt only child privilege) packed with presents. This was such a piece of stuff. It literally brings thousands of radio channels from your internet connection to your front room, or toilet, whatever. Even though 90% of these sonic outbursts are spew, it’s a fantastic feat of engineering. And it also streams all the music from your PC too. It’s that good I think I’d like to meet the designer and shake him or her on the hand.

I also added lots of movies to my Lovefilm account, for which I have got 90 days of freeness. Since I’m always so organised I’ll cancel on day 75; I think the concept is truly sound, but since I’m a bona fide fad man I know 10.7 weeks into the trial, I’ll have gone off films and moved on to recipes involving cauliflower.

Talking of food and stuff… I made my first bread and butter pudding (ME! ME! No help – just MOI!) today and it was an unprecedented success. People round the table, chiefly close family members, whooped with glee when noone had to carry out a Heimlich manoeuvre during the course. It was that good. I don’t think I even ever made real custard before so to do that, AND soak dried fruit in whisky, AND go all chi-chi with brioche instead of stale Blackpool roll, makes me go all pink in the cheeks. Bow to me,  corporate suckers: this boy now does kitchen, too!

After coming over all Ramsay I decided to chew on my Christmas present, Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater. I quite like this chap because he sounds proper camp, but talks wizard about food. And on Page 21 of this book there’s a recipe for the best spag bol ever. This is where I’ll mess up. I know I will – I always do when I get all cocky. So mum, dad, humbles for undercooking the minced beef and they call those carrots al dente because they send you to the dentist.

Au revoir, 2008. Two things for 2009:

1. Move to Australia. This was on my list for 2008 but the immigration clerks just didn’t get it together in time. Or for the subsequent 12 months, for that matter. We live in hope and very warm, very puffed up coats, awaiting temperate climes as that stupid American guy who couldn’t be president, gets set for the break-up of the Antarctic floes.

2. Kick start the new business plan. The boy got game – now he gotta grow up and get himself on the entrepreneurial ladder. Watch this space – it’s in the strategy!

But this was genuinely knock down bloody marvellous. The beautiforgeous Mandy, out of Hollyoaks, looking radiant in nowt but a towel, yards from my face.

Rapturous.

Let me set the scene, for fear of paps stalking me for my virgin appearance in the ‘Screws. I was sat in the circle watching Boeing Boeing when this epiphany slapped me squarely in the chops. It’s a farce, playing at the Liverpool Playhouse momentarily until sometime early in the new year. Mandy plays one of three fiancees of this old chap. Each fiancee is an air hostess, see – so he keeps each unknowing of the others by cleverly planning their sexy rendezvous around their flight schedules.

I think most of the audience settled for this explanation as to how he kept this amorous caper going for so long. My first thought was ‘he must be completely boffed out – the blue tab bill must be through the frickin’ roof!’

That’s cause I’m different, see. And because let’s be honest, Mandy from Hollyoaks would kill you, in the nicest possible way. I imagine she’s one of them birds who would train a sniper rifle on your privates and blow the family jewels clean off if you don’t ham it up in the sack with the expertise of James Bond and the stamina of a cheetah. 

Aside from her well dodge American accent, this plucky auld chap also had to service some duchess with a German accent, and a really quite small Italian-sounding blart who, again, had never actually eaten a good tagliatelle, let alone spent considerable time in Verona. Which I happen to think is a must-see if you’ve been everywhere else in the world, and the art scene in Florence was a bit gay for your tastes.

Boeing Boeing was quite good fun but you could miss the first 45 minutes – say, by having an extra couple of pints in the majestic Ship and Mitre boozer just down the way, or a quick dip in the Mersey. Always a good idea this time of the year when the entire county turns to ice. I’ve always had a dark fascination with swimming under ice. I wouldn’t want to try it, but when Sylvester Stallone did it in Cliffhanger (stuntman my ass – this guy’s a pro!) he ended up shafting a hot girl afterwards. If it was down to me, though, I’d probably kiss a frog instead, making sure it wasn’t one of those cane toads that would kill you.

I’m quite hoping to see the rock ‘n’ roll panto at the Everyman in the next few days with my good mate Andy and his very attractive squeeze. On the subject of nice ladies, we got stopped outside the ‘Mitre tonight by a clearly befuddled young lady who appeared intent on claiming my dad as the doppelganger for Bobby de Niro. She then proceeded to wrap her arms around me and call me gorgeous, which is always a pleasant diversion from finding out your father has been earning countless millions at the box office yet still doesn’t get the rounds in. I later realised she wasn’t that pretty, but bore a striking similarity to that Nikki bird off Big Brother who squeaked when she tried to make words come out of her face. But a fun festive interstitial nonetheless.

Could it get any more surprising?

Quite how he manages to pack in so many gripping layers of storyline goes beyond human comprehension.

Jamal Malik, the ‘slumdog’ in question, is the hero for India’s poor. A stricken childhood riddled with dead mothers, concentration camps for orphans, just about every cruel twist that can afflict the beginnings of life, paradoxically furnishes Jamal with everything he needs to hit the jackpot bell in the gameshow.

Slumdog shines a spotlight on society’s number one cancer – the plight of those in poverty. As Jamal, a chai wallah at a call centre, climbs the ladder on ‘Millionaire’, suspicions run high of his being party to some cheating ring. How, after all, could the simple guy from a Mumbai slum be waging such a blessed war on the preconceptions of the rich towards the supposed stupidity of the underclass?

Notching 10m Rs answering the penultimate question with flair, Jamal is caged and subjected to the most brutal torture (think car battery-powered electrocution) by the cops. Who eventually comprehend that real life deals you the most fortune under the most neglected circumstances, and set him free to take on the final question.

This deals with The Three Musketeers, a book Jamal and his brother Salim adopted as their most beloved ouevre as children. The pair escape an atrocious attack on their slum, leaving the mother dead by drowning, taking with them Latika, a girl who fast becomes a soulmate for Jamal. He is smitten as they find themselves targeted by Maman, who operates an ‘orphanage’ taking children to the streets to beg. To improve their street value, Maman organises his men to blind and disfigure some of the wretched infants, and it is on the point of Jamal being rid of his eyesight that Salim helps them all escape.

The film moves through the life of Jamal, as the questions on Millionaire are knocked down like skittles. As the web weaves, Jamal’s love for Latika is demonstrated in myriad ways, chiefly his desperate effort to find her in a constant cat-and-mouse chase by appearing on the gameshow.

The tapestry of story is thrown into the storms. You’re never quite sure what’s coming next but Boyle has treated the sub-continent with sympathy and awe.

Everything about India is here – the constant battle for survival by the umpteen million slum residents, their belief in destiny (cue millions in the streets sequestering any television they can – the forecourts of electrical stores awash with eager bodies – to witness Jamal’s assault on the final question). And the Bollywood mood is awash throughout, its absolute motive of love against all odds the central strand that ties all Slumdogs and their dreams together.

Beg to watch it. Open your heart to India and the beautiful wretchedness of life. This is one film that will change you.

Of course I thought nothing of it, and moved on. Fast-forward to Christmas Day and my ever-kind mother showed unprecedented levels of internet knowledge by presenting me with the contents of this ridiculous Wish List.

The long and the short of it is that the majority of these reckless Wishes are now on their way back to Tipperary or wherever the junk titan keeps its stockyard. I have no regard for emotions, evidently, but the flipside is I don’t want my relatives spending lots of cash on junk.

There’s a very serious message somewhere in here. It’s this: Don’t put anything anywhere on the internet and expect it to remain safeguarded. Imagine if I’d have put my bank details in my Wish List instead of a bunch of useless books! That would have been ridiculous (and not possible)!

Jesus.

2. Fox’s Glacier ‘mince’. Only deserving of such lofty status because of the sheer delight sucking one of these sweet temptations on a chilly day. -1 for the cagey attempt to justify its entry into a top 10 list about ‘mince’. Who can forget the fun you had putting the Glacier variant of this popular mint into your parents’ G&T, passing it off as an ice cube. Only to discover that your step dad was allergic to one of the ingredients in the minty faux ice, rendering him in A&E and you firmly in the festive dog house…

3. Mincing. Who hasn’t? Even those tough guys with the shaven heads; everyone’s minced for purpose or laughter. I know some really great thespian types who do this on stage all the time. I filter some out and there’s still some of said collective who do this in real life, too, sometimes to solicit, sometimes to entertain, and sometimes craving attention that actors really, really need. All the damn time. Else they’ll cry, or something.

4. Cottage pie. It would be pathologically wrong not to list out this grandma of meals at a respectable position. Everyone loves a bit of cottage pie, but approximately 15% of all eaters can nail the difference between cottage and shepherd varieties of this divine dish. Shepherd, of course, is the head of the sheep family – so in his (or her, there’s a ginger lass in Kettering who used to be a shepherdess; but by the very nature of the name ‘shepherdess’, her pie is rendered ineligible, and possibly tasteless, since it will have soap suds in it and take four hours to come out the oven, cremated) ‘pie’ (though not really a pie, since it does not have crust of pastry) he would obviously have slayed lamb. Although I don’t subscribe to this, because surely if you worked with your ovine friends all day, the last thing you’d want to do is eat them. Unless you were a Page 3 photographer, but I still don’t think they’d feel ravenous over a plate of sheep innards. And as any epicurean knows, cottage pie is so known because it is made from stone cladding, topped with a chewy thatched roof.

5. The ‘mince-strations’ of the Archbishop of Canterbury. There’s an art to being tenuous, you know. You’re not born with this kind of talent, you have to earn it. And I feel the Bish deserves a mention in a list of mincy things, especially since this is published round about Christmas time when for the big guy it’s all ‘give’, and very little ‘receive’. Which is much how it is for certain members of the priesthood, I am led to believe, although for them the pleasure is definitely in the ‘giving’ category. The Hon Bish Williams, however, is cleaner than a whistle and his Christmas speech was particularly interesting in that he rejected the beliefs of Bonnie Tyler and urged everyone else, as well, not to hold out for a hero and look inside themselves for solutions to world problems, etc. I did exactly this and discovered only mouldy blood, flesh and sinews. But I’d still say go with the boy Williams because he’s older than me and his beard makes him look very wise indeed. Check out his wise wintry words here.