He's only got one hall! The house that looks like Hitler

Gems from today's papers. In the Telegraph, 'Britain's Worst Roundabouts' - and it doesn't even mention Gants Hill http://bit.ly/f6qe1M - and in the Mail (and I suspect several other places tomorrow) is The House That Looks Like Hitler which began life as a Tweet from a Welsh girl sitting in a traffic jam and is now a sensation. It is reprinted above and is hilarious (at least I think so).
In particular I love how the house next to Chez Adolf (the one on the reich!) looks ever so slightly shocked.
It works best in low res and blurred. The Mail took a decent pic of the house and it ruined the effect. Which you can tell by the negative comments from the online readership on the lines of 'Worst. Story. Ever.'
Best comment was the one which slammed the Mail writer for calling the house a semi when it was clearly an end-of-terrace. And the subtly naughty comment from one who said 'I have a semi that looks like Kojak wearing a rollneck sweater.' Very good and got past the moderators.
Of course these kind of stories attract the 'going to hell in a handcart' comments about what makes news and why is this news on a day when so much is going on in Libya and Japan and blah blah blah.
That's not the point and hasn't been for some years, particularly in a world where the BBC and other 24-hour news channels cover the heavy stories round the clock so that by the time you open your paper they are old news.
And if newspapers want to gatecrash on what people are talking about then, unfortunately in some people's eyes, that means the trivial and often very funny topics hotfooting it round Facebook, Twitter and other social networks (of which there aren't any others worth mentioning, let's face it.)
So that is why papers carry stories about the worst roundabouts in Britain, The House That Looks Like Hitler, Britney Spears in very tight clothing and some bollocks involving Jersey Shore, the Kardashians or The Only Way Is Essex.
And good for them!
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Talking of TOWIE, as it is apparently known, they were filming it last night in our local hostelry The Nu Bar, previously known as The Crown.
The place is shut on Monday but they opened specially to film two of the Essex girls having a mock conversation as if they were in a crowded late night venue, rather than an empty bar at 6pm with white van drivers and pedestrians going past shouting 'oi oi darling' and other Wildean one liners.
I still can't bring myself to watch more than ten minutes I'm afraid.
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Two things to mention to Andy Townsend. You don't need to start every summary with the word 'yes' or 'yeah'. And when there is one of them, it's a 'goal' not 'goals'. He's wankers.
Loads of Ghana fans heading to Wembley tonight from stations in East London. Very colourful as they swarmed around Leyton and even outnumbered the Eastern Europeans at Stratford, and that's saying something. And typically the Jubilee Line went down between Stanmore and, yep, Wembley at about the same time.
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I've never been a big fan of Neil Morrissey but seeing his programme about his childhood in a care home was moving and genuine. I suppose it hit me because it was set in Stoke and Stafford, where my family are from (on my mum's side). But it was both shocking and warm at the same time. It brought back the whole 'pindown' scandal which I'd forgotten about but which should never be forgotten. What people did to kids in care during the 70s was horrific.
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I have to hand it to my boy, he was wonderful as Ben Gunn in his school's production of Treasure Island last week. He had the funny lines and seemed to enjoy being the centre of attention and making people laugh. Strange that.
Now he's had his first taste of acclaim, I fear it's going to become a habit. Lots of late night rehearsals, fretting over lines, being all melodramatic and arty. The next few years are going to be tough, I can feel it.
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Norman Tebbit is 80 today. A lot of people will go on about how he should have been Prime Minister and how that would have sorted us all out. People remember him being tough and how brave he was after the Brighton bombing, and he was. But he was also a nasty right winger. He railed against the BBC for only putting across the left wing view. I know this because he was constantly on the BBC saying so. He would rather we had not signed a peace deal in Ireland, preferring a situation which would have led to 100 more Brighton bombings. And everyone bangs on about his 'get on your bike' comment which he made at a time when his government was responsible for closing down British industry and raising the jobless total to post-war records. So while we should sympathise with the injuries he sustained in the unjustifiable terrorist atrocity, it should not blind us to the kind of man he really was and how lucky we were never to have had him as Prime Minister.
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Reunions are all the rage, probably thanks to Facebook reuniting friends (now that's a good idea for a website) but I'm not always sure how good an idea it is. My old college mates are arranging a get together in September to 'celebrate' 30 years since we arrived for our year's journalism course at Harlow. Sensibly we are not having the event in Harlow as it is a shithole that no one wants to go back too (and I say that as a parent of three kids all born there). Instead, one of my contempories is going to have it at 'his club' in London - and he's the former anarchist and football hooligan. I'm a member of two clubs - Tottenham Hotspur Football and Athletic Club and Epping Video. Neither of them are suitable.
The class of 82 didn't do badly. We have a Daily Mail columnist and a Guardian one, a very high flying PR guy, a couple of local newspaper editors, a TV journalist or two, some specialist national newspaper writers and me. And not a degree between us.
The thing that I find a little unsettling about reunions is there is always someone who finds a way of saying, in not so many words, 'hey, you lot never thought I'd amount to anything, well look at me now you bastards.' And then I realise the desperate person doing this is often me and I feel ashamed.
So yes, I'll probably be there in September.
See you there guys...Solly

Unlucky Heather

My little niece, Heather, who lives in Aberdeen (Scottish Heather) is only six. But she's lovely - to us anyway.
Yesterday she was at her local swimming baths and she saw GB Olympic hopeful and local hero Hannah Miley practising for the Commonwealth Games.
Hannah's stroke is, apparently, butterfly. So Heather says: "I want to do that," and jumps in alongside Hannah. She then swallows so much water trying to do the butterfly she throws up in the pool.
The announcement goes up that everyone must leave the water while they begin 'netting'.
So the whole place is evacuated, the pool closed and if Hannah Miley fails to win Gold in the Commonwealth Games then we know who to blame!
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Which reminds me of a great quote from Victor Lewis Smith (who may well have pinched it) when he reviewed a Little Chef restaurant once. It had a smoking section which he said was about as segregational as having a non pissing section in a swimming pool.
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It's no good, it's been going for a whole year or more but the sight of 'DJs' on the Halifax bank's staff radio station, particularly the woman doing 'ISA ISA baby' still makes me wish there was someone with a shotgun nearby.
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Cover versions. Sometimes I just don't see the point. You have a great song and then someone else does it but in exactly the same style. Ronan Keating is the latest. He's done an album of Bacharach songs. Every one of them has been done 100 times and, let's be fair, better in most of those cases. Put simply, he has nothing to add apart from that slightly nasal voice.
I know it's a matter of taste but even the greats do it. I love David Bowie to bits but Pin Ups is my least favourite of his albums (up to Let's Dance, after that it's all a bit downhill quite frankly.) Pin Ups is an album of covers and not worthy of the Thin White Duke (and what was all that Aryan stuff about Dave?)
I love The Jam but don't see any improvement in their version of David Watts. I quite like The Fall but they didn't do much with There's A Ghost In My House which was that much different to the original.
Of course, there are exceptions. The original of Light My Fire was brilliant and true Doors fans may have been revolted but at least Jose Feliciano did something different (although Will Young just redid Jose Feliciano) and I happen to think Stevie Wonder's version was out of this world. Even the instrumental by Ananka Shankar was, I thought, wonderful.
Similarly, I Put A Spell On You (Nina Simone, Credence Clearwater Revival - two very different versions to the original) and talking of Bacharach, you have to hand it to both The Stranglers and Isaac Hayes for doing two very original and distinct versions.
But back to the original question, I guess that if you like Ronan Keating you'd buy a recording of him filing his nails. Personally, I find the sound of nailfiling to be nicer.
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So I've been invited to a 'Royal Wedding Party' next door, at the South Africans. They've asked us to bring a bottle and wear a hat. I know I'm a Republican but I love a bit of a do. But what kind of hat should I wear?
It's a bit like the boat race. I actually went once when I lived, ever so briefly, in Putney, but I couldn't get excited about either team. It's still on the BBC who probably think they are satisfying some public service edict to the posh inbreds.
I notice Oxford and Cambridge are no longer the best universities in the world and it's no surprise if they would rather let in square jawed foreigners whose only ability is to row a boat rather than be bright.
The race took place today, along with some violent protests in central London.
So what self respecting student is going to spend today standing by the banks of the Thames painting their cheeks light or dark blue in the hope of getting a quick shag after some posh bloke who might eventually make them rich when they could be in central London throwing fire extinguishers through the window of Top Shop. Beats me.
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The terrapins are back. Every year walkers, cyclists, doggers, witches, gangsters dumping bodies and other regular visitors to Epping Forest are taken aback by what look like dinner plate sized, slightly flattened German helmets on an island or floating on a branch in the water of Strawberry Pond.
They are terrapins - I believe they are known in their native Florida as red-eared sliders. Every year when there is a sustained burst of sunshine one or more of these animals come out to bask in the rays. The rest of the time, experts believe, they lie at the bottom of the water where the temperature remains at a constant few degrees above zero no matter what it is doing on the surface.
It's a remarkable sight though not completely welcomed by all. They are the result of being pets that outgrew their original tanks and were dumped in the pond. Probably around the time of the last big wave of Ninja Mutant Turtle hysteria (the only superheroes who are more recognisable when wearing masks than without them).
They are unlikely to breed, say wildlife experts. And they feed on the ducklings and goslings produced by the pond's resident Canada Geese, mallards and other ducks (including another introduced species, the Mandarin).
But as to those of us passing the pond while walking the dog, it's quite a sight. There's not that much variety in the forest so anything new and different is a bit exotic to us.
Turtly yours...Solly

Herd of swans? Of course I've heard of swans

Headline in the Mail Online refers to a village in uproar over a woman who feeds a 'flock of swans.'
Then the intro refers to a 'herd of swans'. And gets the place wrong.
Honestly, I despair sometimes.
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According to the latest figures, the number of viewers for Vanessa Feltz's chat show on Channel 5 (where else?) has fallen to 100,000. Which is appalling. I mean, 100,000 people stupid enough to watch that?
I only 'met' Vanessa once. I was lucky enough to be sitting in Upper Class of a Virgin flight to Las Vegas when she swanned in (swans being a feature of today's blog). She sat on the edge of my seat and started talking to some bloke next to me who asked her about her much-publicised recent break up with her husband. She started crying. It was awful, I had to turn up the volume in my headphones really loud to drown her out.
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I have an Elizabeth Taylor anecdote. It's not that one about her gay French butler who called her 'the old trampoline' because even at the age of 71 she had to give him viagara so he could satisfy her sexual appetite. Thanks to Matt Drake for planting that unsavoury image in my head.
I have a friend who is a genuine Russian Princess. Her forefathers were kicked out after the revolution. I joke that her lot kicked my lot out of Russia so it was just deserts.
When she was a child, she and her brother used to play on a yacht owned by Taylor and Burton in the Med. As you do.
Liz used to towel down the young lad, kneeling before him as he stood. As she rubbed him down she would look in his eyes, wink mischievously and tell him that a lot of men would like to be where he was at that moment. He had no idea what she was talking about of course.
What I like about her is that she didn't make many crap films as she grew old. She made a few while young but also made some brilliant ones. She also trailblazed the campaign to highlight AIDS when gay men became pariahs. Having had to snog the likes of Roddy McDowell, Rock Hudson and Montgomery Clift on screen, she was well aware of the love that dares not bear its name. Those kisses prove she could act and her fundraising and campaigning prove she had a heart and a conscience. And the most fantastic eyes in the world.
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Asda's advert says it called its food range 'chosen by you' because it is 'chosen by you.' So, not by a focus group or via the millions of pounds a year it pays to the likes of Matthew Freud then.
Of course, it could do something revolutionary like not sell booze for less than bottled water, or take a moral lead and stop selling cigarettes, but it doesn't.
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There is a Facebook page going round titled 'that awkward silence when you tell someone you come from Essex' or something like that.
I know the feeling. I caught ten minutes of 'The only way is Essex' the other night, much of which is based round the corner to where I live.
I have grown up and still live in Essex. Not everyone is orange. But a lot of people are. And they're not all thick - but empty vessels make the most noise and all that.
I love Essex. I love (most of) the people, the culture, the history, the countryside, the coast, the towns, the honesty and the hard work.
A lot of us are here because our East End parents moved out to better themselves. I love that. A lot of people here with money have money because they worked bloody hard for it. They didn't inherit it. As a result, they wear it, they drive it, they spend it. But they don't sit around counting it and moaning about it. They get on with it. They are generous, both financially and in spirit. They are funny and warm and honest. Yes, really. Among the geezers and painted ladies there's a great deal of 'what you see is what you get' and I love it.
A great many of my friends come from Essex. They don't all live here still but many do. They are wonderful. They are warm. They are funny and they are diverse.
The stereotypes here could be stereotypes anywhere but I can live with that. I can live with the sniggers when you say you're from Essex. I'm from Essex, via Stepney and a bit of Stoke-on-Trent. I guess, like the hair of those in The Only Way Is Essex, I am sometimes betrayed by my roots.
So when I'm asked on Facebook, then, yes, I have to say I 'like' the awkward silence you get when you tell people you're from Essex.
Oi oi saveloy...as we say round here....Solly

Get it?

I don't want to vote for AV in the referendum because I now hate the Lib-Dems for their cowardly U-turn on tuition fees. But now I discover those right-wing lobbyists who pose as some kind of friend of the people, The Taxpayers Alliance, are behind the No2AV campaign and I couldn't possibly vote for something they agree with.
At this rate I'm going to have to have an opinion of my own! Wait, I wonder what my favourite newspaper/columnist/celebrity thinks I should do?
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Talking of columnists I am one of the few non right-wing people in Britain who actually quite likes Richard Littlejohn even though I don't often agree with him. I know I'm not supposed to and it's not just his connections to Ilford, Spurs and The Sun that swing it for me. I think he is wrong, for instance, in his column today where he suggests it's wrong to hold a minute's silence for Japan because of their war crimes. But he's right in that, as football fans, we do have too many 60-second silences before games. Soon it will be a compulsory part of every match.
And I completely agree with his observation that there is nothing quite as ridiculous as the sight of a bloke in a giant chicken costume bowing his head in silence in memory of tsunami victims at White Hart Lane last week before the West Ham game.
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There are things I don't get, as opposed to don't like. For instance, I'm not a fan of sailing but get why others would like it. Similarly for parascending and dangerous sports. I don't really get rugby union though I guess some people like to see fat posh men who might have a punch up at any second and I can see why people admire the way they haven't adopted football's more unsavoury habits like arguing with referees or pretending to be injured (except for the fake blood incident of course.) But league is so much better, surely?
I can sort of understand people who run marathons even though they don't realise it makes them look ten years older than they really are. And even cycling - those homo erotic outfits can be quite appealing to thin people.
But, like you, I have things I just don't get. Or at least I don't get why they are so popular. These include Adam Sandler, Phil Collins, 99 per cent of West End musical theatre, Lost, tribute bands, obsessive exercising, Miranda, prog rock, speedway, Crocs on men, decaf instant coffee, puffball skirts, Heat magazine, any car by Chrysler, owning Koi carp, Fred Bassett cartoons, street mime artists, the Welsh language, Katie Price, Sarah Sands column in the Evening Standard, the dipping sauce on Papa John pizzas (it's revolting and everyone I know thinks so), Vanessa Feltz, transubstantiation, Jamie Redknapp as a pundit and Rush.
And that's just for starters. It doesn't include things I don't like but at least can understand why others might such as peas, Coldplay, EastEnders, Sunday newspaper travel supplements, Arsenal, Range Rovers - oh, the list goes on and on and on, believe me.
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Trying to organise a night out with the boys up west on April 16th when we realised there is the all-Manchester semi final that day and then the Bolton-Stoke one the next, both at Wembley.
That's three sets of Northerners, plus Manchester United fans, all in the capital on the same night, doing what they always do on such occasions - moaning about how much a pint of bitter costs in central London, how miserable and impolite Cockneys are, how packed the tubes are and how many prostitutes there are in Soho. They've got a point, mind.
Then they'll take photos of themselves outside strip clubs, gawp at the lights in Piccadilly, shout suggestively at the hen parties going into Tiger Tiger and piss in the fountains of Trafalgar Square before they all strut around doing that funny Northern walk they do with their arms out and legs forward a la Liam Gallagher (don't think we haven't noticed!
Welcome to London lads. Leave it tidy.
Oi oi....Solly

Beyond the Palin

Sarah Palin visits Israel and wears a Star of David to show her support. So now she's Jewish. After 2,000 years haven't we suffered enough?
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My doctor wants to see me on Friday to 'discuss my cholesterol'. When was the last time a doctor asked to see someone to tell them their cholesterol is fine and there's absolutely nothing to worry about?
As regular readers know, it was a doctor - in Harley Street no less - who told me I would die at the age of 54. This was 30 years ago and he based his opinion on looking at my hand and the fact I then smoked 20 a day. So I've got six years left. Unless I hear something different this Friday of course.
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Cross dressing. I touched on it yesterday (oo er missus) but I reckon most men have tried it at some time or other.
Think about it. Stag nights, rugby club dos, fancy dress parties or just doing it for fun, I genuinely believe a clear majority of the male population of this country has donned female attire at least once. Not to mention those who have done it, on their own, when everyone's out, and they have looked through their wife's underwear draw to...oh, sorry, I digress.
Me? I've been to a tarts and vicars party dressed as a tart, of course. I wore a boob tube, short skirt, fishnets, borrowed shoes from my friend's mum (a fantastic woman called Deanna who I still miss) and, in my opinion, looked bloody fantastic. The right foundation can make your nose look a lot shorter, I discovered.
The only other time was slightly odd. I met a girl from Yeovil called Rachel who was a helicopter engineer for Westland (though that has nothing to do with it) and I gave her my shirt and she gave me her taffeta ballgown. She didn't want to go home in a ballgown. I kept it in my wardrobe at my flat in Dagenham (or Becontree Heath as I liked to call it) and one day, after a few drinks and a funny cigarette with some mates, they dared me to try it on. So I did.
Again - and like most men who have dragged up - I thought I looked fabulous. In the end I gave the dress away to the girlfriend of a mate of mine.
I'm betting that most blokes reading this have dressed up in drag at least once. So leave a comment and let me know if I'm right or just a bit warped.
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Dead badger in Buckhurst Hill. By the side of the High Street. This is the first badger, dead or alive, that I've seen in this part of the world, well, ever. I remember several years ago being told there were no badgers in Epping Forest due to hunting but this is clearly untrue. Just like the official Epping Forest web site which says there are only two types of deer - muntjac and fallow. But I regular see roe deer (and there's a major road nearby called Roebuck Lane so there is a history of this species!)
It reminds me of a story of the night when two groups representing the Forest's most popular activities came together accidentally - that's nature lovers and East End murders.
Apparently a group of badger watchers were settling in (pun intended) for a night's observation when they noticed two men dumping a large, black plastic bag, in the bushes.
The men saw the badger watchers, and calmly walked off. Naturally the bag contained a dead body (they say there are as many corpses as badgers in Epping Forest.)
Everyone from the Krays to East Enders has reputedly used the Forest as a woodland grave. Never found a body myself and I use the woods regularly from walking the dog to messing around with my bat detector to taking a shortcut home when there's a rail strike.
But as soon as I do, I'll let you know.
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There's an advert on the tube for Eurostar to promote a five hour train journey (including a change from one station in Paris to another) to Strasbourg, all for £99. You can fly to Strasbourg for less. It takes an hour and a bit and you don't have to change mid-air to another plane. So what's the big deal? No, really. I love Eurostar. I've been on it dozens of times and only had one bad journey coming back from Paris when there were some serious delays. But for £99 and for five hours to get to Strasbourg? I just don't get it. Obviously the main customers will be MEPs who can put in on their expenses.
Adieu mes amis...Solly

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

My Big Fat Gypsy Tsunami

Oh come on, it's the headline the Daily Star is just itching to write given half the chance. But I owe them an apology. After suggesting they were being far fetched in claiming '100,000 feared dead' while all the other papers estimated it at around a tenth of that, it turns out they may be closer to the real figure in Japan's death toll than anyone else. Kudos to Hugh, Mick and the boys.
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My daughter played in a school concert tonight which included Mozart and some of that plinky plonky modern stuff by swan-eating Orcadian Peter Maxwell Davies. And guess what, the composer himself turned up. No, not Mozart. He couldn't even be bothered to send a note, the wiggy bastard.
But Peter - or Max as his new BFFs call him - stood up, applauded the orchestra (even though the flutes were a bar late in one piece) and socialised with the various dads and MILFs afterwards. Bless.
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I know it's a good cause, but either everyone I know is a cynic or it's getting harder and harder to find anyone who enjoys seeing these D-list celebrities trekking the desert or climbing Kilimanjaro or crying because they've split a nail or pretty much anything they do for Comic Relief these days.
And I bet Chris Moyles would find it easier to raise £100k if he promised to shoot himself live on air once he'd reached that target.
Tonight I caught sight of Craig David singing to some people I'd never heard of around a campfire in Kenya. Of course it was something he had a hit with 10 years ago as he hasn't done anything since then. As if the people of Africa haven't suffered enough.
Red Nose Day? It's just an excuse for Andrew Marr to wear stockings and fat women and spotty kids who work in Sainsbury's to pretend they've got a sense of humour.
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I hope England continue in the cricket World Cup. Not out of partisan support but because win, lose or even that remarkable tie, there is no other team in the competition that are simply as much fun to watch.
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Did you know that the bank which spent the most money on advertising in 2010 was the Halifax? That's right, the ones whose adverts show staff working in an imaginary radio station. And that BT doubled its TV ad spend so that we could watch even more repeat showings of that wimpy bloke who used to be in My Family in some kind of second rate Gold Blend rip off.
So much money, so little class.
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Listen, you're not Irish, so take that stupid bloody Guinness hat off and stop pretending. Top of the evening to you...O'Solly.