Amazing

I lost count after a dozen but I'm pretty sure Fearne Cotton said 'amazing' at least 15 times on Comic Relief. But she must have something to appear on TV so much. It's certainly not her use of the English language, actually. No, I mean, literally, she's, like, crap.
Alan Partridge, however, was simply brilliant. Watch the YouTube clip if you haven't. I particularly liked the link between poverty and Southend.
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Of course it was all about Africa. And rightly so. No matter how many homegrown issues they try and highlight, it is the short films from Africa that hit home most. Even when it's Russell Brand doing it. Perhaps because Russell Brand was doing it.
Britain's involvement in Africa is not always to be applauded but we're not alone.
It part amuses but also part disturbs me when I see so many Africans so dedicated to Jesus and the church. When I go to Spurs - my own church, if you like - I walk through the grounds of a local school near the ground and on a Sunday the local African community uses it for their gospel meetings.
The exhortations and singing is something to behold. It sounds like they are having an exorcism sometimes. But while it is not for the likes of me to say whether or not their belief is genuine, Africa didn't have Christianity until the Western world gave it to them. I know of Jamaicans in East London who now run missions to convert yet more Africans in countries like Malawi. Of course the irony is not lost on them but they would do more good if they just handed out condoms to Aids sufferers, of course.
But while some think so many black faces in church is refreshing and part of some kind of racial equality, I find it a reminder of our racist roots. It is testament (new and old!) to the days when Africans were considered uncivilised barbarians unless they had the same God as us.
I don't mean to be anti-Christian, I just mean to be anti religion.
Because the attitude we had was 'any religion you may have, any belief you may have, is worthless. So have ours or remain idiots.' So we stopped their mumbo jumbo and gave them our mumbo jumbo.
But it's now too late to do anything about it. And now the irony is African Christians look down on the Western world as uncivilised barbarians, who have strayed from the path of righteousness with our drugs and porn and wild ways.
Africa still needs a lot of help with its problems...but what they don't need is nuns telling them not to use condoms and all the other religious rubbish we've been exporting to them for decades.
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Talking of Christians, my mate Paul - one of the nicest happy clappy evangelists you'll ever meet - was part of a crowd of us who used to hang around together 25 odd years ago. We had this tradition of trying to choose something a bit different than a pint and a curry when it was someone's birthday and Paul used to come up with the most cultured, most obscure and often most disastrous but funny nights out.
These included seeing such classic films as Paris Texas, One from the Heart and perhaps the worst of the lot, Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean Jimmy Dean. He also arranged evenings out to see those legends of music Morrissey Mullen, 24 Carat Soul and who can forget Roman Holiday? We can actually. We had all arranged to meet outside the concert. Three of us turned up and weren't allowed in because we were three blokes and there were not enough girls in the audience! So we waited outside. Paul turned up late, because he always turned up late, and didn't see us and walked straight in. So spent the night at the gig alone while we went out for a pizza.
Anyway, the reason I mention this is that Paul has decided to resurrect this tradition for his birthday next month - his 48th as it goes. So any suggestions for really awful groups or crap arthouse films that we can all go and see will be most welcome as I've rather lost touch with this side of unpopular culture.
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And talking of religion, happy Purim to those who celebrate it. It's a Jewish festival that celebrates a beauty contest, cross dressing and eating a cake that represents a baddie's ears.
Or, as someone once said when asked to describe what every Jewish festival is all about: "They try and kill the Jews, the Jews win, let's all go and eat."
Apparently the bible forbids cross dressing though only in the same way that some bigots find ways to find passages that they interpret as banning everything from homosexuality to German yodel music.
But God allows cross dressing on Purim.
At my Jewish primary school, Purim was celebrated with a fancy dress competition throughout the school. I didn't cross dress for this - I can remember going with Andrew Mendelson and Jonathan Weinberg as The Marx Brothers. I was Harpo, so wasn't allowed to speak. This went down well.
And one year my mum made me this costume consisting of a cardboard box over my head with a 'screen' cut out so it looked like a TV set. Then I would wear a football top, cricket pads, golf shoes and carry a hockey stick and tennis racket and say I'd gone as 'Grandstand.' It was that bad.
But many others would don a skirt and go as, ooh I don't know, Barbra Streisand say. Some of them have never quite grown out of this habit.
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So, do I spend £325 on going to Madrid to see a football match or do I avoid going further into debt? Or do I do what a fellow fan has done and buy an air ticket to Barcelona for the date of the semi final, not knowing a) whether we'll be there or b) whether Barca will be there? It's either extremely prescient or extremely arrogant.
So either I spend £325 going to see a game we'll probably lose in a city I went to last month for a holiday or I write off £90 and buy a return fare to Barcelona that I won't probably need.
Or I just wait until we get to the final and spend £300 on a ticket for that. Somehow I know that whatever happens, it will all end horribly. Maybe I'll just go and support my hometown team, Stoke City, in the FA Cup Final instead.
Perhaps I'm just barmy on the crumpet, as they say....cheerio Solly