This may be a little pointless seeing as I doubt anyone looks at this blog any more, but just to round things up, and incase anyone finds this thing in like, 50 years time, I just thought I'd like to draw this project to a fitting conclusion.

If you are reading this in 2057, by the way, not everyone acts like this in the past. Don't go around thinking everyone from 50 years previous went round dressing up as clowns or walking round dog kennels with bacon strapped to them just because nutters from the net asked them to...

Essentially, it is with a sense of such delight and relief I can tell you I did it. In 100 days I made 100 people happier. I won. I proved wrong all those nay-sayers - I showed the world you CAN make people happy, and it makes your life a whole lot more interesting and exciting if you do so.
An explanation of things, as well as a rather nifty little montage, can be seen here:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=tyLVlL4IuaA

Am I glad I put myself through this? That I pushed myself to breaking point, physically, mentally and emotionally, and that I spent around £2,000, just to prove a point to myself, a rival, and the girl I was infatuated with? I can honestly say, yes, I am glad. I didn't give up. And I had the kind of experience most people only dream of. An incredible 100 days. Simply remarkable.

But there's a point I feel I have to press. I'm not a particularly special person. I'm not a comedian or a journalist or a stuntman or something - I'm literally a normal kid who just did this on a whim. I have about as much experience at doing this as you reading this, probably less, in fact almost certainly less. I can't even cook beans. And yet I've had this superb adventure - there's nothing stopping you having the same experience. Nothing at all.

You probably won't do this, but at least consider it. Imagine if you did the same. You could literally start it in an hour. All I did was set up an email account and post in a smattering of forums. And here I am, a local celebrity, having been front page of a newspaper, on radio and on TV, and with a book deal round the corner. This fantastic, exciting, joyous adventure was whipped up randomly in one evening and has completely changed my life. Give it some thought. People out there still need cheering up. Trust me, if I can do it, and I can barely put on belts, it might be worth you giving it a shot too...

I'd absolutely love to hear that someone had followed in my footsteps. It really would make my day, that. You can prepare yourselves for some tough times if you do, I can promise you that, but some truly incredible moments too.

Thanks to everyone who helped me out during these insane 100 days. My friends Moaize, Dan, Crabby and Steve, just for making me happier. And to Saskia, just for being her. And to everyone who sent me mails or supported me or placed their trust in me when most people didn't. You all rock so, so much.

Cheers, and until next time, I bid thee farewell.

Your pal,

Matt.

x

The weekend starts here..

Aloha there. Just a quick post to reassure you all I'm still working away, and nothing emphasizes that more than the weekend I just had. Because I had possibly the worst, most knackering weekend in the world. The kind of weekend psychiatrists scrawl on their notepads as "weekend from hell". Whilst crying. Observe:

Thursday - Had to walk down Oxford Road, probably the roughest road in Southern England, wearing that sandwich board. I was chased for the last 100 yards by a gang.

Friday - Had to spend the night in a graveyard. I get zero hours sleep.

Saturday - Had to spend day being two girls slave, who asked me to stroke a random lads hair, who promptly turned on me and threatened to stab me, then kicked a rugby ball at my back.

- Had to spend evening in London in a stranger's house cooking a vegetarian Chinese meal for a dinner party and ended up getting lashings of chilli in my eye.

I wonder if you did something similar with your weekend.

Getting well and truly out of hand...

I cannot begin to explain the stress and ridiculousness of the past week. I've gone from a regular lad performing a small act of whimsy whilst eating potato salad and watching 'Robot Wars' to some publicised local celeb. I'm in newspapers, TV, radio shows, magazines; everything. It's totally and utterly ridiculous...

However, I'll come to that a wee bit later. First, project sit-rep. I've made a whopping 52 people happy now, which I'm quite proud of, but which has necessitated some particularly odd challenges. I've had to burst into song standing at a urinal, recite the alphabet backwards wearing a fake beard, go trick-or-treating which I'm really far too old to do nowadays, write someones name in donuts, and record a weather forecast wearing a girly scarf.

On top of that, someone asked me to tie some nice things to low-hanging tree branches for people to pluck, so I adorned one tree with hanging herbal teas, magazines and biscuits before the police came and I had to run away, suitably abashed. I also had to dress as a knight with a cardboard made out of armour - in the end I looked like the robot out of some horrifically low budget 'Wizard of Oz', and wasn't really up for fighting any dragons seeing as I was literally the most flammable thing in the world. Regardless I got a lot of quizzical looks as I walked through town, before one person asked for a hug which I was a bit wary of doing as he had a cigarette in his hand, and looked like the kind of person who'd find it funny to watch a scalded 17-year-old try to tear off some burning knight costume. He clocked how flammable I was and proceeded to chase me a lighter - all I was trying to do was make people happy, and here was someone trying to set me on fire!!

I also had to go to London as you can see here. I needed to perform some chirpy tomfoolery in Trafalgar Square so I wanted to be quiet - you can imagine my displeasure upon slowly emerging from the tube station to find it was not quiet, no; there were 40,000 people there. I'd managed to come during Diwali, the biggest Indian festival this side of, well, India probably. I had a day of drizzle, getting jostled on the tube, headache, people shouting at me, and a pack of incense exploding open in my bag, all in the name of happiness.

BUT, there's even bigger news. Somehow in the midst of all this, I've managed to become something of a very minor celeb, starting with somehow getting front page of the Evening Post. Since then I've had magazine offers, radio show interviews, and even been on national news for giving out free hugs! Like a properly long, official segment. I swear I nearly had a hernia through stress throughout all this. You can't how stressful this whole affair is until you answer a phone call to hear someone say "Hey, this is Steve! You're going live on the air in 10 minutes!" Argh!

However, despite the media scrabbling about trying to get interviews, and being recognized on the street as that nutter who does similarly nutty things, I DO still need your help. Please, your happy suggestions are needed now more than ever, and your support for the forum is dire. Come on everyone. Please..?

makingothershappier@gmail.com

What madness is this?

Howdy-hey everyone. I know I updated this but a few days ago, and not a great deal has happened in between, but one thing has which is superb.

I. Have. A FORUM!

My own FORUM!!

I didn't even know it was possible for regular joes like me to just get a forum. I thought you had to be one of those big important corporate people who answers their mobile phones by saying their own surname. But oho no - I, some lazy and very tired teenager eating mini rolls and checking his inbox every 20 seconds, have my own forum, which is a superb thing!

You can check it out here: http://makeothershappy.proboards91.com/ . Admittedly, at the moment as I type this, it's shit. I'm the ONLY member. It's not so much a forum at the moment as a place I can write things for me to read later, which is rubbish - I can do that on my fridge. So I really, really do need you to join up and leave a message please, and we can turn this into some fantastic thriving internet community. It'll be excellent. Promise.

As far as the projects concerned, I'm steadily working through requests. I've unleashed the mother of all poster campaigns to advertise a band as the singer who mailed me said he'd write a song about me if I did, I've crept into an office block and sung 'Happy Birthday' to an employee as a surprise from her boyfriend, and I've done some rather dangerous things with some rather dangerous strangers involving fireworks, so enjoy.

If you could keep sending in mails and suggestions, keep spreading the word, and try and pad out the currently quite paltry forum, that'd be much appreciated. For those of you who are spreading the word, you're awesome, each and every one of you.

makingothershappier@gmail.com

Uggh... things are getting harder...

As said previously, I wasn't planning on updating this blog any, but like the project itself this whole thing has gotten out of hand, and now I have to whack a fresh new post in because there's a chance all these gossipy newspapers and magazines are going to come snooping about it.

So, for those newcomers amongst you, I'm Matt Rose, and I'm out to make total random strangers - the generally miserable public we see every day - happy. I got irritated seeing everyone so glum and downtrodden and thus made it my aim for 100 days to cheer people up. I mean... how hard can it be?

The answer, as it happens, is 'massively'.

Since I last posted, I've had to spend a terrible 2 hours with my mouth duct taped together watching people eat and struggling to breathe, I've had to decorate a public toilet to make it look like a 6-year-olds party, and as this picture shows, I've gone round town with a sign that looks like I've stolen it from a homeless person giving out free hugs, as can be seen here. The latter has been the most fun, as it really was nice to see everyone so receptive, and some fantastic people actually recognized me and gave me a free donut! Utterly superb, that lot.

However it's not all badly made signs and free pastries I'll have you know. As per usual I've been up til 6am most nights dredging the weirdest imaginable places of the internet and scoring the kind of odd replies most people have nightmares about. And nasty nightmares at that. The kind of nightmares that Freddy Krueger would crap himself if he found himself in. I've been trying to smear the internet every which way but loose with word of my crazed quest, from facebooks to myspaces to guestbooks to emails to my very own bebo account - http://bebo.com/MattR988

But amongst all the spam and viruses and weird, weird, just really weird suggestions some people have sent, there's still a glimmer of hope that I can come out of this with my head held high and with the masses somewhat happier as a result. But for that to happen, I require your help...

You see.. I need suggestions. Lots of them. Recently my inbox has dried up and you can currently count the amount of emails I'm receiving on one hand, even if you don't have any fingers. So I beg of you, please, PLEASE, mail me ideas as to how I can make you happy to makingothershappier@gmail.com . I WILL go out and do them, no matter how stupid or costly they may be - I am just in dire need of your help. So mail me, please, and spread the word, to friends, family, forums; anyone.

makingothershappier@gmail.com

And now I've gotten serious about this blog business, I'll probably be back with another post sooner or later...

Take care.

A reluctant update

I wasn't planning on updating this blog whatsoever, but I was a bit bored and eager to spread the message so I thought I might as well. So how am I doing, I hear you ask: well not TOO bad actually. I've now made 25 people happy, so I'm a quarter of a way through this chirpily hellish little ride; I've slapped a cow with my arse, juggled with a cactus, had an awkward rap battle with some bemused women, and dressed up as a clown and given out yoyos in a hospital, as you can see from the picture above. That's not me having gone mental, and nor are they my normal clothes; those were the annoyingly costly lengths I went to in order to cheer up a stranger called Candice.

Seriously, a more mentally exhausting 4 weeks you can't have imagined. Whether It's receiving death threats from joke forums, doing cartwheels at a rave gig only to find they don't count as challenges, or receiving at 3am a mail simply reading 'i genuinely just had a wank over your video', this whole thing has totally screwed with my head, and I'm only a quarter of the way through.

And that's why I really, really need your help. You've seen the lengths I'm willing to go to to make you happy. Cost isn't a factor, and I haven't got much dignity left to lose, so I'd desperately like to hear your happy suggestions. Please, I throw the gauntlet out to all those reading this to send me whatever insane or crazy ideas you can concoct. Think of whatever I could do to make you happy, send it to makingothershappier@gmail.com , and watch your suggestion come to life!!!

Yo yo yo everyone!!

Someone called Alex informed me it would make him most happy if I posted a link to his site on this blog. I've never been on this site so I have no idea what it's like. So here we are - http://www.politicallyerect.co.uk/.

Whilst I don't want this project just consisting of everyone advertising their own sites, I'll make an exception in this case because, guess what, no other sods mailing me!!

Come on ladies and gents - makingothershappier@gmail.com !!

GO ON!!!

How can I make you happy?

Ahoy-hoy.

Right, I'm Matt, and I currently have a bet with my friend Chris concerning happiness. Essentially, for the next 100 days, anything that would make you genuinely happy, I will do. Any suggestions you have, be they serious or spectacular or ridiculous or weird or mental; anything that will make you happy, I will do.

It'd make you happy if i spelt out your name in Cheerios in Trafalgar Square? No worries mate, I'm on it. You want to know what actually happens if you eat Mentos then drink Coke? Fine, if it'll make you happy, I'll do so in a jiffy. You'd be happy if you want to meet up in Starbucks, or you want me to send you money, or you'd like to see me stuff my shirt with garbage and roll in some racoons? Then yes, yes, yes; say I, I will do ANYTHING!

So how d'you send me your suggestion? Couldn't be easier - simply drop me a mail at makingothershappier@gmail.com . I mean, why not? You're sitting there at your computer now, with the power to make me do whatever you want in the name of happiness at your fingertips. In just a click of a button you could be made genuinely happy!

It's worth noting I can only do suggestions given to me via e-mail, so there's not much point just leaving your suggestions in the blog comments.

Go on - fine visitors to my blog. Live a little. I'm just a regular joe intent on making strangers happy, so give it a go...

makingothershappier@gmail.com

Cheers.