Hell In The Jungle.

What is it about ‘I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here!’ that persists in being so irresistible? Even a pandemic that reduced it to a couple of years in a buggered fridge of a Welsh castle wasn’t enough to kill it off. ‘Where Strictly Politically Correctly Come Dancing’ is glittery and repetitive and ‘Celebrity […]

Spare Me.

If he’s going to write something then I may as well too. Prince Harry has just given us the news we have never, ever thought for a moment we wanted to hear. As if January wasn’t already the worst month of the year he has popped back into a limelight he very rarely abandons (the […]

Small screen blues.

It is at this time of year that I spend more effort than is healthy avoiding some of the more ubiquitous delicacies on television. My rather pathetic written output of late is perhaps a little bit due to the fact I have to use so much of my energy making sure nothing pops up on […]

Don’t See How They Run.

I haven’t been to the cinema much lately. To be honest I’m starting to lose faith in the big screen. It seems there are just too many films that can’t be bothered to be good anymore. Not that there weren’t loads of bad films before, it’s just that there seems even less of a reason […]

The Scores On The Board.

Today is GCSE day. Thousands of angry, confused teenagers will be gawping, slack jawed and acne abundant, at walls of names and subjects and numbers, baffled at how they did so well or so badly. Some will have battled against the odds in some sink estate shithole to get results that may just see them […]

Poxy Monkeys.

It’s been the slow burn, underground sensation of the summer, if you’d care to look at it that way. People have been going bananas about it. Or going ape, if you’ll indulge me. It’s never quite been top flight headline news but it’s always been there, flitting about along the perimeter, poking its head up […]

For The Love Of Ice.

I love ice. I don’t think I’ve ever told it, but I do. For me it is one of the absolute fundamentals of domestic existence. A freezer without a bag of ice is, for me, of no more use than a kettle without water or a cigarette without a lighter. And for quite some time […]

On Aylesbury.

If you ever find yourself having a decent reason to go to Aylesbury you might want to start re-thinking your life. At any given moment in time there must be worse places to be on the planet – the toilet block of a Nicaraguan jail, a sewage plant on the outskirts of Cairo, sticky-stuck and […]

A Lovely Day.

I am now officially 46. Closer to 50 than to 40, as some birthday philosophers would put it, though since we have yet to master time travel it seems rather redundant to put that into words; it really isn’t that clever an observation. Nor does it matter. In the unlikely and quite cruel scenario that […]

Mind Those Teenagers.

Apparently mindfulness isn’t working with the teenagers. A load of clever people have gone into schools around Britain and asked a load of teenagers if they have found even the slightest bit of benefit from being ‘taught’ mindfulness, and most of those crazy kids have said no. You may think that any negative response from […]