The More You Want Things to Go Away, The Less They Fucking Do It

Fucking hell it's hot. I know that's two swears from title to first sentence fragment, but it really is very, very hot. In March. I've spent weeks and weeks complaining about the bollock-freezing cold of the rest of the month and now I'm longing for the halcyon days where I could wear more than a pair of socks and underpants without dripping like a basted chicken. Obviously this does nothing for my usual happy, carefree demeanour, and nor does the fact I've had four hours' sleep, had to clean up the biggest pile of cat vomit the western world has ever seen (and we've got some decadent cats) and this is the first time I've been able to get online today since I changed my broadband provider and BT took the oppertunity to turn my phoneline off.

Oh, and I have to go back to work in just under an hour. Cock bum.

Anyway, yes, world happenings. Just when you thought they'd finally pissed off forever, it's time for The Maddy Investigation: Redux. Yes, they've been out of the papers for all of five seconds and they don't like it, so they're back with more tales of woe about the police investigating them. This time they're quizzing their friends to see if they nicked the bloody kid. To be honest with you, I'm past caring. I went through a period of extreme rage at this, I even decided that it would be better if the kid turned up dead, just so it could all be over. Now I've come full circle and have decided it would be better if she turned up alive, just to spare me one more glimpse of her parents' crocodile tears. Obviously there would be street parades, meetings with the Queen, Hollywood blockbusters and BBC specials, but at least there would be a visible end to it all - we'd make Maddy Prime Minister, of course, but even given that she would have to retire eventually. Without something, anything, occurring, this story looks like it's going to drag on forever, and if there's one thing I don't need to ever see again in my life, it's Kate McCann's hideously pointed face.

In Beijing, the Chinese have welcomed the arrival of the Olympic torch, which they're presumably going to use to set fire to some Tibetans. It's really quite sad, the tiny amount the Chinese people know about what goes on in their own country - the plane bringing the Olympic torch in was greeted by cheering schoolchildren waving banners of peace and tolerance, while over the other side of the country there are military hit squads clobbering people over the head for being wilfully Tibetan. I have a friend who's from Beijing and she's constantly shocked by the amount of anti-Chinese government stories present in the British media, and we've generally been apathetic to the whole thing. If she went to a country like France or Germany, who have both threatened to boycott the Olympics if they don't stop burning monastaries, I think she'd probably faint. It's not that she's pro- or anti- China's actions in Tibet - I'm pretty sure that even if she was against it, she wouldn't say so - it's just that they don't see it over there.

I reckon every single news broadcast is a 3-hour love-in with the government, cracking down on those evil religious terrorists hiding in the mountains, waiting to destroy our civilisation if we don't destroy theirs. Hmm.

Before we get too far into the politics, let's have a bit of entertainment news, Rickay and Bianca are back on Eastenders. I think I'm going to go and kill myself now.

Goodnight.

Your Say Thursday: Are Children Safe in the Digital World?

Rumours of my omnipotence have been greatly exaggerated. For those of you wondering, since I've jiggled the times around a bit, how I managed to post a critique of the England game around about 12 hours before it actually happened, I used internet magic to shift it back a day so I could still fit in the regular Your Say Thursday segment. That, and I'm trying to convince myself that it was further away than it actually was so I don't have to think about it anymore. Today's Your Say is a typical one to get the crazy right-wing techno-fear thoughtblock, 'Are Children Safe in the Digital World?' - (I do love it when they have a 'Think of the Children!' statement right in the title - Ed) - so I'll just get straight into it:

"Great, another story about how video games are evil. I am 14 years old and have been playing games since the age of 4. I've played games that have been way over my age for a few years, but I'm not an anti social kid, I don't go stealing and vandalising."
Felix Cashap, Baldock

But you are a horrific nerd, and going outside does mean probable instant death from toxic shock, so there's always a downside.

"I don't allow my 7yr old step-son to play pc games when he visits due to him being on them all the time at home. However, on the VERY rare occasions that he is allowed to play them (Lego Star Wars on the DS or Sports on the Wii) he is both hyper-active AND far cheekier afterwards. His behaviour REALLY deteriorates."
Merson The Cat, Staffs, United Kingdom

That might be why he screams and cries when he has to go and stay with the insufferable cunt who thought there was some sort of great detrimental danger in the playing of 'Lego Star Wars'.

"oh look an opportunity to fine people for giving games to their kids with adult ratings, maybe test purchaces from the shops. Look labour more chance to oppress us."
Marc Allinson, York, United Kingdom

Oh look, here comes that blasted Labour again, coming to oppress me while I'm down the shops. I've barely got time for anything else anymore, what with my morning oppression starting at 9, then a quick break for lunch before I start my afternoon subjection. It's getting to the point where I've hardly got the time to piss my half-baked opinions all over the BBC messageboards anymore, you know, in between the beatings that don't happen.

"I played games that weren't "suited" and it hasnt done me any damage. I have a good job, a good home and a gorgeous girlfriend does that make me wierd then for not ending up the way some government ministers expect?"
Purple_Shrimp0, Dundee

Am I the only one who thinks people who have to constantly refer to their girlfriend as 'gorgeous' to people who don't know or care clearly have something to hide? I bet she's got half a face and only one tit.

"Why not have a server that only allows links to approved safe sites (i.e. instead of trying to block unsuitable sites or services, everything is blocked unless it is suitable for kids)."
Paul Kenton, Aberystwyth

Why not lock your children in a wardrobe and slide them their homework under the crack in the door? When they get hungry you can just feed them breadsticks through a little hole that's too high for a paedophile to get his cock in. Then they'd be safe forever until one of the bastards turned up with a stool.

"People who access these sites or supply 18+ content to minors should face prison!"
[Luke_Yeovil]

Hmm. I was wanking to internet porn like a hyperactive chimp on speed when I was 15/16 and my eyes didn't explode out of my head. Does that make me a bad person? Am I going to hell? Only Luke can say, in between bouts of screaming abuse at his penis.

And that's it. I'm out on the piss tomorrow so I'm not sure there'll be a blog and expect even less that there'll be a coherent one, but make sure to have a good laugh at the poor people that populate the Have Your Say boards, because if you didn't, you'd have to cry. Or hit them with a bat. I tried to use a new 'Blogging Tool' to make this post initially, but as I've spent the last half an hour fixing it up after it inserted ten-line blank spaces between every quote, I don't think I'll bother again.

Goodnight.

Shit Follows Shit Follows Shit

Fucking hell it's grim. It's 8 in the morning and I've already been up for two hours working on fixing up about a days' worth of audio recorded on equipment too cheap and crappy to know to leave out it's own mechanical clicking, my stomach's doing backflips trying to expel the quantity of Czech absinthe I misguidedly consumed last night and Fabio Capello's England underwent a complete tactical failure the likes of which we haven't seen since... well, Croatia. It might have only been two games ago but we thought the days of cretinous performances were over when we sacked that ginger imposter pretending to be a competent England manager and replaced him with a bloke that's actually won a thing or two in his time.

The paper says that Capello has only had eight days' training with the England boys since he took over, which isn't really his fault and does go some way to explaining why our bunch of average-at-best headerers and crossers were told to stick to trying to lob it up and over one of the most effective aerial defences in world football, but it doesn't explain how the Italian, who is rightly hailed as one of the best in the game with an impressive CV like his, managed to miss the painfully obvious oppertunity to outstrip France for pace - good in the air they might be, but Lillian Thuram can't move, and William Gallas isn't the fastest center half in the world either. Put Claude Makelele in front of them and you have a defence that could have been ripped to shreds if the likes of Ashley Young, Gabby Agbonlahor, Shaun Wright-Phillips and Theo Walcott had played. Instead we were treated to David Beckham and Joe Cole passing the ball horizontally across the midfield to each other for 45 minutes, and then Stewart Downing and David Bentley doing the same thing while the attacking options of fat Wayne Rooney, terrified Michael Owen and gormless Peter Crouch were forced to drop back almost to the halfway line to get involved in the horizontal pass-fest. Terrible.

Downing and Bentley were probably our best players, which is sad, because they weren't impressive at all - they were just the only ones that actually tried anything ambitious. They both had about four crosses each that were fairly impressive, but were never going to beat a very effective French defence. Even when the oppertunity came to play Walcott (I know he's not very experienced, but he was the only player we had with any sort of speed on him after Agbonlahor, Young and Wright-Phillips were dropped from the provisional squad), we bottled it and stuck on Glen Johnson for Wes Brown instead. Understandable as Brown had been caught out about six times wandering aimlessly towards the opposition area rather than doing any sort of defending, but if you ask me the useless orange wanker shouldn't have been playing in the first place. The sooner Micah Richards comes back the better, and it's a graphic demonstration of the lack of depth in the England side that we are relying on the return of a kid that's barely out of short trousers to give us some strength and steel at full back. Johnson for all his endeavours was better than Brown but still woefully ineffective, and the whole team generally gave off an air of one that was trying so very hard within their set tactics, but were hamstrung by a coach who just bottled it tactically.

There were no bad performances, merely ineffective ones. The fact the strikers couldn't get the ball without coming into midfield wasn't their fault, as there was no-one to connect the players in the middle with the players at the sharp end, just a selection of hopeless diagonal balls. David James had a moment of madness when he decided to try to catch Nicholas Anelka's leg rather than the ball, which was a good foot and a half to the left of him, but we're used to Big Dave having at least one major cockup per year, so we'll forgive him because the alternatives were Paul Robinson and Rob Green, one of whom is a useless Spud shitkicker and the other has let in 12 goals in the 3 games Capello has watched him and so doesn't look like he can handle the pressure of even being considered for England. It's sad because he's a terrific keeper normally, its just you can almost see the terrified trickle of wee running out of his shorts whenever Capello as much as glances in his direction, and the balls just start flying past him.

It should be far from a man who spent the game getting pissed and eating pizza to be able to call a man of Capello's stature tactically naive, but he was. I knew when I saw the lineup and even when I saw who had been dropped from the provisional squad that we weren't going to beat France, because we were trying to play them at their own game - Brazil tried that and lost a World Cup to them, and the boys in yellow could kick our footballing bums all day long and not have to break for tea. We could have managed a draw but for James's annual of madness, but the galling thing is we could have won it if we'd played the better players available to us. Joe Cole might be the Romford Ronaldinho, but he doesn't have the pace to get past some equally skillful but highly ponderous defenders, David Beckham was selected just to get his 100th cap out of the way rather than any genuine footballing reasons, and Michael Owen continues to be scared of the ball when in an England shirt. Still, I suppose it's a good thing that we got Capello's first defeat out of the way sooner rather than later. I'd much rather lose to the French and have the lessons learned there than have the USA beat us when they turn up some time in May or June - I don't think I could stand the gloating if the Apple Pie mob turn us over.

Oh well, onwards and upwards. I've got to go and get up to my elbows in animal crap.

T'riffic.

Goodnight.

The Titles are on Strike Until the Shit Films Stop

The greatest issue facing the world today, the fact that I couldn't get to blogger.com by typing it into the address bar, appears solved. The new issue is that I can't get on my wireless in a particular room in the house - it just goes from full strength to completely dead within about a foot. Some basic research tells me that it's Apple's problem and I have to wait for an update, making it my problem. Surely it takes more than stupidity to make a network card throw up imaginary walls around itself and sit stubbornly refusing to connect?

Anyway, because I've been going around my house looking for further dead spots and I'm bored of carrying this thing around staring at a network monitor that I'm not sure I understand, you're in for a blogging first: a post written while I'm sitting on the bog. Once the awe of that revelation has subsided, I'll also tell you that there's almost no news in this post, largely because nothing in the world is happening: There's almost no news in this post, largely because nothing in the world is happening. Oh, except some people with far too much time on their hands (more time than is required to spend your sunday blogging from the toilet? - Ed) have decided that Paul McCartney wrote a song about Heather Mills, based solely on the fact that the song's title, 'Mister Bellamy', is an anagram of 'Mills betray me'. Come on, that's not even grammatically correct. Incidentally, it's also an anagram of 'Bellm at Misery' and a partial anagram of 'Belly Mist', so you can draw your own conclusions really.

Tonight I'm going to talk about films, and why they've suddenly gone shit. Actually, that's wrong, because that implies I actually know why they've gone shit, and am going to tell you why - I honestly have no idea. I am as gobsmacked by this current crop of gloopy mind-vomit spraying itself all over cinematic history as you are, I'm just the only one bored enough to bang on about it for any length of time. Oh, and as I write this, I'm being told that I can't connect to Blogger.com - bollocks to it, I'll deal with that problem when I come to it.

I'll ignore 'Horton Hears a Hoo' because it's a kids' film and so I can't really expect it to be any good - long gone are the days when kids had good entertainment to stop them from pushing lego bricks up their noses, and I doubt they'll be back any time soon. I'll also ignore that 'Hannah Montana 3D' thing by the same token, although I really have had enough of Miley Cyrus. The people who paid to go and see U2 in 3D, however, really should know better. No amount of additional dimensions will ever make U2 any good.

My problem does not lie with these movies, as infuriating as they are, because I know they are not aimed at me. My problem lies with two other films being heavily advertised at me: Meet the Spartans and Step Up 2: The Streets. I'll deal with the former first because just mentioning Step Up 2: The Streets makes me want to go and curl one out into the minds of everyone involved in it's production. Meet the Spartans is this year's (or this season's - these things are getting more and more frequent) Scary Movie, and by that I don't mean the sharp, fresh if slightly repetitive Scary Movie 1, I mean the painful, teeth-grindingly awful Carmen Electra-shitting-in-a-box Scary Movie 4. Only with about four times less humour and a lot less class. Have you seen the trailer? Of course you have, it's everywhere. There are undiscovered tribes in the middle of the Amazon rainforest that are yet to master the concept of fire, but are well aware of how truly awful this film is. If you've seen the trailer, you've seen the funniest points of the film. Yes, an unfunny repeat of last year's worst internet meme and the hilarious concept of Donald Trump firing Spiderman (and by 'hilarious' I mean 'would-rather-rip-off-my-own-testicles-than-sit-through-again awful') are the high points of the entire movie. Thankfully the whole thing is only 75 minutes long, or your intrepid writer might have chewed off his own face to complete this review for you. If you want an experience with an equivalent amount of humour to Meet the Spartans, but absolutely free, I advise you to out to your local town center, find the biggest bloke in the biggest outsize baseball cap you can find and enquire as to the availibility of his mother.

Or just stick a knife in your eye as a punishment for even considering going to see Meet the Spartans. And then it was over. Breathe.

Because then, ladies and gentlemen, it just got worse. Painfully, it also got 'hip'.

Step Up 2: The Streets is the most hilariously bad thing I have seen in a long time, and the sad thing is it doesn't try to be. It's actually played as a straight, intense film. About dancing. The attitude and determination the characters put into being 'illegal street dancers' is nothing short of absolutely fucking hilarious. The 'illegal street dancing' itself is pant-wettingly stupid, and the very concept of there being such a thing as 'illegal street dancing gangs' patrolling the streets of Maryland is probably the most moronic concept I've ever seen in a serious film since the finger-clicking street toughs of West Side Story. Is street dancing illegal in Maryland? I don't know, and I don't really care. Even if it is, it doesn't make you the criminal badass it's made out to be in this abortion of a film, and seeing as about half the scenes center around the main character's mother living in fear of these street dancers, I found it pretty hard to concentrate on the plot through the flowing tears of mirth and pinpoint the exact time when it became the worst film of all time. I think it was somewhere around the line "She has more talent, more conviction than anyone else I know!", delivered with all the heart of someone who has just seen their partner save a life or overcome a life threatening illness, about a girl had to overcome the odds and erm... dance.

Frankly, much as it shames me to admit this, it's probably more tolerable than Meet the Spartans, because Meet the Spartans just made me want to piss blood out of my eyes rather than watch another second, but Step Up 2 was just so completely blissfully stupid in both concept and execution that overall it's probably the worse film. You'd better keep that one under your hat, though, or some illegal street dancers will come and bust some, erm, moves at you. Because they're badass like that. And dancers. And completely fucking rediculous.

Goodnight.

I Went to the Circus, and All I Got was Assaulted by a Tent

Right you bunch of unspeakable oafs, for some reason I still can't get onto blogger.com simply by typing 'http://www.blogger.com' as my browser seems to stick on 'Connecting' and I don't have the expertise to work out why. I have to go to google and type it in and click the link. Surely this works the same way?

Something to do with referrers I suppose. Oh well.

Anyway, those of you who pay your licence fee will be intimately aware of the BBC's dedication to producing fascinating, in-depth documentaries, creating entertaining comedy dramas and, most importantly, taking a hundred and forty quid off me each year for stating the bloody obvious. Spoilt children disrupt schools? I'd have never have guessed. Little tossers running riot because mummy never quite worked up the courage to tell them 'no' for fear of a four hour screaming fit is nothing new, I saw it, you probably saw it, it just happens. Give them a couple of years and they'll have the spoilt shite kicked out of them enough times by the kid who grew up being locked in a cupboard making up his dad's next hit of smack that they'll learn that no, they can't have the fucking toy and should sit down and do some work before Barry from D4 breaks their thumbs on the cross country trail. The report describes a woman who celebrated managing to get her 5 year old to go to bed at 1am instead of 3am (I have trouble staying up until 3am and I'm not a 5 year old - what sort of freak has this woman spawned? Lock the door). It also said some people would do "anything to shut up their children just to get some peace" - shout louder. You are bigger and have bigger lungs. Shout the little wankers down. No you can't have a fucking XBox, now roll my fags.

In entertainment, Pamela Anderson has continued her quest to marry and subsequently divorce every man who's ever been on television. I'm not entirely sure how a woman famous for running down a beach and a bloke known for shagging Paris Hilton (that would be just about everyone then - Ed) can have valid claims of celebrity, but anyone who can find legal grounds to file for divorce on the basis of fraud has to have had some sort of trainwreck of a marriage, even if it did last eight weeks - perhaps he's really a woman, or lied to her about his level of fame as she desperately seeks to maintain her own. More importantly, what sort of idiot gets married to someone and has it only last eight weeks? I thought it was something you did after you decided that no, you really do like this person quite a bit and think it would be a good idea to spend your lives with them, not a scheme to get a cheaper 'married' rate on a holiday to Hawaii.

Anyone reading this want to get married to a minor internet celebrity, mentioned on all the best automated internet aggregators and harbouring at least a slightly overblown sense of his own importance? Note: Must be blonde and have enormous tits.

If you don't fancy that, though, you could always go to Berkshire and get clobbered by a tent, after six people were treated for their injuries after being walloped by an escaping Big Top. One person caught up in the canvas catastrophe said "It all happened about 10 minutes before the five o'clock performance started. The tent was full of familes with young kids. "All of a sudden there was really loud thunder, heavy rain and hail and incredible gusts of wind that took the tent down. People were panicking and running everywhere as the tent came down." - bloody hell, I bet that's caused a few clown phobias and stimulated a few more - imagine rushing around under an inescapable mass of twisted canvas, turning a corner towards what you thought was the exit and being clobbered by an onrushing clown? You'd probably shit yourself and die right there.

Actually, this story isn't working out too well for jokes - I just can't top the comedy of six people being slapped around a bit by an escaped tent. I think I'm going to move on. The BBC must have been running low on stories, or just run by people with the intelligence of molluscs, because one of the front page stories on the BBC News website is... Snow. Yes, the most interesting story the BBC could drum up in England today was it was it was a bit chilly last night and in some places, - shockingly, catastrophically - it snowed. And some people took some pictures of it. I'm not sure who's worse - the BBC, for considering 'cold country occasionally has snow' to be a news story, or the people who have lives so empty that they have nothing better to do on a saturday morning but reach for the camera and send pictures of a bit of white stuff sitting on their car in to what is supposed to be a serious news website. Tossers.

Oh, and speaking of tossers, there's Cristiano Ronaldo. French team Lyon have been fined almost £3,000 for targetting the baby-faced cunt with a laser pen. That's a small price to pay for firing a laser at the smug little shit, isn't it? What price would I have to pay to hit the hairgelled tosspot with a brick in a sock? I'll start the bidding at five grand. And finally, it's the last Saturday Night Takeaway of the series tonight. Hopefully nothing heavy will fall on them before the next one, like a piano, or forty-seven tons of elephant shite. I'm just throwing ideas out there.

Oh, and this is the most attractive woman in the world. If you disagree, you're clearly the sort of unspeakable tosser who's wrong just for the sake of being wrong.

I love the internet.

Goodnight.

Edit: Suggs says that Bird's Eye Chicken Fillets are only ever 100% chicken breast. Much as I expected then. Are Sainsbury's Chicken Fillets 8% dog bollock? Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Get the Fuck Out of My Paper, You Fucking Murderers

Hello, internet.

I'm still not well, I've been cooped up for two days trying not to die, and the one thing I've been looking forward to early in the morning, the thing that keeps me going when I've had no sleep all night, is the chance to see what's going on in the world via the paper, delivered crisp and fresh through my letterbox every morning. The important stories, the stories that might just change the world. They're my way of keeping up to date with the fast-moving world of change we all live in. I like to read stories of life-changing inventions, cures for diseases and ends of wars. I don't like to have to read papers pandering to a pair of soulless bastards with the gall to try to force the media into making a front-page apology for daring to call them incompetent parents and for making any suggestion that they are responsible for their daughter's disappearance.

You are incompetent parents, and you are responsible for your daughter's disappearance.

Sue me if you want, you sickening pair of neglectful media whores. If suing people and funnelling even more money into the corrosive media machine you've created out of your supposed grief over your daughter's death makes you feel better about the fact you clearly felt a night on the town was better than the safety of your children. No amount of lawsuits and legal papers will exonerate you from the blame you are quite clearly guilty of, and your pathetic attempts to keep yourself in the news and continue your life of fame and fortune bought off of the back of your missing daughter will soon come to an end. When the cameras die down, the column inches dry up and your Posh and Becks lifestyle facade fades away, the only things you will have left will be the guilt you clearly feel for your recklessly irresponsible actions and the knowledge that, as if that wasn't enough, you victimised innocent people for daring to point out things that you obviously don't want to hear. I hope the money you cynically sucked from the goodwill of people too stupid to know better to pay for your cynically exploitative world tour never fills the gaping void your own stupidity has left in your lives, but I doubt it: Two million pounds of other people's money is probably more than high enough a price for your daughter's life.

The pair of you sicken me.

Goodnight.

The Next Person to Use the Phrase 'Yummy Mummy' Gets a Syringe in the Eye

I think I must be the only person completely mystified by the continuing furore over Holly Willoughby's outfits on 'Dancing on Ice'. I've never seen the programme because I don't want to be made into a gay, but I've googled the girl in question and all I can tell you is her figure is nothing spectacular and her face looks like it recently lost a fight with a shovel - have we fallen so far that the sight of an extraordinarily plain woman wearing a low-cut dress sends the nation's teenagers' underpants a-tenting? Come on, lads, there's the internet now - you can see proper tits on proper women, you don't have to put up with this pan-faced disaster.

But I digress. There is a bigger issue currently facing the nation. One that threatens the very fabric of our society in general and my sanity in particular. It is the term 'yummy mummy', which I can only presume is some attempt at a politically correct term for 'MILF'. It's been on TV, in magazines and in the newspaper, there are over 400,000 results for it on Google and it's driving me insane. Is Davina McCall a yummy mummy? I don't know, I personally think she's a shouty smack-laced tart, but if you think she's an attractive woman, then that's up to you - you're wrong, but it's up to you. The point is, the thing that attracts you to her is not likely to be the fact she has forced a screaming, vomiting child out of the gaping tatters of her nether regions, so the issue of her being a 'mummy' is neither here nor there in the unrelated issue of whether or not she is 'yummy'. Oh well, 'yummy' as a term for 'attractive' would be annoying in itself were it not for the fact it's something Leslie Phillips probably says on a regular basis, and that therefore makes it manly and cool. Ding dong. Admittedly the term 'MILF' also contains the odd detail that the woman in question has proved herself capable of producing children, which is probably the second least erotic act the human body is capable of just after vomiting lager through the nose, but at least it has the decency to not pussy-foot around the fact you want to give them a good shunting.

Anyway, before this becomes too much like a proper blog and less like the irreverent view of the news that I like to think it is, let's move swiftly on. It's taken them five years, but someone involved with the inner workings of Downing Street have finally worked out that the Iraq War was the result of a distinct lack of thought. Thousands dead on all sides and the near-total condemnation and exclusion of the international community just to impress Big George, and it still took half a decade for anyone anywhere close to power to work out that it was a bad idea and was probably a decision that should have taken a little more thought. I suppose it's quicker than it's taken everyone else to realise that New Labour were in fact nothing like they promised to be, and were in fact a lot like the Old Tories. Ah well, thanks to David Cameron's cynical "I have a disabled child and that means you should vote for me" exploitation of his child's unfortunate condition, it looks like we're going to get to see just what the New Conservatives are like - my money is on them being just like the Old Tories, which gives us a fantastic amount of choice. Anything's better than the BNP, though, and with them increasingly seeming to gain council seats mostly in the north of the country, Cameron's experience in dealing with people with mental difficulties could yet come in useful.

Hopefully, he'll also be able to silence the slavering pack of idiots that continue to demand that the 'murder simulation' game Manhunt 2 be banned. It's had it's UK release ban lifted this week and will be hitting shelves soon, and there's a certain amount of people that seem to think this will coincide with a massive rise in brutal murders up and down the country. You know, the same sort of mindless scaremongering that preceded video nasties, Black Sabbath and, probably, the Christian religion they all seem to cite as the reason behind their pursuit of outlawing everything fun, which I'm sure the Pagans in Britain claimed was going to result in murdered babies the length and breadth of the land as well. In other news, the Glasweigans involved in foiling the failed terrorist attack on Glasgow Airport last year have gotten into a bit of a spat over which one gave them the best shoeing - John Smeaton, who did his bit by punching a suspected terrorist in the face, has been accused of being a 'fake' by Alex McIlveen, who tore a tendon in his foot while kicking another suspect until the police arrived. Personally, I think they should settle it with a proper scrap, with the winner awarded some sort of prize, like a punching bag with a beard on it.

In entertainment, 'Duffy' has now been at number 1 in the UK charts for four weeks with 'Mercy', which is an amazing achievement for an ugly woman with a stupid name that can't sing. Her album, 'Rockferry', is also at number 1 in the charts. Now I've been to Rockferry, it's crap and why anyone would write a song about it, let alone name an album after it, is beyond me. But then again I'm not a boring Welsh bitch unjustifiably famous for no good reason, so it's quite possible it just isn't my field.

Oh, and the Palestinians in Gaza are kicking up another fuss about 'feeling like prisoners in an open prison' over the Israeli blockade on supplies. Cry more.

Goodnight.

Edit: I've just been channel-flicking and came across the end of the final of 'Dancing on Ice', and, unsurprisingly, the vote has gone to the one with the biggest tits. Thank you, Britain, for restoring my faith in your ability to vote based on the issues that matter.

If I was Going to Steal a Child, I Wouldn't Pick One that Looks Like Jabba the Hutt

You probably don't want to know this, but I am not a well man. Something I ate on last night's endavours has carried out some heinous thermonuclear assault on my guts and I've spent about ninety percent of today perched atop the porcelain throne hoping and waiting to die, so forgive me if the blog isn't up to it's usual standard. Still, it was probably worth today's gastrointestinal recriminations, especially as I did get a girl's number (yay), but only 'to reminisce' (boo) before I had to excuse myself and pebble-dash the club toilet with another dose of Satan's quicksand. You've not had a good night out until you've been perched at a 45 degree angle holding the cubicle door shut with one hand in a vain bid to keep out the bouncers who think you're spending hours in the bog because you're stuffing Bolivian happy powder up your face while your sphincter makes an earnest bid to escape your body via your arse.

Anyway, it's not really been an interesting weekend in the news, which is why I've left it until the middle of Sunday afternoon to actually post an update. Chief story in the UK has to be the stupidity of police public relations people, as Hertfordshire DCI Bill Jephson's reaction to the discovery of a headless, handless body propped up against a garage in Ickleford was, and I quote, "we are treating this as a murder enquiry". Yes, Bill, I'd say that's the most logical course of action, unless you can think of a way the victim could manage to cut off his own hands, handlessly cut off his own head and then manage to prop himself up against a wall and dispose of the murder weapon, all without the assistance or notice of anyone else in the immediate vicinity. If you can think of a way it's all an elaborate trick, you should tell us, because that would put the shits up Paul Daniels. I know it's probably protocol and he's required to say it but I bet he felt bloody stupid doing so, and so he should. If there's ever a case where a body has managed to lose three major identifiable parts of itself in the middle of a suburban Hertfordshire town, then that will be worthy of a press conference. Calling one to say that a man who no longer has a head was probably not alone when neck and skull came to be parted is most definately not.

But then again, I suppose the bizzies quite like the chance to get out of the office and make inane statements like this, especially when being in the office seems to largely center around dealing with inane statements like this. An anti-smoking group in Liverpool wants to have all films that show anyone in any way smoking to be certified 18+, saying that international research shows that children from 11-18 pick up smoking through seeing people smoke in films. Well, Liverpool, I have some news for you: Kids in Liverpool pick up smoking because every other bastard smokes in Liverpool. Every evening I've ever spent with anyone from Liverpool (and there have been a lot) has involved sitting around with a fag in one hand and a cup of tea in the other, watching whatever's on the telly. I almost felt like taking it up so I didn't feel out of place, and I didn't even see a fucking film the entire time I was there. I suppose they're trying to do something because Liverpool is apparently the lung cancer capital of the world, but I really think it's more to do with the fact Liverpool is one of those places where smoking can be considered a full-time occupation - I knew a bloke from Merseyside once who was having chemotherapy for lung cancer while still smoking 60 a day and driving his wagon up and down the M1 six days a week, so I don't think chinny Ben Affleck having a swift rollie on the way to saving the world is any great factor in the north-east's battle against the hanging clouds of smoke.

I'll try not to criticise the police much more, as I'm sure they do a difficult job, but I can't say I was anything less than amused at the fact they are making extra officers available for an anti-domestic violence drive over easter - where are these officers normally? Shouldn't there be a constant anti-domestic violence drive every day of the year? Surely domestic violence is bad at any time of the year, not just on the few arbitrary days a year we decide to call 'Easter'. "No, Mr. Johnson, you shouldn't be hitting your wife in the face with a steel pan, you should be thinking of happy things like baby chickens and lambs". All it says to me is that they won't come out for 'domestic incidents' during the other 364 days a year, but heaven forbid you decide to stove your spouse's head in at Easter, or the rozzers will be round right away to take away your chocolate egg. Still, if one of the stories gets into the media it will give another chance for one of these vulture-y cunts to crawl out of the woodwork and get their faces in the paper. I thought we'd seen the last of them as the Madeline McCann crisis finally started to wind down, but no, now with that poor woman being raped and murdered in Goa, a whole new set of oppertunistic tosspots are coming out and telling The Daily Shite that they may have passed a girl that looked like her on a beach once, and getting a cheque for £10,000 and the gall to call themselves a minor celebrity out of it. Sod off, the lot of you.

Oh, and another sunday, another moan from Sir Alex Ferguson about how Cristiano Ronaldo isn't being allowed to play his game, this time saying that if the preening Portuguese doesn't get more protection, he might leave the Premier League. Wah wah wah, good. Maybe he can make his own special league, the Cristiano Ronaldo Appreciation Division, where there are no other players and every shot counts as a goal. Maybe Sir Alex can go with him, and every now and then he can put out dewy-eyed press releases about what a beautiful man Cristiano is, and how he's not gay but there's just something about Ronaldo's strongly sensitive lines that just makes him want to... anyway, the point is, the pair of them should shut up or fuck off. If crybaby Ronaldo can't take the fact that people can and will kick you in this league, he can bugger off to Real Madrid or another club and league where getting within 10 yards of any attacking player is regarded as a sending-off offence. I don't want to spend my Saturdays being kicked up the arse by big Darren Moore either, but I'd do it if I was on £100,000 a week.

Also, you'd think Sir Alex would be a little less whingy after getting his team back on top of the league as Arsenal continue to bottle their title bid to the third lot of witless shitkickers in a row, wouldn't you? The big whisky-soaked crybaby.

Oh, Lewis Hamilton won the Grand Prix. I haven't seen it yet, I'm watching the rerun after the Fulham-Everton game, but the BBC told me. The race ended with only eight cars, one of which was subsequently disqualified, so it sounds like it should be an eventful one, but not eventful enough for me to stay awake until six in the morning for, especially as it still feels like my arsehole is trying to give birth to a planet.

Goodnight.

Your Say Thursday: Are White Working Class People Ignored in Britain?

Why is it that, sometimes, when I type an address into my browser's address bar and hit return, it doesn't bloody work, but when I copy and paste the URL into Google and click the resulting link, it comes up faster than anything? It's internet favouritism, I tell you. Actually, it's probably just Orange being complete salmon cocks as usual, but it's getting right on my tits.

Anyway, we've got a doozy of a Your Say Thursday today, as any Have Your Say question entitled "Are white working class people ignored in Britain?" is bound to bring out the armies of nutters and reactionary witterers that seem to populate the Have Your Say website. Most peoples' idea of the white working class being 'ignored' translates to 'I should get more because I'm white, why aren't I?', but that wouldn't be very funny, that's just very sad - quite how you can piss and moan for hours on end about 'the blacks' getting benefits/free cars/trips to Alton Towers just for being brown then turn around and, with a straight face, claim that you should get more because you're white is beyond me. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm a minority and nobody's given me a Mercedes.

Anyway, onwards, to the idiots.

"I have read many comments that this country is 92% white etc, if you have eyes you know this is not true, anywhere there is a lot of people London , Birmingham, there are not many white people"
- peter woods, romford, United Kingdom

The black person outside my window proves that 100% of people in Britain are black. This is 100% fact and cannot be disproven by truth, statistics or common sense.

"Frankly I am bored of hearing the working class whine and complain about their lot in life. They breed constantly, they never stop smoking or drinking. They live their entire lives on benefits and won't get a job."
- Mark S., United Kingdom

When I try to imagine the sort of person Mark S. is, I just can't shake the image of a man who's all tweed and teeth, wondering what that horrible braying sound is when he laughs.

"I would like to ask the question.Where are the UNIONS?Why do they stand idly by when once highly skilled well paid WHITE manual workers are being pied high on the industrial scrapheap"
- MARK LOUGHLIN, TIPTON, United Kingdom

I bet when you think about the possibility of your toaster being repaired by a 'black', you get so scared you have a little accident and the poo dribbles down your leg into your Union Jack socks, and then you have a bit of a cry.

"I have served as a soldier in many foreign lands and learnt rapidly that it is nigh on impossible to enforce our standards on all and sundry. Allowing foregin communities to form in the UK compounds this issue!"

Edward Blackmore, Newbridge, United Kingdom

It's nigh on impossible to enforce your standards of peace and tolerance on people by running screaming at them waving a machine gun. Who could have known that wouldn't work?

"How long before the indiginous white population are forced to live on reservations....?"
Mark H, Luton, United Kingdom

Yes, Mark! How long before the indigenous white population is herded into pens and poked by foreign children with brown faces and long sticks with bits of poo on the end? How long, Mark? How long!?

"Anyone in any doubt about this should read the story of the old couple in the Politically correct city of Brighton,the husband had a stroke and they now are seperated because the council will not find them ground floor accomodation,if this couple had been same sex or of minority ethnic origin they would have been moved in days."
[tee4too]

And if they'd both had one leg they'd have been given a kitten and some gummy bears. What would have they gotten if they'd been conjoined twins? Tell us, tee4, give us more of your entirely imaginary political insight, and less on why you are a complete and utter fanny.

I absolutely love Have Your Say, I really do, and this has to be one of my favourites in ages. Getting all the quotes to line up properly in this post has been giving me some serious gyp, but I don't care, because I've been having too much fun laughing at the surprising ignorance of the population of the Have Your Say boards. This question has been great for it, but my favourite of the entire week has to go to the entire question about 'Sky Jams'; how can you possibly argue with the sort of minds that think planes run on magical rails in the sky?

Your licence fee at work, ladies and gentlemen.

Goodnight.

If Men Can't Multitask, What's This I'm Doing With My Browsing Hand?

Bloody hell, the BBC are tackling some tough issues today. Away with the humorous introduction to today's post, because in the spirit of weighty journalistic might that the BBC have set with their stories today, I'm going to leap straight into giving you the day's most important hard-hitting news story, unfiltered, unfettered and right in your face. Brace yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, this is going to be a biggie: Very few people own black and white tellies.

Yes, girls and boys, you pay your (probably colour, thank you BBC) television licence in order to grant the BBC the funding to produce incisive, up-to-the minute news like this, telling us with a big shit-eating proud grin across it's face that it's found out that not many people in 21st Century Britain own black and white televisions. Well done, BBC, you've really got your finger on the pulse of modern fucking Britain. My gran didn't own a black and white TV and she was well into her 70s when she died back last century (OK, 1999, but 'last century' sounds more dramatic), so what sort of batty old bastards are going to be using them now? Well, that's what I'd read an article on black and white TV ownership to find that out, I suppose. Only it's not fucking there. 18 paragraphs and over 600 words, and all it says is that not many people own black and white tellies anymore.

Oh, and the Have Your Say people have gotten a hold of it. If you think that means it can only go downhill from there, you'd be right. Imagining what kind of limp, empty life leads to comments like "I have to admit I love twiddling with the dial, knowing where the stations are by frequency and getting that satisfying feeling of having found the perfect reception point yourself, by hand." simply boggles the mind - what's the frequency for BBC2, and why would I ever give a flying toss? Next up, "I gain a deep feeling of intense sexual gratification when I'm taking off my shoes".

Actually, I take that back. That would probably be a really interesting story.

Anyway, in another case of the general public having nothing better to do, someone's gone and got themselves into the paper because they took a photograph of Jeremy Clarkson talking on a mobile while driving. Really, how tedious must your existence be that the sight of a man who presents a programme largely dedicated to doing stupid things in cars, doing something stupid in a car, sends you into paroxysms of such joy that you feel compelled to break out the Canon and take a snap to remember the moment by? The worst part is the photographer was quoted in the Daily Mirror as saying "We could not believe that we'd caught him out. My girlfriend saw he was on his mobile. She grabbed hers and took a picture of him". Yes, well done. Did you then go home and paint tiny faces on little model soldiers before crying yourself to sleep at your miserable, failed existence? Honestly. Shame on the sort of idiots that feel this constitutes any sort of pressing national issue, and shame on the Daily Mirror - though I don't think at this point that particular tabloid could sink any lower without actually being written in txt tlk - for bothering to print such a pointless non-story. Then again, this is the paper of 'The 3am Girls', so I don't know why I get my hopes up in the first place.

At least there was some good sense somewhere in the country, though, as a judge dismissed a lawsuit against Marks and Spencers by a man who claimed he slipped and ruptured a tendon in the car park of a shopping center because of a Marks and Spencers grape lodged in the tread of his shoe. Frankly, if you are capable of slipping over and tearing a tendon based on a fruit that is 90% water and would be squashed flat to the pavement by the weight of any normal human being over the age of fourteen months, you probably shouldn't be allowed outside without adult supervision and a retractable leash, let alone wander dribblingly around Marks and Spencers or become a practicing accountant. I would also hazard a guess that anyone capable of seriously injuring themselves with a grape probably isn't particularly well versed at representing themselves in court, which is probably why in this increasingly litigous society he managed to present a case so fundamentally daft that it was thrown out and him ordered to pay the clothing giant legal costs of around £15,000. This can only be a good thing, really, so if only they were to extend these £15,000 charges to anyone caught doing anything rediculously stupid, like grape-slipping, car-surfing or listening to Girls Aloud, I'll be as happy as Larry.

In London, at the Old Bailey, the trial of the killers of London schoolboy Kodjo Yenga has heard that the deceased was 'chased by a gang of youths shouting "kill him" before being stabbed in the heart'. Fucking hell. When I was at school, the worst fights got was a ring of kids around two blokes swinging and missing at each other until a teacher wandered in and hauled one or both off by their shirt collars. The closest we got to serious bodily harm was sticking your compass into your mate's leg to see what they'd do - nobody ever stabbed anyone in the heart, for fuck's sake.

That said, very few kids at my school could have found the heart even with a copy of Gray's Anatomy and a game of Operation, so perhaps that has something to do with it.

Oh, and Alistair Darling has put an extra 4p of tax on every pint of beer. Cunt.

I'd do the sport, but it's all so very boring. Everton and Spurs are doing extra time against Fiorentina and PSV, Boro and Villa drew, one-all, Portsmouth turned Birmingham over 4 - 2 and Chelsea gave Derby their predictable weekly thumping. The Formula 1 is back on this weekend, so let's hope that improves things a little bit, as lately it's all been boring me to tears.

Goodnight.

Sometimes, When I Walk Down the Street Without My Head-Bag, Children Point and Cry

Hello, dearest internet.

Like millions of other poor saps from every corner of this here interweb, I do that social networking thing. I don't do it very often, but I do. It's like a bad habit, only with typing. Anyway, those of you that use Facebook will probably be well aware of of this application they have for it called 'Are YOU Interested?', where you choose yes or no to a selection of pictures of women if you're interested in them or not, and if you are and they are then you get a notification that you have a match, and then you awkwardly approach each other in conversation and eventually have elbowy self-hating geek sex in a TravelLodge in Durham. Anyway, this particular application seems to be a favourite of pretty much everyone, and I thought I'd try it out just to see what all the fuss was about, clicked about a bit, got a match or two but could never really be bothered with it, so I stopped. That, I thought, would be the end of it. I was wrong. Terribly, unfeasibly wrong.

Then, the bloody thing started emailing me, telling me I had no matches. I am aware I don't have any matches, it notifies me if I have a match and it hasn't, so the logical conclusion I can draw from this behaviour is that I don't have any matches. You'd think it would realise that we can work out that little tidbit of information for ourselves, wouldn't you? But no, it continues to send them. Why? Bad coding? Logical oversight on the part of the designer? No. It's because it's taunting me.

I know it is. It's sitting there, laughing at my hideous Elephant Man face. Rubbing my twisted nose in the fact Mandy from Doncaster didn't return my match. It's mocking me with it's gnarled fingers and vicious, cathode-ray face. Taunting me with its writhing cables and low, suffocating hum. Sometimes, late at night, it whispers to me in the dark. Sometimes it sings songs of death and hate that no-one else can hear. Sometimes - the worst times - it just sits and stares at me with an almost infinite patience; a patience as deep and engulfing as Natalie Appleton's vagina. Waiting. Always waiting. Forever, eternally, waiting for me to refresh.

I'm just so scared that one day, I might log in, and never log out again.

Actually, I don't really give a toss, I just didn't have time to write an irreverent news roundup today as I was too busy faffing about dealing with 1&1 and the new layout.

Kiss kiss.

So, About These Domain Things Then

I've begun the slow process of converting this site to a proper domain name instead of a Google blog. That's no real slight on Google or Blogger, they've both been fine except for a few irritating outages, but then I suppose you get what you pay for. Anyway, you can now access this blog at www.blandfordexaminer.co.uk, which is currently just a redirect to the blogger page until I can get my head around exporting all the pages and choosing a half-decent 'content management system' thingy. Any feedback greatly appreciated.

Anyway, this isn't the real post for today, I've got some urgent work to do and then, if time permits, I might end up in the pub. I'll try to squeeze one in (wahey) by the end of the day, though. Hopefully I'll be spending my weekend transferring files over and feeling like a right spod, but for the time being, enjoy going clicky-clicky on the link above and bask in the reflected glow of the beauty of owning a proper domain name.

Goodnight.

Edit: The www. address is currently down, which doesn't bode well for the future, I must admit. It's probably 1&1 faffing about with all the backend stuff, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Good thing I've got a backup at www.blandford.co.nr, so you can use that for the time being.

Edit Edit: Back up now. That's the last update for today, this isn't a fucking status page.

Enviropope, or The Joy of Inventing New Sins

It must be brilliant being the Pope, mustn't it? Think about it, he gets to swan about in his posh dress all day, ruling over millions and millions of people and getting your every whim catered to by a dedicated army of funny little men in crimson frocks. The downsides are, of course, that you can't ever get your end away and to get the job you have to have your bollocks weighed on a small, silver trowel by a small, silver Archbishop, but that's a small price to pay for eminent domain over about a quarter of the world's population and the ability to, apparently, make up mortal sins on little more than a whim; the Vatican today unveiling ten modern day 'deadly sins' to link up with the old, classic-style mortal sins. The new deadly sins include accumilating excessive wealth (the irony of the Catholic church chastising others for making lots of lovely dosh is surely not lost on anyone - Ed), genetic manipulation and, perhaps unsurprisingly, environmental pollution. Yes, the Pope has gone green.

The contents of the new deadly sins isn't the issue, though. Not my issue, anyway, not today. My issue with the Pope creating new deadly sins is that I thought the idea of what was and what wasn't a deadly sin was pretty much set in stone. Not in the same way as the ten commandments actually were set in stone, but figuratively pretty much fixed. I certainly didn't know that the Pope could just gallivant around editing them to say whatever he likes. Can he do that with the rest of the Bible as well? Will, after he goes on a particularly ecumenical binge on the holy wine, the world's Catholics wake up one day to a message on their Popephones saying they all now worship Clancy the Swearing Toad? It's a slippery slope with no real end in sight: "Bethlehem was actually a small town near Todmorden", "Jesus spent his formative years in a blood-feud with Ming the Merciless", "Pontius Pilate looked just like Ringo Starr" and so on. It just shouldn't be done.

Still, I suppose he's done it with all the best intentions, even if the environmentalist slant does seem a bit of a trendy land-grab to try to grab some of the stinkies and hippies back to the Catholic fold. I'd just be too tempted to abuse it if I had that kind of power. Maybe that's why I've never been considered for Popedom (Popeism?) - that and being entirely the wrong religion and all - it's highly likely I'd just go mad with power. I'd have to start by changing the actual title to something a bit more punchy, like 'Superpope'. After about a week of that and passing sins requiring my servants bring me my soup at a particular temperature or risk eternal damnation,
I'd get bored and just start messing with people;

"Today, all of Surrey is in mortal sin."
"Oh but why, oh powerful master?"
"And so is everyone called Les."
"Damn you, Superpope!"

It'd all be a great laugh, wouldn't it?

"From now on, not sinning shall be considered a sin, so everyone has to sin, all the time, or else be a sinner. Ecclesiastical feedback loop!"

"Alright I've changed my mind, everyone give me money."

I'm sorry, I appear to have entered a reverie.
I'm blaming the vodka.

Goodnight.

British National Party In Utter Utter Cunts Shocker

Bloody hell, that was an interesting weekend in the FA Cup, wasn't it? The draw for the semi finals is held later on today, with Barnsley, West Brom, Portsmouth and Cardiff in the pot for a trip to Wembley to decide who, erm... goes back to Wembley a bit later and has a chance of winning a big tin cup. Maybe I'm getting older, but I'm still one for only playing the final at Wembley, it gives people something to aim for. When the see that arch soaring in front of the team bus, they should know they are one game away from a cup win, not two. I'm all for playing the semis on neutral ground, but with the big guns out of the cup, surely the Emirates Stadium or Old Trafford would be excellent choices? The Millennium Stadium couldn't be used this year as Cardiff are in the pot and it'd be a touch unfair to send some other poor bastard to Britain's second stadium only to have 75,000 screaming Welshers bellowing at them in a supposedly neutral venue. Still, it might give a bigger chance of Portsmouth being knocked out and thus the FA Cup going to a side outside the top division for the first time since forever - I can't be the only one that wants to see Barnsley vs. AC Milan in the UEFA Cup qualifers, surely?

Anyway, the news. The BBC are reporting that the BNP, evidently of the mind that they just aren't hated enough by anyone with half a brain and the ability to read their sour, hate-filled manifesto, have refused to apologise for publishing a leaflet labelling drug users as 'nasty, pathetic parasites' featuring a photograph of dead heroin addict Rachel Whitear which was released by her parents after her death in May 2000 (Apparently no minority group are safe from the BNP's increasingly unfocussed flailing rage - Ed). Obviously, her parents are distressed, not least because, as well as describing their deceased daughter as a nasty parasite, by using her name and image it implies that they support the content of the leaflet, aimed at pinning the blame for heroin use on Muslim communities. Now, I'm going to come clean and say I haven't read the pamphlet in question, but if it's anything like the leaflets they pushed through my door before the local elections ("GANGS OF MUSLIM EXTREMISTS ARE COMING TO RAPE YOUR DOG RIGHT FUCKING NOW!!!!") it's likely to be complete bollocks. It was printed on nice, soft paper though, even though I doubt my morning poo could have added a great deal to the shit-to-paper ratio of the piece.

Oh well, unlike the BNP, them thar brown people they're so scared of don't half have a sense of humour, as a council of elders in Sudan have decreed that a man must marry the goat he was caught having sex with. That seems a little harsh - I know if I was forced to marry anyone I was caught having sex with I'd have married a few dogs by now, but I mean that in the figurative sense - but if you're going to go out of your way to rape a goat you should at least have the decency to be a gentleman and propose to it - goats are people too, after all. Except they aren't, and that's why it's illegal to have sex with them. Still, the owner of the goat did alright out of it, as the elders ordered the would-be goat-rapist pay him a dowry, as is traditional when taking a bride from her 'father'. Don't know if I'd want to eat the chops after that, though, so I'm sure he's still a bit out of pocket.

In other news, the Daily Express continued it's dedication to hard-hitting journalism by ignoring all the other stories of the day and going with, on it's front page, Holly Willoughby's tits and their determined efforts to escape from whatever she was wearing this week on 'Dancing on Ice'. Who cares? I don't think Willoughby is particularly attractive, nor do I think her dress sense is of national importance unless you're more than a little odd. Frankly I couldn't care less if she wants to swan about naked, although she might get a bit chilly. This odd obsession with one celebrity (oh, except Amy Winehouse - 'Amy is Back on Crack', the headlines scream... did we really expect anything less? Go and get Britney to shave something again) in one particular newspaper hasn't been seen since about 2004, when The Sunday Mirror's 'Fashion' section turned into a weekly 'Look at Kelly Osbourne, Isn't She Ugly? Look, Here's Some Pictures of Her Being Ugly. Burn the Troll, Burn Her!' session.

Oops, I've now mentioned her in two posts in a row. Perhaps it's catching.

Finally, what happened to that killer storm I was promised? I was woken up at about 5 by the wind trying to take my window off it's moorings and a bit of driving rain, but that's about it. I was predicted a deadly storm of cyclone proportions and all we got was a bit of a wet fart. The only way it could have caused a billion pounds of damage would be if there had been a billion pounds on my roof and it had blown it all out to sea, and if there had been a billion pounds on my roof, I'd have taken the fucker down. The Daily Express (so I suppose I should have expected as much, really) was predicting death and destruction on a national scale and spent about four pages hollering about how the wind, rain and earthquakes were all part of the end times and it was all our fault for not saving Goddess Diana from those nasty Arabs, and then bugger all happened except me getting woken up and being unable to get back to sleep, which means I have been working hard since before you probably woke up and this is the first oppertunity I've had to do anything on my own time, in what is actually supposed to be my lunch hour. I'm not happy, but I've no-one to blame but myself.

Edit: I suppose I ought to do some sports news. I've just recalled reading a story earlier about Cristiano Ronaldo saying he was 'afraid to play his game' in the FA Cup match against Portsmouth at the weekend. Bloody hell, if a couple of shoves from a pair of French whoopsies puts the wind up him, I bet he shits himself every time a car backfires in Moss Side. What does he really expect opponents to do, stand off and wave him through on goal? Tip their hats and bow their undeserving heads to his greatness? This is football, and if you ponce about with all the fancy tricks he does, eventually some big bastard of a center-half will come along and give you a nip. I'm not saying people should go about scything him down but the odd shoulder charge is no great offence, and maybe if he spent less time crumpling like a cheap paper Bovril cup any time an opposition player got within ten feet of him, referees might be more willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Oh, and David Haye won the fight, in case you didn't already know. Good stoppage in the second. Two rounds earlier than I reckoned, but I'm glad it was a quick finish as it was closing in on 3AM and I was bloody knackered. I think I was more groggy listening to that fight than Enzo was after that big right hand, for goodness' sake. What business have the Septics got deciding when our boxing goes ahead anyway? Still, Haye's moved up to heavyweight now, and heaven knows the division needs him.

Until later then,

Goodnight.

I Didn't Book a Record, I Booked a Pug-Faced Tart

Evening, fight fans. I've just been reading an article on the BBC website about the Maccarinelli-Haye bout this weekend, and they seem to be of the opinion that Haye will win. I can't say I disagree with them really, Haye is a big bastard and he can't half hit, so my money's on him and not the ItaliTaffy. I respect Enzo as a fighter and I certainly wouldn't want to get him in a bad mood, but the problem is I reckon if I was David Haye I'd be a lot more blasé about the idea, and would go about spilling his pints with abandon. Mostly I'm still operating on the dream I had a couple of months back about how Haye would wipe the floor with him, but my subconscious is rarely wrong. Though I am still waiting the evening involving Kelly Osbourne, a great big bed and some chocolate coated strawberries, so you never know. Still, if you fancy a punt on the fight, my tip goes to Haye.

I should know, I know a bloke that works in a Ladbrokes.

If you were planning on putting a bet on Lilly Allen turning up at the Isle of Wight festival, however, you're a bit out of luck, as she isn't going to, and that seems to have made the bloke responsible for organising it a wee bit miffed. Promoter John Giddings said that Allen cancelled her appearance because her album is behind schedule, and that he didn't book a record, he booked an artist. No you didn't mate, you booked Lilly Allen, who's about as far from an artist when she's singing as I am when I sit down for my morning shit. All in all, he comes off a bit like an angry teacher with a student who's just brought him a note from his mum saying he was at Alton Towers yesterday and couldn't be in GCSE Boredom, claiming that Allen's reason "is not a legitimate excuse". He was also crying and mopping his fevered brow with his unfunny comical tie. Probably. He then has an attack of eco-consciousness, and claims that he'll use Allen's fee to make the festival more environmentally friendly, which makes him a trendy hippie twat who makes me physically sick, so I'm glad the posh brat with the put-on mockney accent turned him down, and I hope it made him cry. He also says that Radiohead have announced they're not going to play gigs that aren't environmentally sound anymore, which makes them about four times more of a pretentious bunch of cunts than I already thought they were, and I've already heard 'Kid A'.

On the topic of moaning teachers, moving from celebrity insolence to police incompetence, which is a tenuous link and an even worse rhyme which even I'm ashamed of, coppers in Oxfordshire have been circulating materials to schools about a new designer drug called 'strawberry meth'; strawberry-flavoured crystal meth that evil evil drug dealing baddies in Lone Ranger masks and stripey shirts are distributing outside schools. Only they aren't, and it's a complete hoax, seemingly known to everyone except the Oxfordshire constabulary, moronic school faculties and the poor kids that have had to sit through countless assemblies warning of the imaginary evils of this entirely made-up drug. You couldn't make it up, could you? Not even Chris Morris ever managed to dupe the actual police into warning about a fake drug. Members of parliament standing up in the House of Commons, yes, but then it was the MP for Basildon and anyone from Basildon is demonstrably thicker than even your common garden-variety rozzer: The fact that the only story I can ever remember being local to Basildon being some bloke going loopy and blowing six kinds of shite out of a lamp post with a twelve gauge shotgun probably bears me out on this one.

Now a story for all you nervous single people out there. When you go on a first date, it's so easy to stutter, to spill your food, to do something, anything, that will create a bad first impression. Rest assured, fair singletons, for however you might embarrass yourself, no matter how much spaghetti you might get on your shirt, you still won't be able to create a worse impression than the bloke who stabbed his date thirty-one times in the face. Now that's horrible and obviously a hideous thing to happen to anyone, and I wouldn't normally be moved to make a joke about something so heinous, but this bloke is yet another contender for the 'silliest murder defence ever': Karl Taylor, 27, of Covent Garden, claimed that his victim, Kate Beagley, stabbed herself 31 times in the neck and head. Yes, you read that correctly, that's what he said: She did it to herself. "Oh, I was out with her, see, and we were just getting to the mints and coffee, and she, like, just started driving a kitchen knife into her face". That one's never happened to me, and I've been on dates with some very odd characters, let me tell you. I'm not sure if this beats the would-be necro nutter from last month, but it's got to be up there - you'd think with all the murder and violence going on in London, they'd know how to think up a good excuse for it by now, wouldn't you? Come on lads, if you're going to murder someone, at least take the time to get your story straight.

It probably would have been more believable if he hadn't also nicked her car. Idiot.

Anyway, there is a happy story to end on after that rather macabre story, though: a former stuntman in Nottinghamshire has set up traps for vandals on his property, including a trebuchet that fires railway sleepers and a catapult that fires chicken poo. I'm all for anything that puts off the average chav from kicking over your garden wall for a laugh, but I'm even more for it if it turns into a special, homicidal game of It's a Knockout and lobs a fucking great railway sleeper at them.

Anyway, I'd do the football but it was all pretty boring, really. Chelsea gave Olympiakos a thrashing while Liverpool thumped West Ham 4 - 0, but I don't think anyone really expected much else with the form all the sides involved are in. Poor Robert Green, eh? The two times Fabio Capello bothers to take a look at him and he lets in 8 in 2 games. Oh, and George Gillett tried to sell up to DIC but didn't, and Tom Hicks did something boring involving a big folder with lots of numbers in it. It wasn't a chequebook, which is what Liverpool need him to open if they're going to win anything next season, but oh well, that's life. I'm not going to cover Liverpool for anything other than on-the-pitch matters anymore until they've got that little squabble sorted out, because I'm starting to sound like a broken record. A record of Phil McNulty singing 'Ferry Across the Mersey' for sixty-eight non-stop minutes.

Also, can everyone stop playing that bloody Paramore band at me? This isn't really aimed at anyone in particular, and is more a general request to the entire world. The woman sounds like Avril Lavigne, and we've already got quite enough of that sort of post-pop shit-pixie clogging up the charts already. The thing is, I probably would this latest one if her head wasn't so enormous on her tiny, wasted body, but it is, so I wouldn't, so there's no redeeming features to the band at all. Oh well, I've linked to them now, so start the countdown to this blog being linked to on some infernal automated Paramore aggregator thing and flooded with 15-year-old emo twats. You lot want to be listening to some Madball, you do.

That's if it doesn't make your face explode, obviously.

Goodnight.

Your Sunday Football Round-Up

So it was a dramatic set of fixtures yesterday in the Premier League, and some interesting news coming out of the papers this morning. Despite his side's 4 - 0 thumping of West Ham yesterday, there is still talk that the Zombie could be thrown out at the end of the season, with several key players stating they want to leave if the current regime stays in place. Joe Cole, Andriy Shevchenko, Didier Drogba, Frank Lampard, Michael Essien and Ricardo Carvalho are the unhappy bunnies at the club, with Sheva being the most likely to leave seeing as he went home on AC Milan's team bus when he watched the Italians played Arsenal, a move which probably drove the Zombie up the wall. I've got to admit, the list of people that want to leave looks like a roll-call of Chelsea's best and brightest, and if they really want to leave - Lampard has been making noises for months about joining up with Mourinho at Barca if he takes over in the summer - then I think Grant will be sacrificed before Abramovich allows that to happen. Steve Sidwell and a pushing-40 Claude Makelele does not a Premiership-winning midfield make, so Roubles Roman has quite an easy decision on his hands: remove the head or destroy the brain.

Other regimes going wrong in the Premier League include Newcastle, where it's taken just six games for Magpies chairman Chris Mort to give King Kev the dreaded vote of confidence. The city is obviously disappointed because they were under the impression that the Geordie Messiah would work his magic and they'd be grabbing thumping 4 - 0 wins every week and challenging for the Champions League instead of being at serious genuine risk of being plunged into a relegation battle if their game with Liverpool next week goes awry. My prediction is King Kev won't last much longer. I can't see him still being boss at Christmas given his track record of walking away when things go wrong, and even if he is, the way he managed Man City when he was there suggests he is totally out of his depth in the Premiership, so he won't be allowed much of a stay by Mort and co if things get much worse.

The sad part of that is Keegan is a great personality and an asset to football, he just isn't a very good manager. He'd be pretty good in the Championship, but his massive ego won't allow that which is why when he was shown the door by Man City he went and set up a 'soccer circus' in Scotland rather than suffer the indignity of doing anything outside the top flight. Oh well, put your money on him being out inside the year, folks. You heard it here first.

Anyway, on to the actual games. Chelsea, as previously mentioned, gave West Ham a 4 - 0 thrashing to strike back against rumours that they had lost momentum in the wake of the Carling Cup final defeat to Spurs. West Ham old boys Frank Lampard and Joe Cole got on the scoresheet as well as Michael Ballack and Cashley, but the biggest cheer of the game was reserved for when Big Fat Frank got himself a straight red for pushing Luis Boa Morte, which even I admit was a bit harsh on the slap-faced tosser. I wouldn't be surprised if Boa Morte got punished later in the week for his surrepitous kick on the Chelsea man that led up to it, but the gentle handbags that followed in no way deserved a red card. Avram Grant got his revenge on the media for their slating of him last week and, in all honesty, the Blues did completely dominate West Ham and probably could have scored more, even with 10 men. Arsenal's visit to Manchester United late on in the run-in now looks like Chelsea's most important fixture, and they aren't even in it; if they draw, Chelsea could easily overhaul one or both of them in the title race. It's all hotting up now.

Some of that heat is coming from the squealing brakes of Arsenal as they try to slam on the anchors in a bid to halt the terrible vein of form they're on. It's a testament to how well Arsenal have performed all season that two draws in a row is tantamount to terrible form, but the fact remains that their lead has gone from 5 points to 1 point inside a fortnight and they still have Manchester United and Chelsea to play; teams who, on the evidence of their 1 - 1 draw with Villa, will completely wipe the floor with them. The game was scrappy and Villa deserved more than a draw in all honesty, but it all balances out; Arsenal deserved to win this week and didn't, and this week they deserved to lose. With full backs camped constantly in the opponent's half, no real wingers to track back and two central midfielders (Abou Diaby and Aliaksandr Hleb, who might play wide right for Arsenal but never has for previous clubs) playing out wide, Arsenal had absolutely no answer for Ashley Young and Gabriel Agbonlahor bombing down the flanks every time Villa got the ball, and with Phillipe Senderos pulling off the finish of his career into the wrong net midway through the first half, it was always going to be an uphill struggle, and NIcklas Bendtner's scrappy finish in the 5th minute of injury time salvaged a point for an undeserving Arsenal team that's going to have to spend every penny of Arsene Wenger's rumoured £70m transfer kitty next season to have any chance of doing what they've done again, but better. First on the shopping list should be two proper wingers, a defensive full-back, a central defender, a goalkeeper and a striker.

The most interesting thing about the match, however, was Sir Alex commenting after his side's game with Fulham that Arsenal scored in the last minute because they were "typical seven minutes of injury time Arsenal". Now, I'm not defending Arsenal's tendency to roll around a little bit more than neccessary, but if there's one manager and one team that has no right to criticise the amount of injury time another team gets, it's Sir Alex and Manchester United, who throughout the late 90s and early 2000s routinely were given as much injury time as necessary for them to score, only for the whistle to go seconds after the restart, meaning they're probably the number one reason behind those electronic boards they have now; definately the number one reason why the boards don't have enough space for 'Play until Man United don't lose'. Maybe Sir Alex has the first signs of dementia? We can only hope.

His team's performance against Fulham, however, can't be faulted. 3 - 0 at a canter and now within one point of Arsenal and Premiership top spot. That said, in current form, I'm pretty sure the rabble I kick a ball about with on a friday could turn up the following day and give Roy Hodgson's side a good thrashing, so perhaps that isn't saying a great deal. There isn't much to say about the match, it was dull and it was more the sheer gulf in class rather than the skill of Manchester United that led to the goals, and it heaped evidence on the pile that Fulham Football Club are not long for this division. Roy Hodgson's appointment was a mistake. He clearly doesn't 'get' English football which is why he buggered off to manage half of Scandinavia in the first place, and his signings seem more than a little illogical - Hangeland is a good player, but other than that it's just a smattering of Norweigans and Finns that have never seen a Premiership ball kicked in anger, which is not the right sort of players to be bringing in for a relegation dogfight.

The signing of Jari Litmanen was particularly odd, with the player who turns 38 later this year and has barely managed 30 games for his last 3 clubs - which happen to be those footballing powerhouses of FC Lahti, Hansa Rostock and Malmo FF - and had to be sent home to Finland because of a suspected heart attack last month being ostensibly signed as a targetman. Why did they need a targetman when they have one of the most experienced and successful lower-Premiership targetmen in the league in Brian McBride? They also had Shefki Kuqi, who is younger and better than a geriatric Litmanen who was never a success in the Premiership even when he was young and fit at Liverpool. Fulham for the drop. Sorry, Fulham fans.

It could also be Newcastle for the drop if their form - and their luck - continues in this current vein. Michael 'worlds greatest striker' Owen squandered at least half a dozen gilt-edged chances and generally showed the form that means he shouldn't be allowed a ticket to see the game, let alone a place in the squad for England's friendly with France later this month (although what are the odds that he'll still be in it, just because he's Michael Owen? - Ed), and the rest of the team had a horrible turn of bad luck to wind up losing 1 - 0 in the final minute to a Matt Derbyshire goal, which clipped over Steve Harper, who's attempted save would have given crocked Shay Given no nightmares about his place, and nestled in the back of the net about four seconds before the end of the game. The Geordies cannot buy a win lately and, as I mentioned above, Kevin Keegan has already been given the dreaded vote of confidence by Chris Mort. He complains about not being able to bring in his own players and having to make do with what he's got, but what he's got includes Michael Owen, Obafemi Martins, James Milner, Mark Viduka, Charles N'Zogbia and so many more - if you can't win games, or even draw games on recent form, with players of that quality, you really do have to look at yourself for someone to blame. Defeat at Liverpool next time out - which is a bit of an unknown quality really, I reckon it will go 3 - 0 one way or the other, although nobody could tell you which - could see Newcastle sucked into a relegation dogfight, especially if the other teams below them start getting their act together.

Talking of lower Premiership teams getting their act together, Birmingham showed that their fluke draw with Arsenal last week wasn't undeserved flattery by thumping 4 past Spurs in a 4 - 1 thrashing. Tottenham played like their season ended after the Carling Cup and might as well have not turned up as Mikel Forssell scored a hattrick past them for his first treble in English football and Seb Larsson scored the other, as Spurs returned to the sort of form that got Martin Jol the boot. Obviously that's not going to happen to Juande Ramos because up until now they have played exceptionally well under the Spaniard, but perhaps his reputation as a cup manager extends a little too far, as now Spurs have a cup under their belts they were playing like there was nothing worth playing for. Fair play to Alex McLeish, I'm happy for Birmingham after the way their supporters clapped Eduardo from the pitch last week and they deserved this victory, but it might have been a different story if Spurs had actually bothered to play.

Two more teams that didn't bother to play were Sunderland and Derby, who fizzled out into a 0 - 0 draw that was one of the most boring games of the season in an indictment of Roy Keane's ability as a Premiership manager. It has become an embarrassment if your team manages to hand any points to Derby in this league, with the Rams now having picked up a grand total of 8 points all season, but Sunderland showed no real bite or desire to take all 3 points from this encounter. Alright, Michael Chopra's goal was clearly onside and should have stood, but against the team that are odds-on favourites for the title of 'Worst Team in Premiership History', you should be able to come out of a game, any game, with more than just a good excuse. Derby were limp and dull as boiled cabbage, but Sunderland weren't much more exciting in a game that I admit I didn't see much of, because even the highlights put me to sleep. Derby are down, and I don't know about Sunderland, but if they can't beat Derby, there is a problem, especially with other teams starting to pick up.

Teams like Reading, for instance, who managed to battle to a 1 - 0 win over Middlesbrough with a deserved and ferverently-celebrated goal from James Harper. With no goals from their strikers in 2008, and the only goals at all in 2008 as far as I remember being Harper's goal yesterday and Nicky Shorey's last week, it was looking pretty grim for Steve Coppell, who's 8 straight defeats actually gave him reason for the glum expression he seems to wear whatever his team have done, but leave it to Boro to hand a struggling team a win. The consistently inconsistent element of the north east football contingent might be doing a great service to English football, with 8 of their 16-man squad being old-style apprentices born within a pint jug's throw of the Riverside, but it evidently doesn't win games. Reading looked for a while to be the team likely to be the third to go down with Fulham and Derby, but they're now back in the fight which includes all the teams up to and including Boro who, with the way results are going and the way the table stands, are only a couple of bad results away from being sucked right into the relegation battle, despite being ostensibly lower mid table.

Speaking of lower mid table, it's where Wigan are and, on the basis of this performance, where Manchester City should be. Booed from the field after the final whistle and struggling to have their strikers score goals, Thaksin Shinawatra's bankrolled team looked like the Man City of old, with Elano still worryingly out of form and no consistent strikers to speak of - protracted transfer signing Benjani Mwaruwari having gone back to his old self as well. Manager Sven-Goran Eriksson has asked his chairman to spend like Roubles Roman in a bid to get City on par with their Manchester rivals, and it looks like he needs to as, for all the money they've already spent, I could pick holes in their team all day long; Michael Ball isn't good enough for a team challenging for Europe, nor is Darius Vassell. Elano is a great player but if he's too tired to play after half a match, you need someone on the bench who can come on and have at least half the impact, and Caicedo isn't that, while their array of strikers wouldn't look out of place at Derby. Money needs to be spent, or Manchester City might be stuck as perennial challengers, not much further up than they were before Shinawatra's arrival. An ambitious billionaire is going to want more than the occasional UEFA Cup qualification run for his investment, but if he wants that, he's going to have to reach into his pocket some more.

Those are all the games that played yesterday, while today Bolton hope to match Reading's forward accelleration away from the drop zone as they face Liverpool in a match that, as with all games played against the red half of Merseyside lately, really could go either way, while the blue half of Merseyside face Portsmouth in what probably looks like being the match of the weekend, and will be a real decider in who gets into Europe, and in what competition. My money is on Portsmouth winning, but Everton are on form so you can't discount them. I hope they don't get nervous and fizzle out as it promises to be a cracker.

I'll be back later with the reviews of those games and the proper news from the real world.

Goodnight.

I Have Taken the Battery Out of my Smoke Alarm, Just to Annoy Julie Walters

Bloody hell, here I am, writing a post to my blog from my MacBook while sipping a hot drink out of a clear glass cup. If it wasn't for the fact I'm wearing last night's soiled Joy Division shirt and some copious bruising I'd almost look like one of those smug twats you usually see writing a post to their blog from their MacBook. At least I'm not in a trendy cafe, that would just about do it for my credibility. Oh, and it's tea in the cup, proper tea with two sugars and some milk. Posh teas and coffee are for girls and jessies.

Anyway, on to the news. Prince Harry has had his 5 minute stay in Afghanistan cancelled because of a media leak, which translates to 'found out he couldn't get the lads into a game of polo, so couldn't be fucked anymore'. That means he'll be back at Windsor within the hour, reclining on a bearskin couch and laughing about how the commoners ate out of packets while his fifteen private servants flew him six goose a day for him to chow down on. Quite the national fucking hero. I don't care how much the little bastard says he enjoyed his tour, unless he's stark raving mad he's obviously going to prefer having his every whim catered for and if he just did a tour as a novelty to see how the other half lives he really shouldn't have gone at all - there's only so much "so what's it like not being royalty eh? haw haw haw"ing you can do in a war zone before it distracts someone into getting themselves shot. And what's he doing saying he enjoyed his tour anyway? I'd say that's pretty much proof he didn't do what other soldiers have to do - the army isn't fucking enjoyable. If it was, people wouldn't want paying for it. Getting shot at in 50 degree heat by people that would slowly behead you with a potato peeler if they got their hands on you is not fucking fun.

In any case, he really ought to give up on all this 'man of the people' stuff and admit he's just your average toff; he's not going to become king anyway, unless he goes the whole hog and drops a daisycutter on his brother. Even then it probably wouldn't get through those huge blast-door teeth to get anywhere near that tiny, tiny brain. Incidentally, brother Willy is apparently going to be given a position of authority in the Navy next year. Heaven help us.

Back in Britain, once again the rail network has been severely disrupted by a bit of a brisk breeze. Two containers have fallen onto the tracks and the companies in charge of picking containers off of tracks say they can't possibly have it all cleared up until the 5th of never. I don't know what they're doing for it to take so long; trying to sweet-talk the containers off the tracks, presumably. I'd just use a crane and have it done in about four minutes, but then I suppose if you're being paid by the hour, it's a good idea to take forever to shift two jumped up tin cans off the tracks. As for the fact this was all caused by 'high winds', I'm forever amused by the rail network's inability to handle anything more than constant calm, still air. Remember that huge storm that battered the country about this time last year? I was coming back from Liverpool to Manchester in that, fresh from seeing the then-missus. Every other train company gave up the minute it started raining a bit, and the only trains that carried on running were Merseyrail, which gives you something of an insight into the fantastic Scouse attitude of "fuck it, I'm doing it, and the world can fucking fall down around me but I'm still going to fucking do it, so fuck off". The Mancs did indeed fuck off about 9.30 and left me stranded, but the Scousers got me home, even if they did only go as far as Manchester Victoria; everywhere east of there starts lurching awkwardly into Yorkshire, which was apparently completely flooded. Not saying much, really, as Yorkshire floods if someone upturns a bottle of Tizer.

In Entertainment news, if you can call it that, Amy Winehouse is in the news again, this time for being the latest personality (why do they use that term for people who usually don't have one? - Ed) to be found 'not guilty for reasons of celebrity', this time of perverting the course of justice in the trial of her husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, who is... who? Is he famous for something other than being a twat? Anyway, I suppose it's a fair cop, seeing as any attempts to pervert anything quite clearly failed, as Mr Fielder-Civil is now staying at her majesty's, and presumably Big Phil in Cell 51's, pleasure. Nothing about this is surprising or newsworthy, I suppose, when you realise it's almost impossible to convict anyone famous of anything. Pete Doherty's wrist has had more slaps from the British legal system than he gives himself when searching for a vein for his morning smack hit, and Michael Barrymore managed to get out of having a bloke in his pool fisted to death with nothing more than a cheery wave to the prosecution. Useless. I'd still do her, though.

On a darker note, a London man who put crushed abortion tablets in his wife's breakfast in a bid to kill their unborn child was described by his defence counsel as 'an eccentric Woody Allen character'. Yes, because when I think of infanticide, the first thing that springs to mind is kooky, neurotic New Yorkers getting into crazy, innocent japes. Or not. What I do think of is murderous nutcases like Gil Magira. Second worst defence ever, the first is still that nutter who claimed he didn't murder people, he just raped their bloodied corpses in the street.

Some short stories: Fame Academy host Patrick Kielty has been clocked at over 100 miles an hour on a notorious Scottish road. Good for him, but the only time I want to hear about this pointless nonentity doing 100mph is if he's doing it off a cliff. Continuing the theme of celebrity nothings, Lee Ryan, formerly of Blue, has pleaded not guilty to attacking a Surrey taxi driver, which I can believe, seeing as Lee Ryan is such an effeminate prick that I think the minute he tried to fight anybody he'd snap in half. Elsewhere Marks and Spencers are going to charge 5p for carrier bags in a bid to save the environment and make them a few million quid into the bargain, and in showbiz, Amy Macdonald looks like a man. Sorry, that isn't the story, the story is that she's got a new single out this week, but as her music is all derivative student pap sung in a voice that belongs on a Birkenhead docker, the real story is just how shockingly manly she looks. An ugly man in drag, but a man all the same. Still, at least she isn't Kate Nash. Thank heaven for small mercies.

In sport, because there's precious little happening anywhere else, the Zombie is starting to crack under pressure, lashing out at media 'lies'. Could this be the beginning of the end for the Zombie? I thought he did a fantastic job with Israel when he was in charge there, but Chelsea is a bit of a step up, and he did look extremely out of his depth in the Carling Cup final. He points to the fact Chelsea have only lost 3 games under his tutelage, but I'd be surprised if that squad lost three games under my tutelage, my mum's tutelage, or the tuelage of Alain Perrin, although that last one might be a little too harsh. Roman Abramovich seems determined not to bring in a world class coach, largely because I think the Russian billionaire likes picking the team himself, and no world class coach will put up with that. Grant will be out by the start of next season, probably, replaced by Henk ten Cate, who will soon be out on his ear as well as a succession of scapegoats starts up to take the blame for Roubles Roman playing Fantasy Football with real people. Though how much of a real person Frank Lampard is is up for debate, as I always regarded him as less a human being and more a seething ball of twat. Oh well, the BBC reckons he's off to Barca in the summer anyway.

Oh, and Jamie Carragher's been nicked for beating people up. You're a great defender, Jamie, but please don't turn into Joey Barton. I didn't like it when you threw a hissy fit and retired from the England team because you were asked to play left back, and I especially didn't like it when you tried to fight journalists that called you a bottler. I'm finding it increasingly difficult to defend Scousers to their detractors when the ones in the public eye keep doing things like this. If Paul O'Grady ever starts mugging old ladies I'll give up entirely and just keep my head low.

More later, after the football.

Goodnight.