Good Grief/Bad Grief

Oh well, 'Movember' is almost over and so we won't have to see quite so much bumfluff around and Gary Lineker can stop looking like an arsehole with teeth.

But congrats to my wife for making such a fine effort for charity (hat tip: John Moloney).

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I don't want to sound like a middle aged football fan harking back to the good old days of terraces, Bovril and man-sized refreshments but have you seen the size of Wagon Wheels these days? They are only slightly bigger than a chocolate digestive. No, really. It's a disgrace.

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So, do you reckon Jessica had a sugary nightmare or a surgery nightmare? Did she wake up screaming that she was being forcefed a giant marshmallow only to find a pillow in her mouth (and not for the first time I'd guess.)

Or did she wake up from an operation to find a surgeon had made her look like a broom handle with two beach balls sewn to her ribcage?

Bet it wasn't a 'sugery' nightmare, as stated below by the Daily Star Sunday magazine cover.

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Interesting to see how people react to bad news. I was watching my son playing football when one of the other dads told the rest of us that Gary Speed had committed suicide.
My first reaction was that it was very sad. Another of the dads, a Welshman who drives from Essex to Wales for every Cardiff City home game (he and his boy have season tickets) showed shock before summising 'I bet it's a tabloid thing.'
That's how low my industry has sunk. A youngish man commits suicide and some people instantly think it must have something to do with newspaper dirty tricks.
Of course, he may be right. But then again, it may be that the rest of us don't understand aspects of mental illness and depression enough to pass judgement.
Perhaps it turns out that he has a relative who has gone missing or a close friend died recently or a crisis of confidence. Truth is, we don't know but that doesn't stop us guessing.
There are other reactions.
At Swansea City's match, what was supposed to be a minute's silence quickly turned into a minute's applause.
Scared of upsetting the Welsh, most of the media described this as a spontaneous gesture of grief.
But what's wrong with a silence? We saw on November 11th how poignant and powerful silence can be.
The penchant for clapping a dead footballer began with George Best and has continued since. Occasionally it is used when there are fears opposition fans wouldn't respect a silence.
It seems appropriate when it's someone who has been in the game for years and dies of old age like Sir Bobby Robson, for instance.
But when it is such an unexpected tragedy like Speed's I tend to agree with those who think a silence is more appropriate.
And there are yet more ways to react.
Within two hours of the news around 380 people had instantly gone to the BBC website so that, in their grief, they could quickly let the rest of the world know that 'I never knew him but he seemed like a great bloke. RIP - Dave, Basingstoke.'
Thanks for that Dave. It's good to know 380-odd people like you are there to help guide the rest of us through the grieving process.
I'm not against commenting on newspaper websites. It's quite cathartic to post 'I think Rupert Murdoch is fantastic' on The Guardian's 'Comment Is Free' section just to see the reaction from people who wear corduroy.
Similarly, it's a nice feeling to go to a Daily Mail story and big up gypsies, immigrants or global warming to wind up right wing expats.
But what's the point in adding some guff about how sad it is that someone you've never met died in circumstances about which you've no idea. And then add a really corny line like 'you're with the angels now' which is a particular tabloid favourite.
It's the online equivalent of dashing to the scene of an accident to leave a crappy bunch of petrol station flowers tied to a lamp-post.
And to cap it all, they don't even sign off with their real name. So a Daily Mail reader who prefers to sign off as 'Mad Melvin, Florida ex-pat sick of NuLiebor' can anonymously tell the world how sad they are that someone they never knew has died.
The papers and the BBC don't help either by asking readers to 'send us your tribute to Gary Speed.'
Worse still is the short form 'text us your tributes' so that some nasal gimp on a radio phone-in can read out 'Dave from Basingstoke says Gary was a great bloke. RIP.'
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Jokes that make physicists laugh: Heisenberg is driving along and gets pulled over by traffic cops who say to him: 'Do you know how fast you were going?' to which he replies: 'No but I know exactly where I am.' No, I'm a bit uncertain about that one too, at least in principle.
Night all...Solly

It's Raining Mendacious

I try hard to take Boris Johnson seriously. Visiting some of the worst ravages of the riots today he said: "I'm going to make Croydon great again." He was doing so well until that last word.
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Paul Dacre is many things. He's not, though, Pol Dacre. The Khmer Rouge were responsible for the deaths of around one in four of Cambodia's population.
They beat and stabbed children, they forced little girls to marry grown men, they ripped the flesh off tortured prisoners using pincers and they even banned the concept of 'love'.
The trial of a couple of withered of Mr Burnsalike despots is currently taking place. If you search the media hard enough you can read about it. Though it isn't getting the line by line, live coverage afforced a bunch of egotistical celebrities at the Leveson Enquiry.
Dacre got it spot on when the Daily Mail today called Hugh Grant 'mendacious' for suggesting, without any evidence whatsoever, that the Mail on Sunday hacked his phone, broke into his flat and hired criminals as paparazzi. The last accusation is ludicrous. Real photographers are far more sociopathic.
Grant was clearly reprising his most famous roles. You know, those simpering posh twats from likeable but inconsequential romcoms. Because he couldn't really be like that could he? His line about standing up to bullies was straight out of About A Boy. His self-deprecating dealing with his arrest could have been from Four Weddings and his well-spoken tosspot routine was a dead spit of Love Actually.
Worse was to come. Garry Flitcroft, a footballer you probably haven't heard of, appeared to say that the fact that two women approached a newspaper claiming he shagged them was such a coincidence that it must have been down to phone hacking.
Except everyone in Blackburn knew he was a serial shagger with a penchant for lap dancing munters.
So he took out an injunction and when it was lifted he had to tell his wife, his father-in-law was ill and several years later his dad committed suicide. He's now divorced by the way. Not all footballer's wives have the patience of the woman married to multi-millionaire Ryan Giggs.
And it was all the fault of the papers. Nothing to do with the fact his wife left him over his philandering, his father-in-law was probably pissed off with the husband of his daughter using local gold-diggers as an ornament for his knob. I'd wager his own dad eventually died of shame.
There's only one man to blame for what happened and that's the two bob footballer who decided to dip his wick in a couple of publicity seeking tarts.
But nothing could prepare for the sight of the unwashed comedy God that is Steve Coogan. Unfortunately in real life he's not as funny as Alan Partridge. And his hair's worse too.
He seems to think publicity is an unfortunate byproduct of being famous. Though it didn't stop him doing several in depth interviews to publicise his various shows, books and DVDs.
It's like saying earning lots of money and, yes, being able to shag lap dancers, was an unfortunate accident that befalls people in the public eye. Funny how all these anti-press celebs like to sleep around.
Unfortunately Grant, Coogan and Flitcroft are pushing at an open door. They could claim the Daily Mail eat babies, the Sunday People drugged their kittens and the Daily Star has reporters permanently living under their floorboards and an army of Guardian readers will believe them.
Even the usually excellent Guardian writer Michael White was fooled. In a brown nosing column he heaped praise on Grant as some kind of hero citing his bravery and kindness. Such sycophantic arse-licking has not been seen since Alastair Campbell's defence of Robert Maxwell, which spared a punch up between White and the future spin doctor many years ago in the House of Commons.
Meanwhile, there's a trial going on in Cambodia.
You can read about it with a couple of clicks of a computer mouse on any number of British media websites. That's because you have a free press.
It means you have a choice. You can, if you wish, read about what Kim Kardashian had for breakfast or you can peruse a report of how some of the world's worst criminals get treated when they caught.
You can read about James Corden going to Broadway, if you want, or you can analyse the Greek debt. You can learn what Amy Childs said on Twitter, what Sinitta had to eat in the Bushtucker trial (another trial, the papers are full of them) and what Lady Gaga wore for some awards ceremony.
The point is, you can do all these things here. And journalists won't come round and connect electrodes to your balls if you don't.
And when they do misbehave, they will get fired or even jailed. Several senior policemen will resign, loads of D-listers will get compensation, Britain's best read newspaper will close and the taxpayer will spend millions on listening to Hugh Grant and Steve Coogan telling us all which bits of their lives you're allowed to read about.
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Oh dear. Russell Grant now claims he 'knew' Diana would die. Funny how horoscopes themselves never actually say such things. Naturally I don't believe a word they say, but then us Sagitarrians are a pretty cynical bunch.
He used to do the horoscopes, through syndication, for the Ilford Recorder. Once when there was some contractualy dispute, we couldn't use it. So instead we, the reporters, did it.
And you know what, it was no less accurate. I'll tell you how we did it next time.
Court adjourned...Solly

Hand in Glove

Well done to Alastair Campbell for winnng the Football Focus predictions cup. Obviously better at predicting what's going to happen over 90 minutes than within 45 minutes. Burnley 1 WMD 0.
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Attended my first ever boxing match over the weekend. An amateur event involving several short bouts with lots of padding so not much blood. Being a namby pamby liberal, I'm not a natural fan of boxing.
But three things in particular struck me. Because the judges score points for accuracy rather than the ability to brawl, there is a very, very, high level of skill that is obvious, even to the untrained eye.
Second, the boys themselves (none of those boxing seemed older than about 19) are incredibly polite and courteous outside the ring. I believe it's something to do with the discipline. I chatted to a trainer and, although there are a couple of exceptions, he said that over the years hardly any of the young boys from his club who boxed got into trouble in their everyday lives, not even fights at school.
A lot of the lads turned up with family, some from miles away. The parents didn't look so well disciplined frankly. The third thing I noticed (and you couldn't help but notice) is how many people connected with boxers seem to have tattooed necks.
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The Guardian this week had an article online about 'the new boring'. It was a condescending attack on the comfy middle classes who spend all their time talking about Downton Abbey, who watch Kirstie Allsopp, prefer Strictly to X Factor and are into knitting and home baking.
They may have well just called it We Hate the Daily Mail and be done with it.
I've never watched Downton, hate the Allsopp woman and neither knit nor bake but The Guardian is a fine one to talk.
Every episode of Mad Men is treated like the second coming in the paper, analysed to death and blogged to within an inch of its finely attired life. Same for The Wire and The Killing and any number of trendy non-British shows. Most of which I love, incidentally.
The Guardian, remember, bored the world to death with the whole Wikileaks saga and for the past year has been putting everyone into a coma with its self-righteous analysis of the hacking 'scandal.'
It has failed to realise that 90 per cent of the country are bored stiff of the whole hacking debate. I work in journalism and know well some of the guys who have been sacked or arrested and even I'm bored. Heaven knows how much everyone else is tired of endless debates on the BBC and mind-numbing government committees featuring some tubby attention seeker who thinks he's funny.
I'm bored by James Murdoch's robotic voice too, and by Whoring Hugh Grant becoming the paragon of virtue for the whole sorry tale.  I'm sick of hearing that another 15 D-List celebrities may have been on the list and are so offended they'll settle for a £10,000 back door payment.
I'm also sick of meeting strangers, telling them I'm a journalist when they ask, and then laughing lamely when they say 'oops, you going to hack my phone now, hee hee.'
Then you have interminable, expensive, public enquiries led by a group of posh people with no knowledge of the tabloid press and even less awareness of the type of people who read them.
It's rare to agree with both Kelvin McKenzie and Paul Dacre but they were spot on in the Leveson Enquiry.
And it's all over a little trick that was discovered by journalists involving mobile phones belonging to people who didn't realise you needed to change the factory setting code in order not to have your voicemails read.
It's not hacking, it's a scam. Showbiz reporters used to do it to each other to see what stories they were working on. It was a running joke at the Princess Margaret awards held by entertainment hacks. All those names in Glenn Mulcaire's notebook? I'll bet that most of the them are journalists who have had their voicemails entered by other journalists.
The journalists responsible for deleting Millie Dowler's messages should have been sacked but to close the paper down was ridiculous. But, frankly, no one gives a flying one that Sienna Miller didn't delete her voicemail messages or change the code on her mobile before someone listened to them.
I know this isn't the popular view, but I simply think to much fuss is being made and I'm bored, bored, bored. As journalists, most of us have occasionally done things that are a little suspect in order to get a story. I've got this nagging feeling that even I may have done at some point in the past.
Before digital communications, we had readers tuning in to police and other emergency broadcasts via shortwave radio then ringing the newsdesk when something happened to try and make a quick buck.
This is quite clearly just as much of a theft as voicemail interception but no one bothered, not even the police who, in effect, were the 'victims' of the theft. And it was through this that, when I was on The Sun, enabled us at 2am to discover a disaster of epic proportions unfolding on the Piper Alpha oilrig, despite the official comments from the rig's owners and the authorities at the time that it wasn't that serious.
And reporters have been slipping a bit of dosh to coppers for almost 100 years. Suddenly it's a hanging offence? Do me a favour.
Want to the know the 'new boring'? Just read The Guardian's media page on most days.
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I noticed that in their joint column in the Daily Express, Richard and Judy described the new drama series Pan Am as about as boring as an in-flight mag. Now I've read the excellent and very professional in flight mags for airlines like BA and I've read Richard and Judy's excuse of a column in the Express and I know which one I'd prefer.
Sit back and belt up....Solly

Falling Standards

According to a survey by Bath Spa University (which is one step below the Bath Londis University), the kind of dog a person owns reflects their personality. It said that owners of labradors are 'agreeable.'
I have a labrador. No we're not. Argument over.
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The paucity of decent female columnists - and there are notable exceptions - is ever more apparent when reading the Evening Standard. What was once a great paper for London is now a collection of stories about Boris Johnson and the latest back slapping charity campaign. Plus the editorial cure for insomnia, an interview by Mihir Bose.
Sarah Sands, who I once thought of as an intelligent writer, now peddles drivel for the paper. Tonight she sought to make an argument against arch atheists Stephen Fry and Richard Dawkins.
She'd been to see them in a debate on the existence of God. Naturally they were witty and urbane and logical. Unnaturally, her way of countering their argument was not.
In a nutshell, she tried to prove that God exists because of two TV programmes she had recently seen. A documentary on Leonardo da Vinci proved there is a God because so many of his paintings were holy and the sitcom Rev did so because, er, it was funny.
And that was it. That was the best she could come up with to try and prove there is an omnipotent being in charge of creation. A decent painter with a spiritual side and a decent sitcom about vicars.
I don't believe in God but I have spoken to and heard many people who make good arguments why I might be wrong. And for atheists to make their argument, they need a robust opposition because that encourages a better debate.
Poor old Sarah Sands does the theist cause no good at all. Nor her reputation come to that.
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There was once a sketch on Not the Nine O'Clock News where two politicians are insulting each other on a TV debate when one keels over and dies. The other immediately stops slagging him off and goes into a speech about what a wonderful MP the dead man was.
Mark Antony said something about the good men do oft gets interred with their bones. But not if you're an MP they don't. Oh no. When an MP dies all the sycophantic journos from the lobby line up to Tweet what a great bloke/woman they were, no matter what.
I've no doubt Alan Keen was a good bloke. He liked football, and not in the Tony 'I remember Jackie Milburn' Blair way either. He died too soon and was a great constituency MP somewhere in West London miles away from his Middlesbrough roots.
But while he may be remembered as a Boro scout and a keen player against the mainly public school XI of political journos, arguably his best known accomplishment while in office was to fiddle thousands of pounds of expenses on the public purse for him and his MP wife, Ann, to claim for a second home they never lived in.
They were known, not unkindly, as Mr and Mrs Expenses. So among all the praise, perhaps we shouldn't forget just how many of our 'decent' MPs had their hands in the till all those years.
For me, as a Labour supporter, I feel it is somehow worse when it's one of your own who does it.
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The more I take my son to his various sporting commitments, the more I can only admire the poor sods who run the various football and cricket teams, tennis clubs and swimming lessons for juniors.
Particularly football. Standing on the touchline, belting out tactics to a bunch of 12/13 year olds in the freezing cold, looks like hell to me. But having to deal with stroppy dads and stupid mums telling him what to do when they clearly have no idea, is a nightmare.
To all those dads who run teams, who fall out with other parents, who have to balance the hopes of all the kids, good and bad, not to mention balance the books, collect the fees, persuade one of us to run the line and bring the corner flags in, I salute you.
And no, I'm not going to to do it. It's bad enough running the line at football or trying to score at cricket without trying to acquire the patience of a saint, which I clearly don't have.
My attitude is to stand as far away from most of the other dads as possible and have a sneaky fag while they argue about whether or not to play five in the middle.
They think it's all over...it is now - Solly

Cemetry Gates

Stop me if you've heard this one before but I caught this joke on Radio Four. A Frenchman, Italian, Brit and German are discussing who has got the most beautiful language. The Brit says: "Look at the word 'butterfly'. It is so descriptive, both of the silky, buttery wings and practical as it tells you what it does.'
'Non' says the Frenchman. 'Papillon, the French for butterfly is more beautiful. You can whisper it 'papillon, papillon' to suggest the gentle beauty of a butterfly.'
'Hey, waddabout oura worda for butterfly, farfalle' said the slightly stereotyped Italian, 'you say farfalle, farfalle and it describes the beating of the wings on the wind.' They all nod at each other.
The German pipes up: 'Und vat exactly is wrong wiz Schmetterling!'
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I'm going to have to change my will. Thanks to John Lewis. I'd always intended to go out to the strains of The Smiths and I'd chosen two, perhaps obvious, tunes from the brilliant miserabalists.
One was 'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out' and the other was 'Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want This Time.'
The latter was chosen because I love it, it's quite a short tune, and it would piss off my family and many of my friends who hate The Smiths.
My wife has always said that she'd have the last laugh by playing Charles and Eddie instead and there is nothing I could do about it.
However, John Lewis has done it instead by using Please Please etc for their latest 'tear-jerking' Christmas ad. Morrissey, ever contrary, is 'said to be' delighted.
I've no objection to Smiths tunes being used in ads. The band is, to all extents and purposes, a middle class combo. For rebellious teenagers it says nothing to them about their life. But when everyone from John Lewis to David Cameron now claim to be influenced by them, then you know the game is up.
So it's open season for all advertisers to use them. BUPA could have Girlfriend in a Coma, Tesco can have Shoplifters of the World Unite and those awful Halifax ads featuring 'real' members of staff can have Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others.
And if we're going to swap roles between Smiths and advertising jingles, then for my funeral, I choose this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYj5o4kQsXs
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Did anyone see James Murdoch in the select committee thingy this week? And if so, did your eyes glaze over?
I tried to get a verbatim version of what he said at one point because, I swear, I had no idea what he was talking about.
It was one of those questions where you could say yes, no or I don't know.
So he said something on the lines of: 'In response to that, may I see that at all times I was reliably informed by, if you will, the relevant sources, in mitigating the circumstance of the situation which was wider spread than we had, at first, been led to believe, if you will, and as such, I'm confident that had it been of relevance then I would have acted upon the information that was not available at the time but has subsequently become pertinent to what was to subsequently occur. If you will.'
At least, I think so. Now James Murdoch is the son and heir of quite a lot in particular, a giant corporation which - whatever your political views may be - deals in one major area. Communication.
Whether it is information via Dow Jones or entertainment through The Simpsons, his empire is about communication.
So why can't he communicate? I'll tell you why. Because he spends most of his life surrounded by rich, preppy nerds with MBAs from US universities (yes, I know I've banged on about this before) who sit in meetings talking in this strange, alien version of English as we know it.
Which is fine in high tech video conferencing meetings or one of those get togethers where they all wear open necked shirts and drink espresso, but not in real life.
I mean, for heaven's sake, he even made Louise Mensch look bright.
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I have absolutely nothing against videogames. I just don't really do them. I'm happy enough with games of patience.
But if they were around when I was young then I'm sure I would have spent hours shooting people or playing football on a screen instead of in Valentines Park.
But they weren't and so our sprained wrists were more likely to be down to posters of Charlie's Angels than X-Box.
But sometimes I despair. A teenage friend of one of my kids queued up during the night so he could buy something called Call of Duty.
Then he got home and played it until, by 7am, he'd 'done it' and then posted the results on Facebook and YouTube.
There's something very odd in this and I know I'm not alone in thinking this.
The kid (he's 17 I think) is a genius on a computer apparently. You can only hope he eventually uses his power for good, and not dressed as an alien at Star Trek conventions.
Live long and prosper....Solly

Come On You SPQRs

Drachenfutter. You know how the Germans have 'got a word for it'? Well Drachenfutter is that bunch of flowers you buy from the petrol station when you've forgotten the wife's birthday. It literally means dragon fodder, as in a guilty present to keep her happy.
For more of these get hold of a book called The Meaning of Tingo by the extravagantly named Adam Jacot de Boinod who is a jolly nice chap who I once interviewed even though he has what sounds like a made up name.
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The words Roman Holiday (or Holliday) conjures up, for me, the name of a great film with Audrey Hepburn or a crap 1980s band that I once went to see but never got in to the audience. That's because I turned up with two male mates and they wanted more women in the audience so wouldn't let us in. I had a lucky escape. Another mate turned up later to meet us and got in - thinking we were already inside - so watched the whole gig by himself while the rest of us went to the pictures to see a double bill of Taxi Driver and Midnight Express for the fourth time.
But now I have had my own Roman Holiday, a four day trip to the Eternal City and while I am not a travel writer (I do not wear mismatched clothing or talk in a voice designed to make everyone listen to what I'm saying in a crowded pub) I must say it's a grand place to visit.
Well, you need at least a grand to afford to eat, drink, stay and travel there for four days when travelling with a wife and two children.
I loved it all. My immediate reaction afterwards was: 1. It's bloody expensive but 2. Why the hell haven't I been here before?
Did you know the mostly densely populated country on the planet also has the lowest birth rate?
The Vatican was an eye opener. It shapes the whole of Rome both spiritually and physically. No building in Rome can be built to be higher than St Peter's and that means it has few modern skyscrapers and office blocks.
We think we do history in London but most of the best buildings in Rome were already falling down before The Tower of London was being put up.
The Colisseum, The Forum, Capitoline and, my favourite, The Pantheon are worth a day trip each. The Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain - and dozens of other spectacular fountains - are truly beautiful.
The Sistine Chapel is marvellous but spoilt by being way too crowded and lacking all spirituality as a result. But a statue of Jesus and Mary by the 18-year-old Michaelangelo is enough to make the hairs stand up on the back of this atheist's neck. It is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.
In fact the whole of The Vatican is a mass (pun intended) of people. Keep the kids close, and not just because it is a city populated by Catholic priests. You move in crowds. It spoils the place a bit but only a bit. The whole place is dripping in splendour. The number of visitors shows how the church has made so much money. The decor shows how it has spent a lot of it.
There are parties of 40 or 50 from places like The Phillipines or Brazil on £50-a-head guided tours who then spend as much again on Pope John Paul fridge magnets or wobbly headed nuns for the back of the car.
There are the strange sights that you probably don't find anywhere else in the world, not even in Father Ted, of gangs of young priests roaming the streets taking photos of each other outside the monuments, smoking cigarettes and riding scooters or filling up their basket with Papal souvenirs from the shops around the Vatican.
Rome is truly one of the great cities of the world. It's an expensive place once you get there, even though it's the capital of a country slowly going bust. But like New York, Paris, Berlin and, for me, Tokyo, it's one of those places you'll never regret going to.
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Not even flying Ryanair will spoil it. I reckon two thirds of the people I meet on Ryanair flights say the same thing. "I keep saying 'never again' but they are so cheap'. I'm not one of those. You put up and you shut up. What people resent, I guess, is the indignity of the Ryanair style.
I was more cheesed off by the lack of logic. They make you queue to get the best seat on the plane then you go through the gate and get on a bus to go to the aircraft. So if you're ahead in the queue you're first on the bus and are furthest from the door. Someone 50 places behind you (ignoring the East Europeans who push in) gets on the same bus but ends up by the doors so when they open they get on the place first. What's the point?
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The funniest show on TV at the moment is probably The Big Bang Theory as I may have mentioned before. But did you know that great scientists are getting older? The nerds on TBBT are out of synch.
In the 1920s all the great scientific breakthroughs were made by, mainly, men in their 20s. Many of them weren't even working as scientists at the time they had their lightbulb moment. Einstein was a 26-year-old clerk in a patents office when he came up with the theory of relativity. There are others. Paul Dirac who came up with something I don't understand and loads involved in quantum mechanics, whatever that is, during the prewar years.
But now the average Nobel prize winner is aged 50.
The trouble is they no longer have their Eureka moment to make a breakthrough. Instead they build up a body of work over two decades to come up with something substantial.
Oh, and baby faced boffin Brian Cox is 43.
Arrivederci...Solly

Old Boot Camp

Has anyone seen that TV magician Dynamo? His tricks are great but when he talks...well, let's just say the magic goes. You'd think someone with that much talent could conjure up a personality. And how comes he can walk on water but can't pronounce his rs.
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I'm not obsessed by The Only Way Is Essex, honest. But it seems that everywhere I go round here I'm destined to bump into the oddly coloured cast and crew of this particular programme.
Popped in for a coffee in the road that used to be my local high street, Buckhurst Hill. The local paper proudly reported, this week, that this road now has 13 hair salons.
This is a street with around 50 shops in all so one in four is now a place to get your hair done. And yet so many seem to have blonde highlights that looks like straw growing through tarmac.
I was standing outside chatting to my old primary school teacher who was on her way to pilates (which I want to pronounce to rhyme with pirates) when that strange one from TOWIE walked past. Which strange one? The tall dark haired skinny bird who has had so much work done she has lips like Daffy Duck with a touch of the former Libyan leader's melted face look thrown in - Gadaffi Duck if you will.
And she was wearing a dressing gown.
Soon the whole lot were milling round the street, all in dressing gowns.
Then back home I'm walking past a clothes shop and some second rate paparazzi are outside waiting for Sam or someone to come out of the shop. She's being filmed inside buying underwear, apparently.
So I take the dog for a walk in the forest and come to a clearing and there is a group of people wearing high vis vests saying 'Loughton Boot Camp' hopping through tyres.
Looking closely I see that instead of a bunch of fat people getting slim, it's once again the cast of TOWIE in perfect make up, running around picking up logs.
I looked up Loughton Boot Camp and they claim to be based in a lodge in the middle of Epping Forest. As far as I'm aware there is no lodge in the middle of Epping Forest.
They are obviously holed up in a house round here somewhere but instead of using their own grounds, they run around the public forest for free shouting 'shu'up' and 'reem' while bench pressing a semi decaf moccachino.
It's getting so bad that the last time I popped in to get a paper I ended up with a burnt ochre St Tropez spray tan and a vajazzle.
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The news is begin to confuse me. I don't understand why a load of people in tents means a load of blokes in dresses have to resign. I don't understand why the Greeks can't work beyond lunch and pay tax and I don't understand why someone doesn't just punch Hugh Grant in the face.
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Perhaps the answer is to treat every world event in a Homer Simpson manner. The Greeks are going bust. D'oh. But the rest of Europe will help them out. Woo hoo. But they are going to have a referendum to see if they want to be helped out. D'oh. But that doesn't matter because the Chinese say they'll prop them up. Er, woo hoo?
Hugh Grant is a dad. Woo hoo. But it's the result of a brief fling. D'oh. But he'll play his part in his upbringing. Woo hoo. By popping round for an hour every few months between playing golf and leading the fight against corruption in the world's media. D'oh.
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Is there a more useless sop to 'doing the right thing' than that most nonsensical of small print additions to alcohol ads, Drink Responsibly? We're offering ten cans of extra strong lager for 10p. Drink Responsibly. Come to our arms fair and buy lots of lovely weapons of mass destruction. Nuke Responsibly. This set of steak knives will be the only knives you'll ever need. Stab Responsibly.
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Off to Rome for a few days, as it's somewhere I've never been. That's me, an atheist Jew and the missus, a lapsed Catholic. I'll blog on it when I get back. Read Responsibly....Solly