#14 James Blunt -- isn't he one just?

In the build up to Live Earth, the concept was dragged to the floor and given the most almighty kicking by pretty much every journo in the land. My faith in the media is restored.

Jonathan Ross – whose main job was to smooth over organisational incompetence by rephrasing the same question continually, before handing over to a “global act” – gleaned the odd ballsy, honest answer. The most memorable: David Baddiel, bemoaning the fact that if you question a few things that don’t add up, backed up by the most eminent of advice, you get called a “climate-change denier”.

Put it there, Dave.

James Blunt’s response to the hot topic? Oh God, don’t get me started. Okay then, get me started. He asked for it.

So he’s just done his performance: position fixed, strumming every bit as loosely as a Thunderbirds puppet; eyes gauping ahead, like someone at the back of the crowd is holding up a magic-eye picture, and he’s started to make out a rocket ship. From Back To Bedlam, he does Wise Men (the one where he rips off Elton John) because You’re Beautiful is, like, too obvious, man. He manages a so-so cover of Wild World by Cat Stevens, and – surprise to end all surprises – he slips in a song off his upcoming long-player.

He comes into the Beeb’s studio. In addition to kissing his arse a bit, Graham Norton describes his beardy look as “Catnip”, a reference that either goes over Blunt’s head or offends him slightly, as he forces a quizzical smirk.

And then, preceding a glib load of cack about wanting to make a difference in some way, comes Jimmy’s answer to Live Earth’s critics: “I think it’s very easy to be cynical…”

Yes, it effing well is, isn’t it. You luxury-jet it in from California to churn out billions of watts to promote your new record under a banner that says, “Look at me. I care.”

Use your brain, lad. Shun Live Earth. Strap a twelve-string to your back, step out of your Hollywood pad, get on a bike and use your military fitness to cycle all the way down to South Central LA, and play a gig in a school hall for some seriously disadvantaged kids. No microphone, just good old fashioned acoustics. On the way back, stop off at Beverley Hills High, and do the same for young ‘uns possibly even more prone to wasting leccy. Ban all cameras so the world isn’t reminded of what you look or sound like pre-release. Then go home.

Then, it would be very difficult to be cynical, wouldn’t it James?

It won’t happen. The reason is, he and his “people” don’t give a fig about being different, cool, or worthy. It’s all about the wonga. That’s why his emotion-stirring songwriting talent is buried under layers of polished dad-friendly production…which is why I can’t cry to No Bravery, a gut-wrenching army tale of everyman disillusionment. Shame.

You can take the rich kid from the castle…

#13 Seany, who has already "had offers". Here's another: you can kiss my arse.

I made a promise to myself this year. I’m not watching “normal” (ie. non-celebrity) Big Brother anymore. Each series has been an increasingly depressed animal, upping its dose of fluoxetine as it leaps about with more desperate abandon.

But I did hear a grumble or two about last night’s eviction. Shouldn’t arrogant arse Jonathan have walked – or even saggy-titted earth mama Carole – before the “loveable house jester”?

Nah. The right man got the heave-ho. Seany (or Seány, as BB – and only BB – keeps insisting ; you lose the right to such authenticities when you insist on one adding a childishly twee “y”) is a man with such eminent knobend credentials, he should win a lifetime achievement Nobel Prize for services to bellendishness.

The curly weirdo has really bent my nose out of joint. And I’ll tell y’all for why: HE MADE ME SIDE WITH CHARLEY! How dare he do that to me. Ugh, I feel dirty and used. Sympathising with that gobby, attention-seeking, self-obsessed harpy – and it’s all his fault. Him, and his side-splitting “pranks”.

I don’t want to come over all Nicky...ahem...(And by the way, what is with that little ray of sunshine? She’s got Asian trophy-bird looks ; she’s a bright communicator. But she can’t break a smile because of those in the house who won’t wait until after lunch to eat a yoghurt...)

But Seany’s mischief cranked the unfunnyometer up to eleven. “I’m not being funny” shouldn’t be Charley’s catchphrase: it should be Seany’s. Filling someone’s boots with water is not funny. At all. Not even in the slightest.

Tracy, who is displaying clarity now the pills she took on her entry are finally wearing off, called it well: Seany was jealous about not being the centre of attention anymore, what with the new male additions. So he started courting the negative spotlight. Then, when the inevitable reprisals came-a-screaming at him, he did a butter-wouldn’t-melt face to make Old Saggy Tits and his other cronies come up and defend him, declaring him the most lovely, harmless human alive.

“I just wanna have a laugh,” he would protest. Okay. Me too. So I’ll soak something of yours that costs a hundred quid – like the entire contents of your tragic Manchester bedsit – and we’ll both collapse with merriment on to your flooded threadbare carpet as we attempt to control our guffawing.

Did you see him cry during the exit interview, as he tried to describe his bond with Laura? He was stalling. Because there was no bond. Other than the fact she was the only other contestant backward and Celtic enough to find a condom on a toy monkey’s head hysterical.

Seany lists one of his likes as “dancing in supermarkets”. I’m not shitting you. He dislikes “withdrawn people”. No “Seany-love” (blurggggghhhhhhh) for them. What he means is, he doesn’t like quiet, pleasant folk who show him up even more as a needy, irksome pudding-faced Mick Hucknall hobbit.

Anyway, like I say. I am not watching Big Brother anymore.

#12 The Apprentice: The toff with the tartan paint

Eh, that was some series. Just utterly triumphant, riveting viewing.

But enough of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps. Did you check The Apprentice?

And what do you make of new protegé Simon Ambrose, the Hampstead Hoodie? If you ask me this has to be the luckiest plum gob in the history of posh boys. Repeatedly he escaped the boot in spite of world-beating incompetence and a tenacious insistence on looking like a cock.

Once Tre bailed out Simon, his lap dog, by not boardrooming him. Simon has spent the series so far up Tre’s arse, he could have told you at any point what the Ali-G-alike had eaten in the past five minutes.

Unforgettable was Simon’s performance for a shopping channel. Ignoring early indications that he was utterly useless, he chose himself to go solo. Selling trampolines, he showed how easy they were to assemble. Televisual aurum.

The nation collectively folded over with asphyxiated laughter as Simon put something out there to rival the elephant taking a dump on Blue Peter. He twisted in each ten-inch cylindrical leg, one by one, at the exact position his dick would be were it erect. We all begged for mercy as he turned it the wrong way, turned back again, and peppered the glee-inducing shambles with comments like, “Children will like playing with it” and “Adults will love it too”.

But this highlighted something fans have long suspected. The tasks have bollocks all to do with the firings. Though Simon’s main contribution had been breakdancing, and spitting “on da mike” what the “streets” were not about (not about low-cost airlines, apparently), it was clear “Sir Alan” (as he’s sickeningly referred to) had a soft spot for Mr Dippy.

Here’s where the Sugar spin comes in. The players had chosen gear for their team mates to sell on TV. Simon sold none of Naomi’s trampolines. Who was blamed? Naomi, for choosing a duff product for Simon. This sidesteps the possibility that hundreds may have sold, had potential customers not been debilitated by mirth and consequently unable to reach the phone.

Simes chose a pricey wheelchair for Tre and Naomi to flog, spawning one of the best sarcastic Tre-isms of the run: “So Simon, are you going for the disabled market?” Sugar thought the choice stank. Naomi and Tre overcame the impossible and shifted two. Sugar’s verdict? Great product selection by Simon.

Long have the tales of quitting superjobs smelt of bull excrement. But think on: it’s the bearded dwarf that manipulates us big time. Word has it that Simon and Kristina have been working for Al for six months. That’s how he makes his choice. The real-estate task was just TV. Kristina pissed all over Simon. Sugar claims they edited out Simon holding the floor. Whatever.

Kristina probably didn’t nail it because another working-class bootstrapper would make Sugar look like the inverted snob he is.

Earlier I backed Katie. Not to win the Apprentice; when she ran at Chepstow.

Neeeiiiiiiggggghhhhhhh.

#11 - The Curious Incident of Bill Nighy and the England Football Team in the, er, Night-Time

In the week of David Beckham’s recall to the England squad, Bill Nighy – yes, that Bill Nighy – has felt compelled to go public to express his consistent and undiminished support for his fellow national treasure. It turns out that he was so incensed by Beckham’s exclusion from the team last year that he actually went so far as to write to the footballer’s management to sympathise.

Nighy told The Sun the other day: "I wrote to David to say I thought it was unfortunate he was no longer part of the England set-up. I had a bee in my bonnet. Let's just say I was confused by the decision and I thought I'd like to disassociate myself from it”.

Well, thank God that’s cleared that one up. At least Nighy has finally done the decent thing and clarified his role in Beckham’s omission. I just hope we can now draw a line under the whole sorry affair. But if he’d only come forward earlier, perhaps we could have avoided the kind of understandable confusion that I overheard from a neighbouring pub table recently.

Man 1: The England team are going from bad to worse. Why did we have to jettison our talismanic captain David Beckham so prematurely?

Man 2: I couldn’t agree with you more. It’s all very well wanting to make a clean break, but we just didn’t have a player of sufficient quality to replace him.

Man 1: That bloody, meddling, Bill Nighy!

Man 2: I know! Why can’t he stick to light romantic comedy acting? Aren’t all those awards enough for him? Why does he have to exert such all-pervasive influence over the national football team as well?

Man 1: Only the actor Nighy seems to believe that Shaun Wright-Phillips has the chops to adequately fill the right midfield position. Performances certainly haven’t borne this out.

Man 2: Far from it. Talk about Shaun of the Dead!

Man 1: And apparently the elegantly weathered star is said to be continually interfering in the maintenance of the national team’s playing surfaces.

Man 2: Well, I’ve heard of The Constant Gardener, but that’s ridiculous!

Man 1: Come on Nighy – bring back Becks now.

Man 2: Yeah! We want The Lost Prince back!

Man 1: I haven’t heard of that one.

Man 2: Nor me. I just looked it up on Wikipedia. The wi-fi in this place is great!

Man 1: I haven’t felt like this since Terry Scott kept Glenn Hoddle out of the 1982 World Cup team.

Man 2: And just what did Victoria Wood have against Matt Le Tissier?

Man 1: Hold on, who’s that listening in to our conversation on the next table?

Man 2: Isn’t that Barney Myerson? I expect he’s writing one of those Naptime 500’s.

Man 1: Well he hasn’t got anything like 500 words there. And I’ve completely run of things to say.

Man 2: Me too!

Man 1: Did you know that Leslie Crowther was Phil Lynott’s father-in-law?

Man 2: Yes.

#10 Jeremy Clarkson: Fancy a Ginger Beer?

I’m not always the best judge of character, but if someone solemnly assesses that something is “political correctness gone mad”, I can be pretty sure that someone is a bona fide tosser.

Jeremy Clarkson is clearly one of that number, a sort of public-school, lanky Gary Bushell. Sporting a blazer, and a grain-sack gut spilling from suffocating drainpipe jeans, he made his name coochy-cooing at whopping engines, and starting sentences with: “If this car were a bird...” Thereafter he spent much of his time verbally holding his nose and making a flushing gesture, littlejohning on about speed cameras and tree huggers sending this country to the dogs.

For sure, an easy target for whiney, wishy-washy, baa-baa-black-sheep-banning poindexters. So the BBC must brace itself for charges of overreaction as it upholds complaints regarding Clarkson’s description of the Daihatsu Copen as “ginger beer”.

It turns out, he was only following the lead of a Top Gear audience member, who had spontaneously labelled the aforementioned vehicle as “gay”.

But before we go all Barney-Myerson-on-George-Bush, lamenting perspective sacrificed in order to find a stick to beat someone with, let’s dig a little deeper.

Clarkson has form for using “gay”. This is him in the Sunday Times in February 2006. In an article entitled “This is the kind of gay I adore”, he deems the Mazda MX-5 “gay, in both the new and the old sense of the word. The balance, the poise, the gearchange, the exhaust note; they're all spot on."

The old model was "...just a teensy bit gay...you just knew that given half a chance this little car would be off to the gentlemen's public lavatories with its friends George and Michael. That's why we all liked it so much."

So far, so innocuous. But you get the idea. He likes the word “gay” a bit too much. Now let’s slip it down into fourth, put the foot down, and see how this baby really handles: a quote from a few internet sites attributed to Clarkson in January 2000...

“So, they're lowering the age of consent for homosexuals to four ... and the Army is to become a hotbed of single-sex fumbling...How long will it be before we get ‘Gay Lanes’ on the motorway?"

Aha. Now we’re getting somewhere, aren’t we. Tongue-in-cheek, yep, but it’s telling. Forget the daft non-sequitur punchline. Note the homo/paedo connection; the profound blindness to the real issues of equality and recognition. I love the use of “is to become”. Soldiers? Doing each other? It’ll be prisoners next.

So did Clarkson copy the audience member, or did the audience member copy Clarkson?

Here’s another one: who cares? Clarkson made the mistake off veering away from the increasingly diluted “gay” to rhyming slang for the more punitive “queer”. Sussed.

I like my PC world. I dislike Clarkson’s, where it’s okay to openly assume all Hyundai designers are spaniel eaters, all BMW workers are Nazis, and all Americans are dull-witted.

Stereotyping often offends oppressed victims. Political correctness only offends Clarksons.

#9 Chris Tarrant: Do Me a Curry Favour!

It must be rubbish being Chris Tarrant sometimes. He is never more than twenty minutes away from a village idiot asking him whether he’d like to “phone a friend”.

Misunderstand me not, for a well-executed Millionaire cliché can a zinger make. Spot Tarrant on a public telephone – or, hell, maybe even a new-fangled mobile doobrie – and you have the perfect oppo to pounce with that old standby. Tarrant would collapse into a hysterical heap and want to be your life-long friend.

Not so, I’m afraid, if you desperately try to shoehorn. And certainly not so if you can’t, in the words of Reeves and Mortimer, let it lie. A tenuous and enduringly repetitive offensive turns an everyday, common-or-garden twat into the real deal: an olympic-standard arsehole.

Following the curry fracas, it’s tempting to stoop as low, and custard-pie Tarrant with a similarly obvious line...

But we don’t want to give him that!

So Chris’s side of the story reads approximately like this: I was at the Memsaab with a producer when some peckerhead tried to impress his bird by engaging in banter with me. I was absolutely fine with it, no animosity. Which is why I lobbed (I emphasise “lobbed”) something like a serviette (or, yes, it might have been a fork or a knife, or both, whatever, let’s not lose sight of the wood for the trees) at their table. I was surprised to find later that the man had seen his rump about it and tipped off the Heat. Jeez Louise, strangers dispense pints of lager onto my head in good humour all the time. What’s the world coming to when I can’t, in jest, throw (lob, I mean, lob) a spoon at someone’s dinner?

Is that your final answer, Chris?

I see his point. I remember when I was little, at the Sunday dinner table, my dad gently ribbing me about the girl next door...my mum and my brothers giggling in that slightly stifled way. And me, beaming with respectful amusement. Then lobbing (we’re talking seriously slow underarm action) my cutlery into his beef and yorkshires. The table erupting with mirth. My gravy-splattered father included, slapping his thigh with some force, yelling, “He got me a good ‘un there!” Yeah, nothing keeps the atmosphere light-hearted like a timely discharge of cutting instruments.

Surely staff and fellow diners can shed some light on this. They must be able to confirm that Chris, actually, I mean come on, lost his cool big time.

So let’s ask the audience!

Eff all use they turn out to be. First, there weren’t really any fellow diners. The much-lauded eatery was dead. Chris, producer, peckerhead, girlfriend. That’s pretty much it. And in spite of this, the owner has suggested the staff hadn’t even noticed Tarrant filling his face, never mind doing a whimsical knife-throwing act.

Though I’m guessing the blame can be split down the middle.

I need a wisecrack to end on. What’s another, snappy way of saying “split down the middle”?

#8 Barney Myerson's debut - George W Bush!

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m no great admirer of George W Bush. But in his bumbling, folksy, murderous way, he has actually added greatly to the gaiety of nations. I speak of the Bushism – those solecisms, verbal blunders, mangled formulations and gaffes that have turned him into a sort of dark-side David Coleman.

Bush’s every word has come to be scrutinised and held to ridicule by people more articulate than himself. And at the outset, Bushisms were indeed a delight. Remember this classic: ‘Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.’

But after a while, Bushism quality control began to suffer, and any utterance he makes now seems to be eligible for consideration. Take this recent example: ‘Information is moving through the blogosphere and through the internets’. Wow. He said internets. I think the only living person that would find that funny is Bill Gates.

This all culminated this week in his now famous ‘gaffe’ that occurred during the visit of our own Queen Lizzy 2. I expect you saw the headlines. ‘Bush Rewrites Royal History’. ‘Bush Gaffe Ages Queen 200 Years’. Yes, it appeared that the prez had embarrassed himself by claiming that the Queen had been present at the country’s bicentennial – in 1776. The big, stupid, American dumbo.

Or so you would have imagined from the hysterical reaction that followed. Surely Bush must have said something like, ‘I am pleased to welcome the Queen, who was definitely at our bicentennial in the year 1776, because the USA was founded in 1576, and I genuinely believe her to be 281 years old’. What he actually said was, ‘You've helped our nation celebrate its bicentennial in 17 ... in 1976’. He was thinking of 1976. He said ‘17…’ – not even 1776, just ‘17’. He slightly tripped over his words. Big. Fucking. Deal.

And then he winked at the Queen, which was outrageously claimed by some to be another gaffe. You have to admire the nerve of our parastocracy (I just made that up! Parasites/aristocracy!) for inventing these absurd self-serving rules then accusing anyone blissfully unaware of them of an offensive breach of protocol.

The Queen, humourless old trout that she is, responded to this breezy flirtation – probably the most action she’s had in forty years – with one of her trademark frosty glares. Suitably briefed, she later opened a dinner speech with the words ‘When I was here in 1776’, to much completely genuine, un-sycophantic laughter. Oh, the banter.

Incidentally, remember Bush’s overheard ‘Yo Blair!’ greeting? Journalist Geoffrey Wheatcroft recently named a book about the Blair/Bush relationship after it. But people who have actually bothered to listen to the recording have spotted that Bush really said ‘Yeah Blair!’. Now you may still find that impolite, but the point is that it’s markedly different. Now, naming a whole book after something someone didn’t actually say? That’s what I call a gaffe.

#7 Jesus Christ! (No, but I'm his dad...)

Good friends often raise an eyebrow when I, a card-carrying atheist, show an interest in the life of Jesus Christ. It’s hard to explain, but my Christ complex must be something to do with it.

We do have a lot in common, JC and I: both sons of carpenters ; both better at spouting bullshit than banging nails ; both have a penchant for sporting dodgy beards ; both like a drink ; both borderline autistic.

So I’m a godless soul. Big deal. How does that preclude me from a belief and fascination in the past existence of a nutcase who thought he was the Messiah in a time when everyone believed in Messiahs? Back then, when someone as influential as John the Baptist piped up you were God’s rugrat, you damn well listened. What beggars belief more is somebody like David Icke. He purported to be Son of God in 1991 on The Wogan Show, a time and place in which almost nobody believed in God, let alone His sons. How come I’m allowed to believe that David Icke existed?

Jesus taught his followers to turn the other cheek. This means you can take the piss out of him mercilessly with nary a consequence. Forget hippies and the E generation. Jesus was doing the one-love shtick thousands of years before – pre-cannabis, pre-ecstasy, in a society which ruled that not wishing to skewer one’s closest friend with a rusty railing over a disputed sandal was tantamount to being gay. Having made the celebrity A list, he hung out with a tart – in full view of everyone – and didn’t give two shits.

Kum-bay-yah-ers are not the only ones left affected. His school of thought is sewn into the fabric of modern, liberal morality: the simple goals of tolerance, peaceful resolution, and love. Here and now, only Richard Littlejohn would not sign up to that.

Net research makes entertaining – if risible – reading. Wikipedia, as ever, is the model of studious inquiry and savvy, balanced thesis. Their article vindicates me: most proper historians reckon the Saviour stripped of all mythological claptrap was real. The mythological claptrap gets its fair share of column inches too.

However, put “Jesus Christ” into Google and, Wiki apart, you get a load of old balls.

Take whoisjesus-really.com. This site wants to answer some “tough questions” like “How can I be sure the Bible is really the word of God?”. It offers “facts” so that you can come to an “informed decision”. Intrigued, I read on.

A number of facts make it reasonable to believe the Bible is accurate and reliable. Jesus, the Son of God and the greatest spiritual authority of all time, attested to the accuracy of the Bible, even to the "smallest letter or stroke."(Matthew 5:18)

Did you get that? In summary, we know the Bible is accurate because it says so in the Bible.

I’m not sure how he managed to proof-read the bits written after his death.

Maybe a manuscript was Fed-Exed to Heaven.

#6 Paris Hilton: Sign the Petition to Throw Away the Key

We, the undersigned, wish to see Paris Hilton man-handled roughly into Century Lynwood, tossed into the most austere of cells with her rancid little dog, and secured with a series of premium locks – the keys for which should then be melted down and refashioned into steel marbles to be posted back through the flap as her only means of entertainment.

She must be denied the standard three magazines and one book, as per human rights: we would not, on anybody, wish the painful brain overload caused by what amounts to three times Ms Hilton’s literary tolerance level. Not to mention traumatic exposure to an actual book.

However, she should be subjected to every prison cliché doing the rounds. She should be made to tear off a scrap of sheet to use as a head band ; learn to play the harmonica; succeed the top-dog’s left-hand-side bitch; become a pool ace ; and sport an iron-pumped physique covered in more ink than a biro factory.

We feel strongly that state pen represents an unprecedented opportunity for Ms Hilton to do a decent day’s graft. (By that, we mean an actual day’s work: not the twenty minutes she has to do for The Simple Life while the cameras are there.) Perhaps the laundry press would be her forté. Her earnings, no matter how meagre, should be involuntarily donated to a charity that works with the victims of drunk drivers, as a gesture of moral rather than financial support.

Ms Hilton may also be surprised to discover she is not the only one to pay somebody else to read her mail for her. Many prisoners too: although they will pay less (market rate: two smokes per letter). Their reasons for doing so will differ: an inability to read altogether; as opposed to the sickening indulgence of a spoilt, bone-idle, talentless self-publicist with the scruples of a ferret (and the inability to read well).

Ergo we believe that Ms Hilton should be assigned the role of Jail Reader. (Her next single could be “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”? Never mind.) The authorities should censor any big words (not that many are likely to be bandied about by the nearest and dearest of yardbirds) and post all ciggies to Brian Vallery, Blogosphere, UK, so he can sit in a traditional boozer with likeminded masochists and pull through as many as possible before the July ban.

And, while you’re at it, the undersigned reckon you can bung Nicole Richie in with her too. And her dad, for that “Hello” video, in which he overcomes the obstacle of ugliness by exploiting disability; and breaches teacher/student trust to get his end away.

And Richard Hilton. For calling his daughter “Paris”. Was that a billionaire’s particularly witless idea of a joke? It doesn’t even work. His hotel is called the Hilton Paris.

Okay, maybe the undersigned are going too far. But we definitely think that Paris Hilton should stay where she belongs: with all the other vile, self-serving whores.

#5 Brian Turner's Bread and Butter

You may know Brian Turner as the TV celebrity chef who blusters in a Yorkshire whine that he's right about everything. His philosophy can be summed up thus: shepherd’s pie and spotted dick are much better than any of that foreign muck – a view you’d expect from your slightly racist Uncle Tony, but not so much from a supposed culinary icon.

Everyone knows this is poppycock. Anyone who insists that the imported way (concoct a simple yet tuneful blend of subtle herbs, punchy spices and mouthwatering sauces) is inferior to the British method (smother in lard and flour, then cremate at gas mark 11 for sixteen hours) is an imbecile. I’ll bet anything Brian Turner, as a debutant restaurateur in the eighties, was at least partly responsible for all that backlash nouvelle-britannique bullsugar, subjecting foodies to microscopic portions of tripe and onion for sixty quid.

So, it shocks one not that the man – contrary to his no-nonsense, lowborn demeanour – is a shrewd business fellow. Not one to shy away from a soupcon of self-publicity and dinero, he’s now the face of a range of rip-off sandwiches.

You’ll find them in buy-this-here-or-starve establishments. You know, motorway services, airports, Londis shops positioned miles from any half decent supermarket. Hospitals, too. I bought two for me and the wife during the usual five-hour wait in children’s A & E. For your concern, my daughter had a nasty gastro-viral thing. She needed a drip and a two-night stay-over, but she’s fine now. The Naptime Five Hundred is back in business.

What did we make of Brian’s butties? Actually, not bad, I admit with a nagging sense of shame. My wife, who had professed a lump in her throat, was seduced by the blurb (in Brian’s world, “bacon and egg” is something like “delicately coddled scrambled hen embryo with rashers of freshy slaughtered ale-sodden suckling Tamworth"). She opined, with all the promise of a budding food critic, that is was “nice”.

In kiddie casualty, a bloke’s job is twofold: to get stuff (already achieved) and to lighten the mood. So, unoriginally, I quipped that they’re nice because Brian makes them with his own bare hands. Consumed by fatigue and anxiety, we could at least raise a smile at the thought of Turner beavering away in a factory kitchen, buttering and laying meagre allowances of processed pork with the heed of a perfectionist.

Internet reviews I checked were not so generous as we. Sandwichguide.co.uk bluntly concludes:

BLT: Horrendously mediocre.
Egg and bacon: Where’s the bacon? (Good point. “Rashers” is a breach of trust.)
Chicken and bacon: You’d think it came from a supermarket.

The latter is the nail on the head. My beef is the £2.25 price label. Tesco’s seafood cocktail is as good as anything “by” Turner, and costs a quid less. You pay that extra nicker to see his ugly boat race and some descriptive bravado on the plastic lid.

I’d pay more than one pound sterling to never see his stupid moustache again.

#4 Gina Ford, She Who Made This Site Possible

As a bright, angry young thing, you may build up an impressive athenaeum of improving, highbrow texts. Later, as a parent, you might as well stuff them into cardboard boxes and ferry them off to your good friend Sue Ryder.

Nietzsche could well have been on to something with that radical perspectivism thing, but if there’s nothing in Der Antichrist telling you how to make your (or is it Rosemary’s?) baby sleep like an, erm, baby (yeah, I know) seven through seven, it aint worth a hill of rubbish antihistamine chill pills.

This is where Gina Ford comes in. Before I go any further, I should explain that I’m a big fan of Gina. In fact, the missus and I have become mild Gina evangelists. I wanted to get that in early should any of Gina’s lawyers be reading who are, by all accounts, no slouches.

The top and bottom of Gina’s philosophy is “get baby into a routine from day one”. Many, like us, pick up her book and implement her strategies a couple of months later: from day one of feeling like doing a bus-stop belly flop.

Her routine for the suckling evokes a day in the life of a Foreign Legioneer. Exact timings for when you should put your “drowsy” baby down for a nap (if I’ve followed the steps to the letter, how come my baby is not so much “drowsy” as “Chucky on amphetamines”?) make a lot of detractors point to a lack of freedom. But the alternative is winging it, never being able to predict when she’ll (a “she” in my case) kick off next. Trust me, that’s no freedom when you’re out and about. Or in bed. Parents of near-newborns will never have much freedom, but a modicum of control is the closest we’ll get.

Gina polarises people. Those who don’t get on with her output express very robust opinions. Somebody told me that her sister told her (sound familiar?) that Ford’s work is the biggest contributory factor to post-natal depression.

I can’t imagine anyone who really (and I mean, really) gives Gina a fair crack of the whip not ending up with a more contented baby and a more contented soul. And there is room for manouevre despite preconceptions to the contrary. Some take it wholesale, others use it as a framework and adapt, but a few take out their frustration with accusations of child cruelty. Jibes about her not having any of her own are pointless and mean. I feel sorry for mumsnet. A couple of bad apples...

Ford’s tone has been described as patronising. But if you can get past that, the reward is often a harmoniously sleeping household. And that can't be bad.

Talking of patronising, when I filled in the form for Gina’s site (I was later put off by the less-than-paltry forty quid fee) it said, helpfully:

Surname (Like Ford) :
First name (Like Gina) :

Cheers, Gina.

Mind you, mumsnet asked me if I was pregnant.

#3 Alan Ball, and Alan Ball

God wants his Ball back.

That was a headline in the Sun today. Appropriately, it’s a deft touch, but it falls down on two counts for me: 1) I’m an atheist, and 2) I’m a Evertonian. So if God ever existed, He was Alan Ball. Dixie Dean was Everton’s first legend. But Alan Ball was Everton’s first God.

This is the third time God has wanted his Ball back in the last quarter-century. Around the turn of millenium, Bally’s wife and daughter were both diagnosed with cancer: his daughter won the battle ; his wife lost. His dad, Alan Ball, Sr., died tragically in a smash in Cyprus in 1982. The culpable cabbie got a one-year ban, and Mrs Ball, Sr. was awarded a whopping twenty-five grand compo. Alan Ball Jr. sold his World-Cup winner’s medal in 2005 for the family. Yesterday, he suffered a heart attack whilst reportedly fighting a rekindled bonfire in his garden. If there is a God, he’s been a real tw*t to the Ball family.

Bally’s dad, the other Alan Ball, is less famous than his mercurial son, but he had a critical part to play in football. He didn’t exactly set the world aflame as an inside-forward (a position that has gone the same way as orange footballs on snowy pitches) in stints for Bolton, Southport, Brum City, Oldham and Rochdale “The Dale” AFC. Nor were his managerial years at Halifax and Preston the stuff of folklore. But he did an amazing thing. He got his son a job.

Three cheers for nepotism. When clubs wouldn’t give Bally a proper bite of the cherry on the grounds that he was too small and too ginger to play professional football, dad called in a favour at Blackpool. In that struggling, unfashionable line-up, he was noticed by Sir Alf Ramsay and adorned with a cap. And the rest is, as the Germans say, Geschichte.

I remember watching a documentary about Alan Ball (Junior), and the fondness with which he spoke about his ol’ fella. He related the tale of when Everton wanted to flog him to Arsenal (sniff) ; how gutted he was, having been so happy as one third of the Holy Trinity with Howard Kendall and Colin Harvey. He sought his dad’s advice because, he asserted, his dad always gave great advice. And not just the advice most people’s dads are good at – tips on stud walls and repointing.

“Son,” came his father’s words down the blower, “when you’re not wanted, you must go.”

He was right, Bally. His dad did give great advice.

And as the tributes fly in like Bally’s low cross for Hurst’s discredited 1966 World-Cup Final goal, let’s hope one shows restraint when it comes to using words like “enthusiastic”, “industrious” and “engine”. They don’t do the man credit. His skills were an inspiration to every midfielder that followed in the dainty steps of his white boots. A wonderful family man, and an icon for narky, helium-voiced short arses everywhere.

#2 Cho Seung-hui, The Old-School Oldboy

It was an odd decision by murderous fruitcake Cho Seung-hui, shipping his multi-media PR package to NBC. And not only because it feels a bit old hat in this cyber age. Nor do I highlight the financial folly of paying fourteen dollars for a courier (Money’s not a hot issue for a crazy ready to turn a gun on himself). What I mean is, he was taking a risk.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, NBC hadn’t turned out to be such a bunch of vain, insensitive scoop-whores getting a semi-on because he chose them (“Gee!”) – say they had taken a couple of weeks or even months to call this, rather than the “full day” which NBC advertises like we’re supposed to coo at their syrupy compassion (it takes me a full day to choose a new electric kettle from the Argos catalogue). America might have been buzz...sorry, weeping about the next big middle-American studocide by then.

The question that slaps us in the face, like a chubby, gold-trimmed fist of a jock striking the cheek of a socially inadequate oriental for talking funny, is this: why didn’t he upload to the net? This would have left the very real, disturbing possibility of a global audience, chortling away at this loon’s manifesto on YouTube as he went about his homicidal business. That would have bumped up his infamy rating a bit, something he clearly cared deeply about.

Anyway, shame on NBC for spraying all that steaming manure about insights into the mind of a killer blah blah bloody blah. The police had already dismissed the video nasty as being “as much use as a glass cricket bat”. (Okay, that’s not a real quote.) The film, along with the cringeworthy cinematic poses and the mind-numbing text, was designed with one purpose only: publicity. NBC couldn’t resist giving it the old oxygen.

Mind you, neither could many other news networks. Responding to Paxman’s judgemental sneering on Newsnight, NBC’s big cheese quite reasonably pointed out that extensive footage had been shown on that very show prior to the interview.

“You put it out there,” was Paxman’s retort, sounding rather like a toddler insisting to mum that he started it.

And because I am no different, here – purely because it’s in the public interest – is a chunk from Cho’s rant.

“You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today. But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off.”

So there you go, students of Virginia Tech. That’s cleared that one up. Apparently, it was all your fault. You made him do it. Obviously it’s a tough time right now, what with so many innocent friends losing their lives, but I’m sure you can take some peace away now you profoundly understand the notoriety-hungry mentalist that took them.

God bless America.

And God bless NBC.

#1 Samantha Seager

You probably don’t know who Samantha Seager is, do you.

Get a grip.

No, don’t google her. I’ll tell you in a bit. But first I’ll explain the premise of the Nap Time Five Hundred. In the two hours of my daughter’s midday nap, I am devoting half an hour to the jobs my wife left (“clean kitchen floor” ; “iron tea towels” ; “endorse direct bilateral negotiations between Israel and Palestine”) and the remaining ninety minutes to spewing exactly five hundred words of my brain on to Microsoft Word.

Anyway, Samantha Seager. She’s just surfaced on Britain’s Favourite Soap as Jodie Morton, daughter of the bloke who used to be Sinbad in Brookside.

I was chuffed to see Samantha on Corrie, for I, the wife, and the bairn know her best for her jaunty portrayal of Bobbie in CBeebies offering Me Too. I always thought Samantha was by far the most talented of that ensemble cast, and it surprises me not in the least she’s hit the big time.

Me Too, for the uninitiated, is the less famous urban sister of Balamory. The setting is downtown Riverseafingal and its aim is supposedly to reassure infants that their parents think about them when they’re at work – a message that went over this thirty-two year old’s head, so how many four-year-olds got this, I wouldn’t like to say.

Samantha’s Bobbie is a contemporary working-class hero. She’s a chavvy northern single mum many Daily-Mail readers would expect to be hibernating on benefits. But no, she pays for (what looks like pricey) daycare out of the miserly sum she draws in scrubbing buses at the crack of dawn. How much net can she be in pocket for bothering to work? A tenner?

Yet somehow, Bobbie resists the temptation to play the martyr or wallow in self pity. Her lust for life and work is heart-roasting. She makes me proud to be of proletariat stock. When she sings On My Way To Work – which extols the virtues of being en route a pied to a hard day’s yacker – she means it so much more than the other mediocre luvvies making up the numbers. The cartwheel Bobbie throws as she approaches the depot raises the neck hair. It’s so unexpected. And, slickly, she falls back into her consonant strut, perma-grin still beaming at the camera. Sigh.

I’m delighted for Bobbie to be a role model for my daughter. These days, a job which involves dorkily prancing around and constipatedly gurning in risible clothes is seen as “high status”, whereas getting your hands dirty for an essential, punishing day’s graft is sniffed at. I’d sooner my daughter turn out more Bobbie than Kate Moss.

More power to your gymnastic arms, Samantha. And I suppose it’s goodbye to Bobbie. Surely we won’t see her again if Samantha becomes part of the furniture in Weatherfield. Accordingly, in anticipation, I mourn.
So, farewell Bobbie. As the buses of Riverseafingal will gleam a little less, so will the days of many stay-at-home parents.