A friend phoned me the other day to ask what I'd been up to, but the mobile signal wasn't at its best.

'Nothing much,' I replied. 'I had a quiet weekend.'

'A hen?' came the reply. 'You had a fight with a hen?'

I've just discovered a fab site called Totallylookslike which features some very funny and revealing lookalikes (not just human ones). Definitely worth a visit.

I'm delighted with Bolly's new size zero figure, having fretted about the prospect of her looking a bit anorexic. Thankfully it suits her. She looks cute and kittenish.

But it doesn't always work that way for humans. Nigel Lawson looks like an empty crisp packet now he's lost his trademark rotundity and ought to be forcibly re-inflated by the government. Same with that camp astrologer Russell Grant.

Some people just should be larger. Dawn French for instance. Santa Claus, obviously.

And Fern Britton too. I certainly know which Fern I prefer.

The same goes for blonde hair. Some people were just born to be blonde, even if they weren't born blonde.

This brings me to the whole blonde-to-black thing, which seriously bugs me. What is it that possesses these people? Look what happened to Fernando Torres. He lost all his powers, like Samson, and he was rubbish in the World Cup. Either that, or none of his mates recognised him (or saw him), so they forgot to pass the ball.

As Abba once memorably said, 'There was something in your hair that night, the stars were bright, Fernando.'

Torres, before and after his tragic deblonding

Now Eminem's gone and done it. It's like some mad epidemic.

Surely it can't be about being 'taken seriously'? You can be blonde and intelligent. I cite Paris Hilton, Boris Johnson and Dolly Parton -

Just because I'm blonde, don't think I'm dumb, cause this dumb blonde ain't nobody's fool

The film Legally Blonde offers further incontrovertible scientific proof.

Some people were born to wear glasses too - Alan Bennett, Ronnie Corbett, Nana Mouskouri. Without their glasses they are nothing.

Kate Silverton read the news without her glasses the other day and I had to turn the TV off.

And Woody Allen without glasses - that's just disturbing. And wrong.

Boll's new mouse is supposed to squeak when you prod it. It did this at first. But then I stood on it.

Now it squeaks once a second, 24/7. And it's been squeaking solidly for three days. It's so bad, I've now started imagining I'm hearing it when I'm out of the house.

The only thing that seems capable of silencing this evil super-rodent is the full weight of the coffee table.

Please don't tell the RSPCA.

I took a load of change to the supermarket the other day and painstakingly counted it out to pay the checkout emo.

'Is that the exact?' he asked, clearly too bedevilled by ennui to use a noun.

'Yes. It's the exact. But maybe you should check.'

'No. I don't like counting,' he replied, pouring it into the till.

This expression is beyond tiresome.

It irritates me even more than 'Thanks very much indeed for that' and 'Coming up later in the programme'.

I heard someone, with a voice so twangy it could kill a gerbil at 30 paces, whine it today into a mobile and gave them a Paddington Stare.

That was bad enough. But then, in Tescos, at the self-service tills where the shoplifters go, I distinctly overheard another twangy personage tell her friend she'd been up till 'silly o'clock'.

The expression is clearly mutating and must be stopped.

I bought a bottle of wine tonight and used the self-service checkout. It said 'approval needed', so I summoned the yoof hovering nearby. He logged on. Up popped a big red message saying

CUSTOMER IS CLEARLY OVER 25

He pressed the confirmation button straight away.

'Am I?' I asked.

'What mate?' he replied.

'CLEARLY over 25?'

'Just,' he replied with an insolent smirk.

Old Man 1 - How are you?
Old Man 2 - Not so terrible. You?
Old Man 1 - Well, I suppose I'm still here.

I deserve to be flogged,
'Cause I haven't blogged
For quite a long while,
Which isn't my style.
I've been rather busy
And in quite a tizzy.
But now I'm not slogging
So I can do blogging
And witter online
Like a crazed porcupine.

Me, with my assistant Deirdre

My new Calvin Klein rimless varifocals with ultra-thin Zeiss lenses have finally arrived and I really like them. The optician issued various dire prognostications about dizzy spells on the stairs and so on, but I've found the transition pretty easy. All you have to do is slightly tilt your head back when you look at close-up things, so you're seeing the through the bottom bit of the lens.

As one varifocal support group puts it -

You should point your nose at that which you want to see .... and tuck your chin in when going down steps.

You can also emulate rapid zoom shots in films, by placing a mug or something in front of your nose and tilting your head suddenly. The mug's in focus one second, but then a distant tree in the garden's in focus and the mug's blurred. It really is a hoot.

Check out the excellent Oddly Specific for stuff which is - um - oddly specific.

I was in a cafe at a well-known broadcasting corporation yesterday and they were blasting out easy-listening Christmas tunes. At 7.30 am. It was incredibly loud, verging on distorted.

I was impressed by the stoical assistant who appeared to be oblivious to it.

But then he sighed, gave me a wistful look and said, 'No wonder there are so many suicides at Christmas when they play this sort of c**p. That'll be £1.60 please.'

I was in a posh furniture shop yesterday, looking for an oak storage chest.

'Do you require any assistance sir?' asked the nice man in the corner.

'Yes thanks. I'm looking for an oak trunk thing.'

'What level of rusticness are you looking for?'

Yes. Those were his very words. And out came my absurd reply...

'Um - a medium to high level of rusticness.'

'Come this way. I have the very thing for you.'

And so he took me to a trunk of a medium to high rusticness level. I'm now considering buying it.

If you're in the UK, would you please, please, please stop using the hash sign for 'number', or No, or №.

Thank you.

It's №1, №2, №3.

It is not #1, #2, #3.

The hash symbol is starting to insinuate itself from across the Atlantic like a graphical grey squirrel. It must be stopped.

I find many things irritating.

But, pretty near the top of the list are -

Vibrato whistling and

When a child is born by Johnny Mathis

So I wasn't best pleased to be trapped on a bus in Newcastle last weekend, next to an old man who was vibrato whistling that very tune, in a loop, for half an hour.

Anyway - I got back down south and forgot about it. It was all a dream, an illusion now...

Until Friday morning. 8.07 am. Oxford Circus tube station. At first, it was echoey and indistinct. But then it got louder and unmistakable.

An old man (a different one) was vibrato whistling. And the tune was........

When a child is born

At first, I thought it was in my head. But, no, it really was happening.

It's like a Dr Who plotline. Johnny Mathis turns out to be a space alien and possesses old men. Throughout the globe, dentures rattle to the sound of his ghastly Christmas hit from hell, as the rest of us die from aesthetic poisoning.

I guess it could be worse. Cliff Richard's Mistletoe and Wine or whatever. But if I encounter another Vibrato Mathis in the near future, I'm calling the police.

but are they happy together?

How odd. The designer Stefan Ulrich has created a shape-changing object which can move in with you and keep you company.

According to Stefan -

The Funktionide is an autarkic amorph object whose intention is to provide the user with an atmosphere of presence, thus counteracting the feeling of loneliness.

Surely a cat would do. Or a nice potplant? Interesting idea though.

I once met an artist who made cassettes of hoovering sounds. The idea was that lonely people could put a cassette on in another room, shut the door and pretend they had an friend who was vacuuming.

Apparently they sold pretty well at the ICA.

I spent a large part of this week exploring the relationship between surrealism and fashion, preparing for a discussion I was chairing at the Design Museum. Among the many wondrous things I discovered was the work of fashion photographer Tim Walker

Here are some photos he took at Eglingham in my home county Northumberland - one of his favourite locations.

Number 21 - leaving tissues (or indeed kittens) in washing machines

I feel consoled by the fact that so many other people are annoyed by the same things as me.

In a recent Annual Intolerance Survey (of all things) the following entries caught my eye -

1 chavs

12 noisy eaters

15 stubbing your toe

17 your computer crashing, losing work you've spent hours doing

18 people who talk loudly on their mobile phones

19 spam

21 leaving a tissue in a pocket and putting it in a washing machine

26 people reading over your shoulder

38 people who walk painfully slowly on the street

39 noisy neighbours (mine aren't, but noisy ones annoy me)

60 paper cuts

72 people who mumble

74 cashiers giving you your change on top of a receipt (makes me seethe)

a pic I took of the Tibetan bowls

I've just been to The Roundhouse to experience a day's worth of the longest piece of music ever performed. Longplayer began in 1999 and it lasts a thousand years. The idea was dreamt up by Jem Finer of The Pogues.

The score consists of six melodies played simultaneously on Tibetan singing bowls. Precisely calculated changes in sequence mean that the full cycle will only be completed in a thousand years' time.

The musicians wore Mao-type suits and stood solemnly, a bit like Kraftwerk.

It was an odd but highly entertaining day. Who knows what sort of people, or creatures, will complete the tune in 2999? What instruments will they use? Where will they be? Scary.

Is it me, or are they birthday cake candles?

I have a habit of reading series of books backwards by mistake. And the same sometimes happens with blogs and websites. I once became a big fan of a granny in the USA who did a daily blog and read it avidly in one go, but in the wrong order. Finally, I reached the present and found an entry written by her son ..... saying she'd died. I felt as if I'd lost a friend.

I wonder what percentage of the internet consists of inconsequential stuff written by the dead.

And I must admit I've no idea what will happen to my 'web presence' (as they call it) when I'm no longer here. Or the stuff on my computer - some of it password-protected. My diary for instance. I've not written it for posterity or publication. It's just a sort of aide memoire for little me.

The good news is that the clever internet people have started to think about this. So on Facebook, for instance, you can have 'memorial status', allowing friends to write tributes. And most of the email providers have policies about allowing posthumous access to passwords and/or actual emails. This normally involves having to provide a death certificate and proof of family connections.

There are also several websites allowing you to prepare yourself for digital death.

DeathSwitch ('Don't die with secrets that need to be free') was set up by an American professor and provides a full online legacy service. You can even make sure you have the 'last word in an argument' according to their publicity. Love it. Once you sign up, DeathSwitch sends you regular emails which you have to reply to. If you stop replying, they contact your designated 'verifiers' to check whether you've died or just got bored with the whole thing.

LegacyLocker provides a similar service and even allows you to speak from the grave by recording goodbye videos. Do they censor them I wonder?

MyDeathSpace is a sort of MySpace for dead people, with content added after death - by the living.

MyWonderfulLife ('Let your angels know where all your stuff is') allows you to leave instructions, letters, memories and so on. You can also write your own obituary, choreograph your own funeral and design your own headstone. This is to help your family and friends (aka your 'angels'). There's even an 'angel bootcamp' for them on the site.

GoneTooSoon is also a memorial site, where people can create shrines and light online candles for you after you've gone (and no longer have an aesthetic say in the matter).

I think this is all good stuff, and could prevent a lot of stress. But - as with writing a will - I'm hesitant about signing up, as I intend to live till I'm at least 150 and don't want to tempt fate.

deathswitch

the pet section of gonetoosoon

Ian: Do you like Handel?

EP: Oh yes. Especially Zorba the Greek.

Ian: Don't you mean Zadok the Priest?

EP: Yes. Zorba the Greek.

It's not easy being an Ian. I've just read that Ians are the safest drivers (Bens are the most wreckless). What a claim to fame. We drive carefully. How very James Dean.

My parents called me Ian because it couldn't be shortened. No offence, but this strikes me as preposterous. Why didn't they call me X or Ng (real names in the Far East)??? Or Brad? Or Butch?

No - they called me Ian. At least they didn't call me Iain (or Ean, Eann, Eion, Eon, Ion or whatever) which is a blessing.

No-one can pronounce Ian outside the UK. I renamed myself Jan (pronounced Yan) when I lived in Austria, after getting irritated by people calling me Iron.

Ians are invariably middle-aged as well as being dull. Ian's never in the top 100 baby names nowadays. And it can't have escaped your notice that murderers are often called Ian (is it causal?)

I'm convinced I'm not really an Ian at all. Like a sort of appellative transsexual, I believe I'm really a Sebastian, a Dante, a Peregrine (insert non-tedious name of your choice) trapped in an Ian's body.

But it is a relief to discover that there are some interesting Ians around ...

Ian Thorpe (aka The Thorpedo)

Ian Botham (cricket)

Ian Rush (football)

Ian Thorpe (swimming)

Ian Woosnam (golf)

Ian Wright (football)

Ian McCaskill

Ian Hislop (Private Eye and Have I Got News for You)

Ian McCaskill (weatherman)

Ian Messiter (creator of Just a Minute)

Iain Lee (comedian and presenter)

Me

Ian Brady (Moors murderer)

Ian Huntley (Soham murderer)

Ian McEwan

Ian Fleming (James Bond)

Ian McEwan (Atonement)

Ian McMillan (poet)

Ian Rankin (Inspector Rebus)

Iain (M) Banks (Wasp Factory)

Ian McKellen

Ian Carmichael (Lord Peter Wimsey – and married to a friend of a friend of mine)

Ian Holm (Bilbo Baggins - met him once but had no idea who he was)

Ian Lavender (Private Pike in Dad’s Army)

Ian McDiarmid (Star Wars)

Ian McKellen (Gandalf)

Ian McShane (Lovejoy)

Ian Richardson (Francis Urquhart in House of Cards)

Ian Somerhalder (Rules of Attraction and Smallville)

the charming Ian Paisley

Ian Blair (former head of the Metropolitan Police)

Iain Duncan Smith (leader of the Conservative Party 2001-2003)

Ian Paisley (ranting Irish person)

The Ian Watkinses

Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull)

Ian Astbury (The Cult)

Ian Broudie (Lightning Seeds)

Ian Brown (Stone Roses)

Ian Curtis (Joy Division)

Ian Dury (I met him once, in his flat in Hammersmith, and he was really nice)

Ian Gillan (Deep Purple – formed in Hertford in 1968)

Ian Hunter (Mott the Hoople)

Ian Kilmister (Lemmy, from Motörhead)

Ian McCulloch (Echo and the Bunnymen)

Ian Van Dahl (a Belgian dance group who had no idea Ian was a male name)

Ian Watkins (Lostprophets)

Ian Watkins (H from Steps)

one of my perfectly-composed photos of Bolly

I'm not exactly Henri Cartier-Bresson, but I do try to take nice photos in my own little dilettantish way, and it's pleasing to get compliments.

But there is one 'compliment' that frankly makes me want to fatally impale the person offering it on my zoom lens. I've suffered it several times recently and it makes me apoloplectic with rage.

'You've obviously got a very good camera,' they say. 'Your camera takes really nice pictures.'

My camera??? My camera?????

No. Me, actually. I take the photos.

'You were lucky to catch that,' they add.

Lucky???????

Did people say to Shakespeare, 'You must have a really, really good quill. Is it a swan one?'

Did Michaelangelo's friends say, 'What a good likeness of David. You must have a very good chisel. It does lovely sculptures. Very clear too.'

What's the 'clear' thing about anyway?

I could go on, but I'd better stop.

My friends the Ps were using their new Satnav the other day and it announced (as they do) 'At the next junction, bear left'.

A small voice piped up from the back.

'Daddy. Where's the bear? I can't see the bear!'

This reminds me of a Marx Brothers film, where a comedy trollop tells Groucho to hide because her boyfriend's coming home.

'Quick!' she yells. 'Duck behind the sofa!'

Groucho does as he's told, but then pops up looking confused and declaring -

'There is no duck behind the sofa!'

My friend P recently changed his name by deed poll (long story) and wrote to the usual companies to inform them. All of them wrote back to confirm the change, using his new surname.

Except BT.

Their letter began -

Dear Mr Deed Poll

As you can see, Boll's hour on Anthony Gormley's fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square was pretty uneventful.

You can follow the plinth's other, less glamorous occupants by checking out The Guardian

I think it's a fun idea and I don't care whether it's art or not. I wish the same could be said of some Times readers -

The plinth - Come off it!

God, humans bug me.

Have you ever wondered why this country is in such a mess? What a shambles.

A bunch of unknown people, with no artistic talents, doing nothing of any interest, in public, for an hour? This isn't original art - Big Brother has been doing it for years.

I think we should all book a slot and then not use it. That way we have a nice empty plinth again so we can keep on wondering what to do with it.

Where are you on this graph? I know where I am. I'm in the intelligent and rational bit.

Bolly says, 'I know where I am too. Can I have a prawn please?'

Cats can talk. Yes they can. Don't you give me that funny look.

I noticed this interestingly amended sign in an important office in a well-known broadcasting organisation today.

I just read an article about Robert Pattinson from the vampire film Twilight. And it had to happen - the newspapers have started calling him RPaz. Susan Boyle, the Hairy Angel, has now mysteriously metamorphosed into SuBo. Stray into the limelight nowadays and it's difficult to survive with all your syllables intact.

This is, of course, so lazy journos can fit them into headlines. They've been using abbreviated nicknames for decades - JFK, JR, Posh, Becks, Madge and so on. But the random selection of syllables in a HipHop styly is pretty new.

The US tabloids now call President Obama OBams, Bams or Bam (as in 'Hil Slams Bam'). And US sports stars get it too. ARod (Alex Rodrigues) is probably the most well-known.

But I'm not convinced the two-syllable treatment works on everyone. If Dame Barbara were alive today, would we be calling her BCarts? Or DBabs?

What would I be, I wonder? IPeacs I suppose. Bollinger would be BPeacs. And Peacockshock - PShok.

I actually prefer old-skool rap names, like Grandmaster Flash, Queen Latifah and so on and I was amused to find a Rap Name Generator

My name came out as Gunshot Ian P Sheets
Bolly was BB Gangsta
When I opted for a female rap name for myself, I came out as Phat IP Chilli Cherry which I'll be calling myself from now on.

Here are a few more -

Gordon Brown - MC Golden Gordy B (please don't start using it Gord)

Hazel Blears - Diva HH Ritz (spookily accurate)

Alan Sugar - Sir Alan (weird - I didn't put the sir in ... it just came up with it)

Osama bin Laden - Bad Silver Osama B - aka Justice Smirk

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - DJ M - aka Busta Assassin

Ann Widdecombe - Gangsta Annie A Cookies

and finally...

Camilla Parker Bowles - Dirty CP Humps

Gangsta Annie A Cookies

Z and Vielpunkt

Congratulations to Z and Vielpunkt - two celebrity gay penguins at Bremerhaven Zoo in Germany who have hatched a rejected egg and are bringing up the chick together. Z and Vielpunkt are longtime partners. The zoo has two other gay penguin couples.

There have been lots of gay penguin couples in zoos around the world - notably Silo and Roy in New York, who were the Elton John and David Furnish of the penguin gay scene until they got divorced. They inspired And Tango Makes Three - a children's book about gay penguin parents which didn't go down too well in the Bible Belt.

Now it's thought that a fifth of king penguin couples in zoos are gay. Gay animals and birds are found throughout nature. In 1999, Professor Bruce Bagemihl documented gay relationships in at least 1500 species - including otters, owls and hedgehogs.

And Oslo's Naturhistorisk Museum recently featured gay animal couples in an exhibition provocatively entitled Against Nature?

The museum prominently displayed a quotation from Magnus Enquist, a professor of ethnology at Stockholm University -

'There are things that are far more contrary to nature than homosexuality, things humans alone do — such as having religion or sleeping in pyjamas.'

Z and Vielpunkt haven't named their chick yet, but it's apparently doing very well.

I've done some spectacularly loud sneezes today thanks to the hayfever. But the Boll hasn't flinched or run off once. If I shouted that loudly, she'd be upstairs like a shot and under the bed within seconds. Clearly, cats know what a sneeze is and recognise it as something totally non-threatening. This is one of the many good things about cats.

Like Sir Peter Viggers MP, I'm occasionally visited by ducks. My ducks have so far had to make do with quacking around the garden. But I've now realised, thanks to the duck-friendly Sir Peter, that I've been neglecting them.

It's well known that ducks, and indeed chickens, have classical sensibilities. An aesthetically-affronted mallard is bad news. And indeed, a chicken in St Albans recently reported its owners to the RSPB for not providing it with the correct type of palladian portico.

And so I visited Heytesbury Bird Pavilions, where they sell houses for birds of distinction.

I was particularly tempted by the Duck Banqueting House, the Scottish Baronial Chicken House, the Moorish Pagoda Bird Table (which offers chaffinches and bluetits 'the excitement of a folly'), and the Queen Anne Duck House ('This is based on the many buildings one sees in Country Life').

Here are some excerpts from their brochure to assist you with your choice of ornithological accommodation...

Stockholm Duck Island - £2,585.00

Scottish Baronial Chicken House

Greek Temple Bird Table - £763.75

I'm doing my accounts this week and I'm thinking of claiming mortgage payments on my shed, which is my main residence. This will be a mistake. I then intend to move back into my house and claim for a second mortgage on my other home (a bird table), a moat and 175 tonnes of manure. This will be due to the fact that I'm very busy and not good at filling in forms.

Because my work is so greatly influenced by the comfort of ducks, I'll then send my assistant (who is a cat, due to an error) to Heytesbury Bird Pavilions to purchase a duck house in the style of a Swedish Palace, because an aesthetically-affronted mallard is never a good thing and ducks are well-known for their penchant for 18th century Scandinavian architecture.

It's also a well-known fact that bluetits like to think of themselves living in Ancient Greece, which is why my assistant will be spending £763 on a Greek Temple Bird Table.

I also feel that my work could be disrupted by disgruntlement among neoclassically-minded chickens. There are no chickens in my garden, but one never knows when a chicken might pass by and decide to come in.

I have therefore asked my assistant to purchase a Palladian Chicken House (£3290) which I will also be claiming on expenses.

Sir Peter Viggers MP resigns over Duck House

Stockholm Duck Island

Greek Temple Bird Table

We wait. We are bored. We are bored to death. There's no denying it. A diversion comes along and what do we do? We let it go to waste. In an instant, all will vanish and we'll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness.

Beckett, Waiting for Godot

I've just bought an M&S apricot tart (tarte aux abricots). It now has 24% more apricots. Why 24%? Why not 26%? Who decided on the 24%? A marketing person? Does it sound more authentic than 25%?

I like this old card, but I find the size of the egg perturbing. Poor hen.

This egg is far too big for the worried-looking chicken emerging from it. I find this deeply sinister.

In contrast to its predecessor, this mutant chicken seems far too large for the egg. Perhaps it's from Sellafield.

Clangers - it's wrong to punish them

I was watching the football the other night. One of the players clearly broke a rule and this was described as a 'clanger' by the commentator. An opposition footballer then got his revenge with a goal, and I distinctly heard the commentator shout -

Yes - He's punished the clanger. He's punished the clanger!

I would hereby like to point out that it is deeply wrong to punish clangers. They are innocent creatures living on a bleak planet and doing their best to survive. I have informed the RSPCA.

The atmosphere is something halfway between a girls' school and a lunatic asylum, and all we are doing at present is useless, or slightly worse than useless.

It's 8am but it feels like 7am. All day today, all week, it'll feel like an hour ago and I'll feel exhausted, grumpy and discombobulated. Why do they subject us to this pointless jetlag twice a year?

Last weekend, at my parents' house, we put the clocks forward a week early by mistake and spent all morning moaning about BBC programmes running late.

We then had lunch at 11am.

This must stop.

I'm the one on the left

Jennifer Anniston

Nicole Kidman

The Beckhams

Sarah Jessica Parker

Johnny Depp

Britney Spears

I was amused to read about this peacock, sighted doing a bit of window-shopping at ... Peacocks.

The peacock is apparently a regular visitor to the shops in Dunfermline, Scotland. It lives with its peafowl pals in a nearby park.

According to a somewhat alarmist TV report about recycling this week, the UK is 'running out of holes'.

Surely not. There's an endless supply of them. You just dig them. I guess it could get problematic if you dug a hole, filled it in, and then dug another one in the same location. Would the second hole somehow cancel out the first?

The Telegraph has become weirdly obsessed by holes of late. Recent headlines include -

There's a God-shaped hole in Westminster (What exactly does a God-shaped hole look like?)

and

Labour lands Britain in a £1 trillion hole (How can an entire country land in a hole? Did the hole itself cost £1 trillion?)

The Beatles seemed to have a thing about holes as well, transforming four thousand holes in Blackburn Lancashire into overnight celebrities in 1967. (Though the holes were rather small, they had to count them all. Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.) Perhaps Blackburn could profit from the hole shortage.

I look forward to a national boom in the hole trade.

US TV discussion about the money hole

I've just discovered the wondrous morphthing.com where you can merge your face with someone else's. Here are some of my first attempts at facial mergers. The first one's pretty obvious. It's George W Bush and I find it quite disturbing. I'll leave you to guess the rest.

As George W waves goodbye to the White House, here are some of my favourite Bushisms -

Rarely is the questioned asked: is our children learning?

You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.

I heard somebody say,'Now, where's Mandela?' Well, Mandela's dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas.

She's a West Texas Girl. Just like me.

More and more of our imports come from other countries.

Free societies are hopeful societies. And free societies will be allies against these hateful few who have no conscience, who kill at the whim of a hat.

Nigeria is an important continent.

I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.

My plan reduces the national debt, and fast. So fast, in fact, that economists worry that we're going to run out of debt to retire.

I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.

Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.

I wish you'd have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it. I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with answer, but it hadn't yet. I don't want to sound like I have made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't. You just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one. (after being asked to name the biggest mistake he had made)

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.

I want to share with you an interesting program, for two reasons. One, it's interesting. And two, my wife thought of it, or has actually been involved with it. She didn't think of it. But she thought of it for this speech.

This thaw took a while to thaw. It's going to take a while to unthaw.

I'm coming as the president of a friend, and I'm coming as a sportsman. (on his trip to the Olympics in China)

They have no disregard for human life. (describing Afghan fighters)

And so, in my State of the ... my State of the Union ... or state ... my speech to the nation, whatever you want to call it, speech to the nation, I asked Americans to give 4,000 years ... 4,000 hours over the next ... the rest of your life ... of service to America. That's what I asked.

I've heard he's been called Bush's poodle. He's bigger than that. (discussing Tony Blair)

I'm looking forward to a good night's sleep on the soil of a friend. (on the prospect of visiting Denmark)

Throughout our history, the words of the Declaration have inspired immigrants from around the world to set sail to our shores. These immigrants have helped transform 13 small colonies into a great and growing nation of more than 300 people.

They misunderestimated me.

I didn't grow up in the ocean - as a matter of fact near the ocean. I grew up in the desert. Therefore, it was a pleasant contrast to see the ocean. And I particularly like it when I'm fishing.

I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office.

I had an M&S goats' cheese tartlet for dinner the other night and dreamt about ..... goats. Goats in Africa, jumping into the sea from the back of a ship.

The next day, I did some interviews about pirates in Somalia and, several times, my interviewee mentioned ..... goats.

The next day, I got on the train and started reading the paper, and there was an article about George Clooney's new film 'The Men Who Stare at ..... Goats'.

The next day, I opened my emails and there was a spam one from a Mr ..... Goatley.

The next day, I opened my emails and looked at my daily phrase from urbandictionary.com. It was a slang phrase meaning 'futile activity' and the phrase was ..... 'goat rope'. A rope attached to a ..... goat.

The next day, a friend of mine started spontaneously talking about ..... goats.

And then today, I decided to google the one-hit-wonder rapper Vanilla Ice, having heard his one hit in a bar the other night and chatted about him with my friend Wilhelm. And the first thing I stumbled on was a story about his pet, Pancho, who recently escaped along with his pet kangaroo.

Pancho is - yes, you've guessed it, a ..... goat.

It's good to know that our liquidity has been restored.

'Liquidity' has always struck me as an odd word, but it was once a popular Christian name among the upper classes. Liquidity Sackville-West was a minor member of the Bloomsbury Set. There was, of course, Liquidity 'Quidders' Waugh and Unity Mitford's younger sister too.

Liquidity Mitford (1901 - 1967)

I'm sure I'm not alone in being afraid of Alastair Darling's eyebrows.

I've always been fascinated by eyebrows - particularly ones which are clearly the wrong colour, and 'unibrows' or 'monobrows'. These upset me greatly and were rightly considered to be a sign of criminality by Victorian criminologist Cesar Lombroso.

A site called monobrow.com offers support to unibrow sufferers. 'Many of our visitors are multibrows,' reveal the monobrow persons, no doubt raising their eyebrows - sorry 'eyebrow' - superciliously ('supercilious' is derived from the Latin word 'supercilium' which actually means 'eyebrow'). The sinister monobrows continue, 'Multibrows once mocked us. Now they come to us, hoping to join our ranks. For these mono-curious individuals, an array of exciting options now exist. Monobrow.com - if God had wanted you to have two, he wouldn't have given you one.'

Freaks.

Alastair Darling

Animal from The Muppets

Liam Gallagher from Oasis

the puppy of the apocalypse

the late David Hemmings - actor

Bert from Sesame Street

Dennis Healey

Frida Kahlo

a Munster

Martin Scorsese

Thufir Hawat from Dune

a spider

If you say 'whilst', kindly leave this website.

'Whilst' is a complete waste of phonemes. It has no earthly point. It's like a wasp or an appendix or - I can't even bring myself to say this - a fish knife.

You don't see a big sea creature and say, 'Look! There's a whalest!' You don't look at your desk and exclaim, 'What a big pilest of paper work!' Do you? Well, do you? Doest thou?

The sort of people who use 'whilst' are the sort of people who put '(Mrs)' after their names and spend all weekend polishing their plastic conservatories.

In America, 'whilst' is considered quaint and silly - a bit like 'methinks' - and it's only ever used in writing, if at all.

It deserves extinction and I intend to make it my mission in life to eradicate 'whilst' from this planet.

Once upon a time, people in shops used to say, 'thank you sir' to me and refer to me as 'the gentleman' when talking to other assistants. I approved of this, despite my liberal tendencies, because it made me feel important when I actually wasn't.

Then, in the late nineties I think, they started saying, 'thanks mate'. I wasn't their mate. I didn't know them from Adam. I didn't like it one bit.

And then, just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, I popped into Focus in Hertford today to buy a plant pot.

The assistant who served me was all of 12 years old and I had high hopes of a 'sir'. But no. I didn't even make it to 'mate'.

He scanned my pot, smiled politely, looked me in the eye and said, 'cheers fella.'

Just in case you found that hard to take in - the phrase was

CHEERS FELLA

ie.

CHEERS

followed by

FELLA

Debretts Guide to Etiquette doesn't cover such moments. I was so flabbergasted I resorted to an emergency 'pardon?' to allow him to upgrade his language.

'Cheers fella,' he repeated.

'Thank you,' I replied in my best Penelope Keith voice, making a dignified exit with my £1.99 terracotta pot and resisting the tempation to smash it over his egaliltarian little teenage head.

A cat has become station master at a railway station in Kinokawa, Japan. Bollinger lookalike Tama, 9, has an office, wears an official cap and is paid a salary of cat food. Profits have gone up by 10% since Tama was employed.

We should try it here. Get a cat to run Heathrow Terminal 5 perhaps.

And Bolly would make a great Prime Minister in my view. She's popular, knows what she wants, and rarely does u-turns.

I bought this 1902 antique print yesterday for a mere £5 and intend to put it up next to my wardrobe. If a 2008 yoof dressed like this, I suspect he'd be severely beaten up.

I know it's deeply wicked, but I'm sure I'm not alone in noticing the frightening similarity between poor Shannon Matthews' mum Karen and Kathy Burke's Waynetta Slob.

First Capital Connect, who run the train service from Hertford to London, have introduced a useful new information service in their carriages.

The small, openable top windows now have stickers on them saying OPEN FOR EXTRA VENTILATION.

How very useful. Thank you First Capital Connect. I had no idea that, if you require a bit of fresh air, opening a window can help.

I suggest they expand this thoughtful new service, adding stickers saying KINDLY LOOK THROUGH THIS WINDOW IF YOU WISH TO SEE OUTSIDE or PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT TO LOOK THROUGH THIS SOLID WALL BECAUSE IT IS OPAQUE or PLEASE DO NOT FALL ASLEEP WHILE STANDING FOR THE ENTIRE JOURNEY, AS THIS MAY RESULT IN FALLING OVER.

I'm feeling deeply ruffled. It's 9am, but it feels like 8. Bollinger's confused as well, as she had her breakfast an hour early. This whole nonsense about moving clocks backwards and forwards must stop.

Apparently it's to prevent road accidents in the darker parts of the UK. Can't the Scots just be made to wear lamps on their hats? Or have their own time zone? Why should we suffer down here?

My parents say it was even weirder in World War Two when we had Double British Summer Time and it was light till midnight. Who wants that? We're not in Norway. This is Britain for goodness sake.

Several of my friends live in flats. I like flats. I have nothing against them whatsoever.

But it upsets me greatly that flats aren't called flats anymore. Thanks to the M&S effect, everything now has to be poshed up. So my friends live in apartments, loft apartments, units, duplexes, condominiums and mansion flats.

It's the same with terraced houses, which have suddenly metamorphosed into mews houses, link houses or cottages.

But it's a simple fact (is it not?) that a flat is a flat is a flat. Is a flat.

This is, of course, a reference to Gertrude Stein's 'a rose is a rose is a rose' - meaning 'things are what they are' and they don't necessarily have to signify something else (as in Freud's possibly apocryphal 'Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.')

Stein once said, 'Now listen! I’m no fool. I know that in daily life we don't go around saying 'is a … is a … is a …' Yes, I'm no fool. But I think that in that line the rose is red for the first time in English poetry for a hundred years.'

I'm a big fan of picturesonwalls.com Don't visit if you're offended by un-PC graffiti or swear words. But do if you're not. Here are some of my favourite graffiti from the site.

So ran a headline in Harmsworth's Magazine in 1899. Having heard that their beloved city was gradually sinking, the magazine pre-empted the climate-change-and-flooding hysteria of the nineties and noughties by 100 years. Their enterprising picture editors published mocked-up photos of the capital with Venetian canals and lagoons, adding new Italianate place-names.

Stazione di Pancras

Piazza St Pauls

Hyde Park Corner

Palazzo degli Horse Guards

Canale del Regente

Fenland in Cambridgeshire

Thanks to the new National Express train 'service', I spent yesterday afternoon meandering gently through the Cambridgeshire countryside in a coach. And, having lived in Cambridge for years and worked at BBC Radio Cambs for a large chunk of my youth, I suddenly realised I'd never visited half the places I used to broadcast to.

As the coach plodded its weary way in the direction of Hertfordshire, we passed villages and towns I'd only ever encountered in news bulletins and travel slots and almost seemed fictional at the time. I had fond flashbacks to my phone-in regulars, who were always known by their first name and place of origin, in the manner of Guy of Gisbourne, John of Gaunt, or Hildegard of Bingen.

There was Coral from St Ives, Nancy from Yaxley, Agnes from Kimbolton. And the redoubtable Bert from Manea who once sold a pile of manure via my programme if I remember rightly. Happy days. They seemed quite old back in the 80s. I wonder if they're still alive.

I'm greatly taken with carp magazines at the moment. Every day, there seems to be a new one. WH Smith's magazine section is starting to resemble a fishmongers.

I was in Harlow the other day - a place devoid of all nature - and there were seven different carp mags on the shelves of a newsagents there.

Carp magazines have strict rules. The cover must feature a carp-brandishing gentleman in a hat, posing as if playing air guitar with his carp, which must be fat. The man should ideally be ugly. If he's wearing a baseball hat and glasses, this is considered to be a great boon. It's also a good idea to include a union jack on the cover, because carps are very patriotic fish.

Total Carp is my favourite. It's full of useful features such as 'How can breakfast cereals make your zig rigs more productive?' And I recently read a very evocative piece about bread - the forgotten bait. It begins, 'Armed with loaves of bread, baguettes and finger rolls, Craig erects his brolly to seek shelter from the elements.'

It's also good to see a carp hitting the headlines. Who can forget the Daily Mail's Angler catches world's biggest carp - which weighs almost as much as Kylie

Kylie the Carp

There are countless carp-related websites too - Carp Mad, Carp Culture (German), Carp Passion, Carp Crazy and Carp Universe, to name but a few.

I'd like to run my own niche carp publication one day - Feminist Carp, Postmodern Carp, Evangelical Carp or whatever. I'd find this oddly fulfilling.

Today's Pollock is by Jane from Hertford.

Today's Pollock is by Ben from Cambridge.

Today's Pollock is by Frank from Waltham Abbey.

Apparently, there's a shortage of Gordon Brown lookalikes. What a relief.

We're told the lookalike agencies are desperate, but I fear they won't locate any - at least on the earth's suface.

Perhaps they ought to extend their quest to the seabed, which is where the Gordonfish live.

Gordon Lumpfish

Gordon Blobfish

Gordon Stonefish

No 5 by Pollock - yours for £130 million

You can now paint your very own Jackson Pollock online. It's great fun.

I'd love to see your Pollocks and display them if you'd care to email them to me.

My first musical obsession of 2008 is the Icelandic band Sigur Rós. Lead singer Jonsi has an ethereal falsetto voice and sings in Icelandic and occasionally in a made-up language. Their bass player uses a bow.

They record their wraithlike tunes in odd locations such as an abandoned swimming pool. And they've recently made a film called Heima, which consists of a compilation of unannounced gigs performed in far-flung locations in Iceland.

Their song titles are a bit enigmatic (eg 'Hoppipolla' means 'hopping into puddles' – it's pleasing to know Icelandic has a word for this) and their videos are very Nordic. I like the one for Glósóli (which you can watch here - just choose the right player for your PC). It's worth watching to the end.

There's a BBC Culture Show about them, available on iPlayer for the next few days. The latest album Takk is a good starting point if you want to hear more.

one of my new cat postcards

I was in an antiquarian book shop today, buying some old cat poscards. And I noticed one or two cards wishing relatives a happy Christmas.

One - dated 1907 - had been posted on December 24th.

Clearly the habit of leaving Christmas to the very last minute isn't anything new. On the other hand - I guess people didn't really have time off to prepare in advance a hundred years ago. And - with two posts a day and a reliable service - at least they could guarantee it would arrive on time.

Thank you to Hazel for pointing me in the direction of Prof Richard Wiseman's Quirkology site, where you can take part in some interesting surveys. I recently filled in a short questionnaire about my friendship with Bolly.

Professor Wiseman - based at the University of Hertfordshire - is fascinated by the odder nooks and crannies of psychological research and his site and his books are very entertaining.

Ship of Fools has just announced this year's kitschiest Christmas presents for Christians. Here are some of my favourites...

St Sebastian Pin Cushion

Virgin Mary Memory Stick

Holy Toast

I've just received the following spam email from someone who's clearly a real academic.

Try to think of a better coreer option for you!
Why wait?!We now thrilled to bring you this special offer to get your degree on-line!Any field your master in you will defenitely go better with a diploma record in your CV.
Lot's of people worldwide appreciated this unique opportunity of getting bachelor's, PH's, and Master's through the net.
And plus you now able to reach your aim almoust instantly.The missing brick is right there! Call us 1 206 888-2083 around the clolck. Your diploma is just a few days away!

Alistair Darling

As the ancient Croatian proverb says, 'Nikada pouzdanje čovjek čiji obrve jesu različit naličiti from njegov kosa' -

Never trust a man whose eyebrows are a different colour from his hair

It was dark at 6am when I tottered downstairs this morning to put some coffee on. Boll was running ahead, as ever, almost tripping me up. Then I saw him. A man at the foot of the stairs. I saw his shoes first. And then his trousers. I was genuinely terrified and felt a shiver down my spine and a horrid burst of adrenalin.

Then I realised I'd hung some jeans on a clothes horse to dry and left a pair of trainers directly underneath. 'Silly me' I thought, leaving everything as it was.

Ten minutes later, I popped downstairs again for some toast. And I got exactly the same shock again.

The mind's a strange thing.

I downloaded Radiohead's excellent new album In Rainbows for £3.00 today. You can pay whatever you wish, from zero upwards. My theory was that they'd still make a profit if I paid that. And I've bought all their previous albums, so I'm a pretty loyal fan.

I like Radiohead's idea and enjoyed reading a BBC feature about honesty boxes, with some interesting comments at the end.

a specialist chicken catcher

It's awful news that a lorry full of chickens has crashed, causing chaos in Scotland, and I seriously hope no chickens were harmed. But it's good to know that 'specialist chicken catchers' have been called to the scene.

Still Lost in Translation has just come out and it’s very funny. It’s Charlie Croker’s second compendium of bizarre and baffling English encountered abroad. Here are some of my favourites:

Off-Licence, Portugal
Selling of alcoholic drink is forbidden to minors of 16 years old and to those who are notoriously drunk or to the ones who appear to have psychic abnormities

Roadside, Japan
When passenger on foot heave in sight, tootle the horn

Hotel, Japan
All rooms not denounced by twelve o’clock will be paid for twicely

Restaurant, China
Roasted duck let loose
Rashers beaten up in the people’s fashion

Lake, Oman
Drowning accidents are now popular

Monkey Area, Japanese National Park
We do not like to be stared at our eyes. If you do so, we are not responsible for what will happen. We do not hope to be such a monkey.

Door, Oman
Physio the rapist

Restaurant, Switzerland
Half a lawyer with prawns

Restaurant, China
Dumpling stuffed with the ovary and digestive glands of a crab

Hotel, Canary Islands
Great entertainment - live paella

Hotel menu, France
The salmon smoked house
The ham of stage coach
The sausage of ass
Spotted frog thighs
The flap with shallot
The nice one of pig green pepper

Coast, Spain
Beach of irregular bottoms

Sign, Ethnic Minorities Park, Beijing
Racist park

Hotel, Prague
Water is officially drinkable (but not for sucklings) but we don’t recommend to drink it

Hotel, Munich
In your room is a minibar filled with alcoholics

What a relief. It's now 100% legal to keep a sloth as a pet without a licence.

one of my best friends

It used to be called the 'beer garden'. Now, it's called the 'smoking bit' (as in - 'I need a cigarette. Are you coming out to the smoking bit?')

When my smoking friends leave a bar for a cigarette (typically in twos) I'm always torn between staying inside - paranoid they're talking about me - or going out and getting even more drowned in smoke than I was in the old days.

And it's often the more interesting bohemian types who go out and smoke, leaving a load of tedious old puritans indoors and creating a sort of Friday Night Apartheid.

This smoking ban is divisive and wrong. I'd rather die from passive smoking than passive boredom.

Last week was weird. I had several migraines (one in the gym). And I had the oddest nightmares ever. In one, I was imprisoned in a manor house run by Attitude magazine and forcibly injected with poison by a mad dwarf from a Velasquez painting. In another, I was chased round an African restaurant by a vampire which I stabbed to death during a peculiar cabaret. The next night, there was a horse on the roof. It fell through into my bedroom, but it was fine and rescued by the RSPCA.

Last night, I was finally back to my usual media anxiety dreams. I had to stand in for Terry Wogan at short notice but I had no records or CDs. And the Pause for Thought vicar was too short-sighted to read his script and alarmingly off-mic.

According to one online dream symbol dictionary, the rooftop horse means I'm connecting with a higher being. What a relief. But the vampire means somebody in my life is bleeding me dry and draining my energy.

There was sadly no explanation of being imprisoned in a manor house and attacked by a dwarf.

Oscar

Bollinger tells me she's thankfully not related to Oscar the cat despite the superficial resemblance.

Dogs having kittens? Cats having puppies? It's all very odd.

Nora

Nora's recital

Less impressive recital by plump German cat

During a (totally innocent) googling session this morning, I stumbled on a very odd website. Do not click on urinal.net if you're a prim, proper or shockable person. It features photos of eccentric and picturesque loos around the world. There are no human beings in the photos thankfully. Here are my three favourites.

Taj Mahal

Felix Club Hong Kong

Stockholm Airport

A grapefruit is a lemon that had a chance and took it.

Photos of books by Cara Barer.

You can now get married by double-proxy in Montana. In other words, you can get married via two stand-ins, so you don't have to turn up for your own wedding.

I assume you can also have a double-proxy honeymoon (or single-proxy one, attended by you and a stand-in of your choice), a double-proxy life together, double-proxy arguments and double-proxy affairs, rounded off with a double-proxy divorce.

I can't decide whether I find these photos sweet or sinister, but they're certainly intriguing. They were taken by Harry Whittier Frees (1879-1953) who used his own pets for the poses and made a point of treating them humanely, even if they don't look entirely comfortable. He had the idea when a party hat fell on his pet dog's head and the dog went on wearing it.

'Every subject was a living, healthy, active animal brought into position by patient kindness. No drugged animals, much less any that was artificial or stuffed, could give the results shown. Rabbits are the easiest to photograph in costume. The kitten is the most versatile actor. The pig is the most difficult to deal with.'

His puppies were called Wags, Tags, Rags and Obadiah. The kittens were Buzz, Fuzz, Suzz and Agamemnon. The rabbit models were Fluff, Puff, Muff and Algernon.

Here are some photos of unexpected friendships from Let's Be Friends

Shorpy is one of my favourite websites. It's a collection of old photos, mostly from a 100 years ago. The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham - a child miner who was photographed in 1910.

Happy Easter from Boll and me. We're having a break but will be back soon.

I'm happy to announce that spring has officially arrived. For some, this is indicated by harbingers such as cuckoos or groundhogs. But for me, spring is heralded by my first hayfever sneeze. This year, it occurred at 3.17 pm on Sunday 25th. And the momentous event was captured for posterity, as I happened to be in front of an open microphone recording a programme. It was, in my view, a classic sneeze and I hereby offer it to anyone requiring an authentic sneeze sound-effect.

Listen to the First Sneeze of Spring

'Our stunning Egyptian themed room is draped with golden fabrics. Ancient relics, gilded sarcophagi and hieroglyphics envelop you throughout your dream' announced the website of the Talardy Hotel in St Asaph in Wales.

When I arrived on a short trip this week, I was alarmed to find a sphynx presiding over my kettle, hieroglyphs on the headboard, twin Tutankhamun death masks on either side of my bed and a sarcophagus next to my complimentary Hobnobs.

After checking the wardrobe for mummies, I almost felt safe. But I did worry slightly about waking up in the middle of the night and thinking I'd been buried alive in a pyramid.

The hotel was actually very good, with excellent food, and I'd thoroughly recommend it if you visit that part of Wales.

A friend of mine was in a shop recently and noticed they had some clangers for sale.

'Do you have any soup dragons?' he enquired.

'Yes,' replied the assistant. 'I think they're next to the casseroles.'

A Clanger

A Soup Dragon

Finally - something dramatic has happened Peterborough.

I've become addicted to the websites of lookalikes agencies like this one. My current favourites are Einstein, Hitler and Jesus (below).

It's good to know that Jesus looked like Johnny Depp.

But who hires him? Does he do theological conferences? Old people's homes? Hen parties?

I overheard the following highbrow conversation this morning in Starbucks on Piccadilly:

Bloke 1: 'I'm off to see Carmina Burana tonight.'

Bloke 2: 'Who's she then?'

Bloke 1: 'It's an opera mate. By Carl Orloff.'

I've just read a shocking statistic while researching a book.

On average, women spend six months of their lives on the loo.

That's frightening enough. But MEN spend THREE YEARS of their lives sitting on the toilet. What a terrible waste.

My Dad told me the other day other that he often wakes up in the night to find the time on the bedside clock reads 1:11, 2:22, 3:33, 4:44, 5:55 and so on. Weird - because that also happens to me and happened several times last night.

The question is, of course: do I really wake up at those times in particular, or do I just notice and remember those times rather than others? I suspect the latter may be true.

But it seems Dad and I aren't alone. There are some interesting discussions of this apparent phenomenon on the internet and one or two quite spooky stories too.

I'm intrigued by the notion that these numbers are connected to guardian angels, as I once had a session with an angel therapist (for a BBC programme) and was told that my guardian angel was standing behind me. I'm not prone to be affected by such things (quite the opposite), but I did feel a very strange physical tingle at the time and still get it whenever I think about the experience or the idea of having a guardian spirit.

There's even a book about the 11:11 angel connection, by George Barnard, who was apparently contacted by some 11:11 angels. He claims they spoke to him in French, saying: 'Nous sommes les Mille-Cent-et-Onze Esprits Gardiens ...'

'We are the One-Thousand-One-Hundred-and-Eleven Spirit Guardians. The name of our number, the number of our name. We share your space, not your time.'

By the way, if you haven't read it, Miss Garnet's Angel is an excellent angel-related novel, set in Venice.

Don't worry - I haven't gone mad. I just find angels interesting.

A man crying out to be sectioned

During a recent search for a spam filter, I accidentally stumbled on a website for Spam enthusiasts. I know it will give me nightmares. One of the products advertised was an outfit which ingeniously disguises you as a can of Spam. Perfect if you're out on the pull.

YOU WILL BE THE HIT OF THE PARTY claims the optimistic brochure AS YOU BECOME A LIFE SIZE SPAM® CAN.

NECK & ARM HOLE OPENING MAKE FOR AN EASY FIT.

I spent some time this week working in St James's in London - the home of England's most exclusive gentlemen's clubs. It was like being in a timewarp. I felt like Miss Marple on a trip to Claridges. I saw pinstripes, meticulously-folded handkerchieves in top pockets, buttonholes, pipes, and horn-rimmed glasses. Everyone looked and sounded like Leslie Phillips.

At one point on my perambulations, I encountered one of those narrow passageways under some scaffolding and gave way to an elderly gent.

"Eye of a needle, old chap," he said. "Eye of a needle."

I've just discovered The Bookseller Prize for Oddest Title of the Year.

This year's winner was:

People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What To Do About It

The runners up included:

Bullying and Sexual Harassment: A Practical Handbook

and

Ancient Starch Research

Previous winners include:

1980 - The Joy of Chickens

1982 - Population and Other Problems

1988 - Versailles: The View from Sweden

1990 - Lesbian Sadomasochism Safety Manual

1992 - How to Avoid Huge Ships

1994 - Highlights in the History of Concrete

1996 - Greek Rural Postmen and their Cancellation Numbers

1998 - Development in Dairy Cow Breeding and Management and New Opportunities to Widen the Uses of Straw

1999 - Weeds in a Changing World

2002 - Living with Crazy Buttocks

and

2004 - Bombproof Your Horse

A Stripper

It seems that funerals are no fun anymore in China.

Last night, I dreamt that the house was possessed by a poltergeist.

Then, when I went downstairs to make a coffee at about 10am, I heard a bang and the sound of glass shattering. A glass bauble had fallen off a bookshelf and was smashed to smithereens. The bauble's been there for months. It was also, interestingly, the bauble which seemed to identify the genders of friends at a dinner party a few weeks ago (see the entry Swinging Both Ways). Bolly the cat was with me in the kitchen and was nowhere near the bauble.

A couple of years ago, I presented a Radio 4 programme about people who try to record ghosts, which included alleged recordings of the Enfield Poltergeist. I interviewed psychical researcher Maurice Grosse about it. And, as soon as he walked into Studio 7E in Broadcasting House, all the reel-to-reel tape recorders started spinning on fast forward. He shrugged it off and said he tended to 'attract energies'.

A few days later, when I was editing the interview at home in Oxford, there was a deafening bang upstairs. The attic cupboard door had apparently been blown off its hinges.

Thankfully, nothing odd has happened so far while writing this. That would have been scary. I'm going to press 'save' and 'rebuild' very quickly now.

Maurice Grosse

Peacockshock has been Googlewhacked.

In case you don't know - the word 'Googlewhack' was first used in 2001. A Googlewhack is a Google search query consisting of two words (both in the dictionary and without quotation marks) that returns a single result - one solitary website.

Hence 'Googlewhacking' involves juxtaposing two (usually) obscure, unconnected words and typing them into Google.

Examples include -
squirreling dervishes
fetishised armadillo
quintupling zugzwang
netherworldly mugwumps
and...
blithering clops

So - back to me. I've just received an email from Sarah Kampel - a complete stranger, possibly from the USA, who entered 'ornithological cocopops'.

What did she get? One hit. And that hit was this site - Peacockshock. That's because I must have used the words 'cocopops' and 'ornithological' quite near to each other at some point.

Peacockshock is proud to have been the recipient of a Googlewhack and extends pavonine congratulations to Sarah upon the occasion of her successful whacking.

I had some friends round for dinner the other night and we noticed a glass bauble on a bookshelf. I've no idea why it was there.

Anyway - Henrietta said she'd heard that, if you suspend a bauble (or pendulum of any kind) above the palm of a man, it swings back and forth in a straight line. But, with a woman, it revolves in a circle. So we tried it, and it worked - quite spectacularly.

Henrietta then disappeared and returned with folded bits of paper on which she'd written male and female names. The pendulum managed to sex them too, with 100% accuracy.

But it went a bit berserk with one name, circling, then swinging back and forth randomly. We unfolded it, and it was the name of ... a transsexual.

Spooky. I've since researched this phenomenon and discovered that pendulums can identify the gender of unborn children too.

www.picturesofwalls.com

Cats that look like Hitler

More

I got into a terrible flap about my health today for various reasons and went to the gym to get it out of my system. As I approached the normally unspooky Cannons in Hertford, I bumped into an old lady in a strange hat. She stopped, looked me up and down, and said: 'You don't need treatment.' 'Pardon?' I retorted, thinking I'd misheard. 'Look at you,' she replied. 'You don't need treatment.' Then she scuttled off round the corner, never to be seen again.

I had occasion to google the word 'blackberry' the other day as I'm thinking of getting one to collect my emails.

Naturally, I expected to find lots of entries about actual blackberries first. (For young people - a berry is a juicy thing that grows on a bush). But I was shocked to the core. The first 17 entries were for handheld wireless devices. Even on Google Image Search. It was like something from Dr Who. Fruit possessed by technology. I was apopleptic and stormed out of the room.

The blackberry (berry version) is also, by the way, known as the bramble, cloudberry, dewberry, thimbleberry, and bumble-kite. And it was associated with Pagan gods such as Brigit.

In fact, if you scald yourself, you can invoke Brigit using a blackberry and cure yourself by dipping nine blackberry leaves in spring water and then laying them against the burn gently, while saying the following chant three times to each leaf (27 times in total):

Three ladies came from the east.
One with fire and two with frost.
Out with fire, in with frost.

It's good to see the cat photos of Satoru Tsuda are in fashion in the UK. And it's difficult to avoid comparisons between his models and the highly photogenic Bollinger.

Tsuda took up cat photography in 1980 when he found an abandoned kitten at the dry cleaners next to his home in Nagoya. He named it Matakichi after the dry cleaners and adopted it, despite not liking cats much at the time.

The kitten joined his large collection of pets, including dogs, rabbits, ducks, sparrows and marmots. More cute cats followed, resulting in more photos and a craze for collecting his catpix in Japan.

Tsuda loves animals and he's very careful not to harm or upset them when they pose for him.

I found this grape in a Pret fruit salad this week (from the Pret a Manger on Marylebone High Street). Yes - it's half red and half green. I'm very excited about it and I've decided it's a good omen.

Me, earlier this morning

Here are some things I learnt this weekend while flicking through a frightening skyscraper of unread newspapers in the corner of my bedroom:

Preston, from The Ordinary Boys, is the great great great great grandson of Earl Grey - from Newcastle - who was Prime Minister and invented tea.

Paris Hilton has a diamond-encrusted Blackberry.

Manchester has been named as one of the top seven 'most intelligent cities' in the world by the US Intelligence Community Forum.

There's a 'playground for the elderly' in Finland.

Drinking four or more cups of coffee a day can increase your chances of having a heart attack by 60%, if you carry a particular gene.

7,000 lives a year would be saved if we swapped crisps and chocolate for dried fruit and nuts. On average, Brits eat 3 unhealthy snacks a day.

This week's pin-up is Dexter from Waltham Abbey.

A friend of a friend's dog died recently. The friend of a friend's toddler answered the phone (to a friend of my friend's friend) and announced:

"Dog dead. Dog gone. Bye Bye dog."

Then promptly hung up.

Meanwhile, another friend visited Hertford avec toddler the other day and he asked where Mo was. On being told that Mo had died, he declared that people become stars when they die, and pets become clouds.

Why do old men have such big ears? Do their ears get bigger? Or do their heads get smaller? Or both?

This week's pin-up is Todd - a very fetching Fell Terrier.

Ivor Cutler died last week. I'm a big fan of his. But it didn't go well at all when I met him a couple of years ago in his messy attic.

"Hello. Is that Ivor?" I said on the phone when arranging my visit. "No", replied the familiar clipped Scottish voice. "It is Mr Cutler." He didn't hold with first names.

When I turned up to interview him, he accused me of being Australian. He also objected to my 'staring antipodean eyes' and asked me not to look at him while we were talking. Then he asked me if I was wearing aftershave and left the room, returning with large chunks of cotton wool projecting from his nostrils.

The interview went OK but was punctuated by very long silences.

Later, I heard from a friend who knew him that he'd been frightened of me. Oh dear. I still have no idea why. I wish it had gone better. But it was good to meet him nevertheless.

Some quotations from Mr Cutler:

I have avoided competitive situations, because I am not a baboon.

What happens to sharks when they're old?
They don't just fade away.
What happens to sharks when they're old?
I'd rather not say.

Add 15 inches to your stride and save 4½ per cent of insects.

I've been listening to BBC 5 Live today and I've heard about ten contributors at different points saying: "I'm not going to beat myself up about it."

Have you ever tried to beat yourself up? It's very difficult.

Why is this ludicrous metaphor so popular? I guess I shouldn't beat myself up about it, but I'd take great pleasure in beating up the halfwit who thought it up in the first place.

I've just been reading a paper about the correlation between country music and suicide. It claims:

'Country music is hypothesized to nurture a suicidal mood through its concerns with problems common in the suicidal population, such as marital discord, alcohol abuse, and alienation from work.'

To test this out, I tuned into a country music station on iTunes.

The song they were playing was called, if I'm not mistaken: "I Lost My Baby In The Portaloo Line."

I'm now treating myself with an extra Prozac.

I forgot my online banking password this morning and tried to re-set it.

This all went terribly well until my bank asked me for a new security question, which only I could answer. It accepted the answer ("26 omlettes") but absolutely refused to accept the question. So I phoned the helpline.

"Oh, that happens a lot," said the helpful northern person on the line. "Did you put a question mark at the end of the question?"

"Yes," I replied.

"Thought so," sighed the northern person. "It won't let you do that."

So now my question has no question mark. Isn't that ridiculous?

Sorry - "Isn't that ridiculous."

I sent my friend Danny a birthday card this week. Danny is married and is straight in the best possible sense. He's also a budgie expert. The touching card featured two yellow budgies kissing eachother. And Danny liked it. But it turns out that the budgies are gay. Both male. I wonder whether the card designers knew this. I like to think that they did and simply didn't care.

This prompted me to urgently investigate the gay budgie scene - whereupon I discovered that the subject pops up a lot on budgie-fancying chatrooms. I also learned that there's an unperformed Monty Python sketch featuring a gay budgie, entitled 'Who's a Pretty Boy Then'. And gay Australians apparently refer to Speedos as 'budgie smugglers.'

I've developed an odd fascination with Komondor dogs over the last few days. I particularly like photos of them jumping.

Q. Why did the chicken cross the road?

A. Because its dopaminergic neurons fired synchronously across the synapses of its caudate nucleus, triggering motor contractions propelling the organism forward, while emitting 'cluck' distress signals, to a goal predetermined by its hippocampal road mappings.

Picasso Getting Dressed In The Morning

© Shani Solomons

If you want to contact Shani (who, as you can see, is a brilliant cartoonist) just email me via ian@peacockshock.com

Kevin Maguire (left) and Arctic Monkey (right)

I can't help noticing that the singer from Arctic Monkeys is in fact also the Mirror journalist Kevin Maguire.

All eyes were on Gobbler's Knob this morning when Punxsutawney Phil emerged from his burrow and failed to see his shadow, confirming we're in for another six weeks of winter. The last time he saw his shadow was in 1999.

He and his ancestors have been meteorologically prognosticating in Pennsylvania since 1887, when German settlers brought the Candlemass tradition over to America. They used to monitor hedgehog shadows back in Germany, but they couldn't find any, so local groundhogs stood in.

Groundhogs are also known as woodchucks (as in: 'how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?') and whistlepigs.

Other states have groundhogs too, such as Staten Island Chuck in New York. And the Canadians have their own weather-predicting woodchucks, such as Shubencadie Sam.

If you think the BBC's dumbing down, go to Avon and Somerset, where the police have put up textspeak placards in areas frequented by teenagers.

Here's one of their messages:

d bil cum arnd hre n wl vzit ur olds if ur messin bout

copyright 1999 Trengove Studios, Inc.

What's happened to icicles? Why don't we get them anymore? It's wrong.

Thank you to Shani for this very amusing Christmas card. It's by Edward Monkton who has an excellent website full of quirky things.

I just emailed an acquaintance who has - um - one or two psychological challenges. And I did a typo which I only spotted AFTER sending the email. It said: HAPPY CHRISTMAD. Oh dear.

Skarajeb is an online museum of old family photographs, found in fleamarkets around Europe. It's very poignant and well worth a visit. Thanks to my friend Laurence from Århus for recommending it.

According to the headlines, a starling has won the Turner Prize. I know the Turner's well known for being pretty extreme, but I'm astonished that it's gone to a garden bird. What next? Chaffinch Wins Booker? Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Curlew?

More signs at swanksigns

Man guarding banana

I was very excited to read about a new invention - the Banana Guard.

Here's an excerpt from the useful Banana Guard FAQ section:

Q: Not all bananas are the same size or shape, so how can the Banana Guard fit them all?

A: The Banana Guard was specially designed to accommodate the majority of banana sizes. Our testing indicates that over 90% of commercially available bananas will fit into the Banana Guard. Highly curved bananas can be straightened ever-so-slightly without harm to fit the Banana Guard shape. The opposite holds true of very straight bananas.

More cartoons

Hangovers - I was out in London last night till 2am

Fireworks - they frighten pets and they frighten me

George W Bush - he frightens pets and he frightens me

David Blunkett - ugly, dishonest, charm-free

Jimmy Carr - ghastly beyond belief

Michael Ball - what's the point?

Joanna Trollope - may she roast in her own Aga

People pronouncing "H" as"haitch", when it should, of course, be "aitch"

The metaphor "a rollercoaster ride of emotions"

The expression "giving it 110 percent"

TV people saying "thank you very much indeed for that"

People in general - I prefer animals

etc etc etc etc etc...

You must try this!!!!!

If you want a laugh - go to Google. Then type in 'failure' (without quotation marks). Then, instead of clicking on 'Search', click on 'I'm feeling lucky'.

Google

I was thinking to myself today (while cleaning the kitchen in fact) that most very successful people have monosyllabic names: George Bush, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mick Mouse, Don Duck, and so on.

And, as you do, I started fantasising about having a monosyllabic name myself. I even got as far as inventing one, from a shortened version of my middle name and one syllable of my surname. The result: Geoff Cock.

I was so excited by Geoff Cock that I even looked up the name on Google, feeling 100% sure that no other Geoff Cocks existed.

But, sadly, there was one.

Geoff Cock lives in Tasmania. (He's the son of Glen Cock apparently). And he's a famous hockey player. I felt unaccountably annoyed by this and started to dislike him, but I've forgiven him now.

Today is International Pangolin Preservation Day. Peacockshock is proud to support it by showing a photo of a baby pangolin. Pangolins rock.

Speaking as a Peacock, I'm naturally very worried about the current invasion of migrant foreign fowls with the flu. In my view, we should deport these fly-by-nights, or at least put them into special hen coops for asylum tweeters. They come over here and just expect to use our birdbaths and eat our seeds. It's disgusting. I'm spitting feathers.

After my comments on lookalikes being sad, I'd like to thank the kind friends who reminded me that I used to be frequently mistaken for the pop singer Howard Jones, and that I abused my lookalike status on numerous occasions.

I've always felt sorry for lookalikes. It's rather sad being identical to a famous person in every respect apart from their talent. It's even sadder being identical to a talentless Z-Lister and flaunting it. But I'm nevertheless a big fan of alistlookalikes.com. Below - a few of their cast, including 'Sven-Goran Eriksson' who, in my view, could also do a very convincing Charles Hawtrey...

'Sven'

'Brad Pitt'

'Tony Blair'

'Frank Lampard' (who does bear a striking resemblance)

If you like watching hens, which I do, you'll love ourchickens.com which has a live hencam, starring some chickens in a garden in Weston-Super-Mare. It's only activated by the chickens' movements, so it's sometimes static when the chickens are having a rest. And it's dark at night. But the rest of the time - it's a non-stop hen party. I love it.

PS.
Q. Why did the chicken only half cross the road?
A. Because she wanted to lay it on the line.

Chester and the rabbit

I was amused to read an amazing story of rabbit derring-do in today's Times.

Chester the dog, from Richmond North Yorkshire, loves chasing rabbits. And he was doing just that when the rabbit in question (see photos) decided to dive into a pond and swim for it.

But Chester almost caught up. So the rabbit decided there was only one option - to scramble on to Chester's back and cling on till they were back on terra firma. Chester couldn't reach the rabbit and swam for dry land, whereupon the rabbit darted into a bush and escaped.

So it ended happily ever after...for the rabbit. Hurrah.

Jade Goody

As a fully 'out' fan of Reality TV, I'm very excited by Croatia's new reality show 'Flock' which stars not people but ...sheep. It works just like Big Brother, but the winner will get a poem in its honour rather than a cash prize. The losers will be eaten. The producer Sinisa Labrovic defended himself against animal rights protestors. "I am not an insensitive bastard who abuses animals," he bleated. "We call a vet for the sheep who are in poorer shape." He said the idea of the programme was to show that "more and more people, especially those who take part in reality shows, are made to look like sheep in every situation".

Watch it here

I've just been to Harefield for a check-up and they're very pleased: my heart's behaving totally normally again.

I'm also back at the gym now. I've already swum a massive three lengths and sat on an exercise bike, pedalling vaguely and watching Sky News.

To inspire my new fitness regime, I'm making regular visits to the hilarious Classic Bodybuilders site (see pix below). I'm not sure if it's supposed to be hilarious, but I think it's the campest thing ever. They all have silly names like Buddy Basil, Bob Birdsong, Chuck Sipes, Casey Vibator and Rock Stonewall. And I particularly like the ones who look like Sir Robert Winston and David Jason in Inspector Frost.

from gapingvoid.com

The Times asked this pressing and deeply topical question yesterday. And it drove me to distraction all the way from Milton Keynes to Watford. I was on a train and nowhere near the internet, which, as you know, exists purely in order to answer such questions. It turned out to be the sparrow of course, witnessed by the fly. Cock Robin - Cock to his friends - was then buried by the owl and mourned by the dove. The finch tolled the bell, as they do. Then the wren volunteered to be a pall-bearer. How? Surely wrens are too small.

And where, might I ask, was the starling during all this?

Cock Robin (With Odd Stuffed Birds)

The RSPB (Opposed To The Killing Of Cock Robins)

Robin (Batman's 'Friend')

Robin Cook

Robin Hood

Robin Reliant

Pierced Peacock Latest

Good news. The pierced peacock of Detroit (see previous peacock posting) has successfully had its arrow removed and has been sighted running around a local park with a peafowl pal.

A new occasional feature, rounding up the latest pavonine news stories from around the world.

Peacock Gets It In Neck

The hapless residents of a Detroit suburb are desperately trying to catch a peacock with an arrow stuck in its neck. It seems perfectly happy and is eating, drinking and making its usual noises. But vets hope to remove the arrow if the peripatetic peafowl can be caught, as it could cause problems later in life. Full story with photo

Peacock Peeves PM

According to The Hindu newspaper, India's PM Manmohan Singh was holding a photoshoot in his grounds when a peacock stole the show by 'dancing' on the lawn. Press photographers were distracted by the peacock and by a cat which was watching the dance with rapt attention. In the end, a junior police officer was drafted in to chase the peacock and its fascinated feline fan off the premises.

Hotdog Hampers Peacock's Progress

A peacock running amok in the New England town of Newton has finally been caught by a local woman who tempted it into her house with a hotdog. She then put it in a cat box. Animal wardens in the area have recently received reports of: a rampaging giant hog, a porcupine attacking a car tire, a duck walking into a house, a skunk with an ice cream carton on its head, a killer mockingbird, and a python that turned out to be a garden hose.

Watch this space for more breaking peacock stories...

OK. Chavs are a bit 2004. But they still exist (and can be sighted even in genteel Hertford, on the MacDonalds-Greggs chav leyline that is Maidenhead Street). Here are some of my favourite chav jokes:

Q. What do you call a chav in a bank vault?
A. Safe.

Q. What do you call a chav in a filing cabinet?
A. Sorted.

Q. What do you call a chav in a box?
A. Innit.

Q. What do you call a chav in a white tracksuit?
A. All White.

Q. What do you call an Eskimo Chav?
A. Innuinnit.

Q. Why are Chavs like slinkies?
A. They have no real use but it's great to watch one fall down a flight of stairs.

Q. What do you call a Chavette in a white tracksuit?
A. The bride.

Q. If you see a Chav on a bike, why should you try not to hit him?
A. It might be your bike.

Q. How do you get 100 Chavs into a phone box?
A. Paint three stripes on it.

Q. Two Chavs in a car without any loud music. Who's driving?
A. The police.

Chav Article for Wikillectuals

ChavScum

Chavtowns

Test Yourself and find out whether you're posh, a chav, or whatever. I had a go and I'm 43% posh and 18% a chav.

I have a new philosophy. I'm going to dread only one day at a time.
Charles Schulz

Thanks to the brilliant Andre for recommending an absurdly funny site featuring a very peculiar but oddly uplifting webcam dance. Have the sound turned on.

Try the Longevity Game. I did, and I'm apparently going to live till I'm 87. Groucho Marx lived till he was 87. “Anyone can get old,” he said. “All you have to do is live long enough.”

I have final confirmation that my iPod is definitely psychic. When I was compiling the election calculator (see below), I had iTunes on random play. It had a choice of 4.5 days' worth of music - 1547 tracks. And what track came up? Politik by Coldplay: the only track on there with politics in its title. There's a 1 in 1547 chance of that happening. Spooky.

If you're feeling up to it, I suggest you visit the Comic Sans Translator, which allows you to view your favourite sites (like this one) in the David Brent of fonts: Comic Sans. All you do is type in the URL. It doesn't alter the site - just your viewing of it. BBCi looks particularly sad in Comic Sans - a hateful font, only used by people who are desperate to be liked and cry a lot when alone.

He's 78, he was in the Hitler Youth and Nazi Wehrmacht, he ran the inquisition and hounded modern thinkers out of their jobs, he thinks the C of E isn't a proper church, he thinks gay people are 'intrinsically evil', he's against multiculturalism and women priests and he'd seemingly rather see millions of people get AIDS rather than use evil contraception. Yes...he's Pope Benedict: formerly Joseph Ratzinger. But he does have a nice Bavarian accent. And his own fan club with a tasteful merchandise section (which you simply must visit or he'll send the boys round to interrogate and torture you).

If you want to remind yourself how ancient you really are, I suggest you look up a photo of a computer from the year you were born. Try a Google image search. This is the one I found for my year (um...1984 of course). Pass me another Prozac. Thank you so much.

If, like me, you're an afficionado of (East Coast) rabbit HipHop, I suspect you'll enjoy this Rapping Easter Bunny (have the sound turned on).

I was amused to read the following letter in The Times from Professor Emeritus NM Atherton:

Sir, Please stop printing pictures of Michael Jackson (March 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10 and 11). We all know what he looks like and it is not a pretty sight.

People keep telling me I look like Kevin McCloud, who presents Channel 4's Grand Designs. I'm not so sure. Have a look at the pix and decide for yourself.

Thanks very much to my pal Ponch (aka Dr I.D. Paczek) for the following mathematician's explanation of 'coincidences' (see entries below):

In science, there is generally a distinction made between theories which are descriptive and those which are predictive. All the really great theories ( e.g. Darwin's Natural Selection, Einstein's Relativity ) are both descriptive and predictive. That is, they describe objective reality and they make predictions of phenomena we have yet to experience.

Theories which are only descriptive do not have as much merit.

Theories which are only descriptive and which are needlessly complex (see Occam's Razor) are unlikely to be true. Einstein said "Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber boshaft ist Er nicht": "Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not". Einstein said he felt that Nature kept her secrets because of her essential loftiness and not through any capriciousness or desire to deceive mankind.

Your coincedences are just that - meaningless coincidences, unless someone is suggesting there is an underlying meaning to them, in which case they become descriptive theories. Now, what would REALLY IMPRESS ME is if one of the writers of these conspiracy theories came up with an explanation of these coincidences which PREDICTED the next presidential assassin BEFORE THE FACT (sorry for the shouting capitals).

Until then, these coincidences don't pass the "so-what" test.

As you correctly point out, most coincidences are due to things like survivorship bias (you only hear about the success stories, the failures are edited out or forgotten ) and other cognitive biases (it seems that our brains are wired to search for patterns and we often end up finding them where they don't exist).

During one of his many bouts of madness, George III insisted on ending each sentence with the word "peacock." Not surpisingly, this often proved rather embarrassing when the king spoke in public.

At last, one of his ministers hatched a solution: George was told that "peacock," being a particularly royal word, could only be whispered, if used at all, in the presence of his subjects.

I discovered this story on the very amusing Anecdotage site.

To discover which dog you are, click here then click on Game on the vertical menu on the left. It's very clever and amusing. I'm apparently an American Fox Hound: "good-natured but wilful, requiring lots of exercise and the occasional sponge."

I love Bubble Wrap more than life itself. My rabbits like it too as they have it on top of their hutch for frost-proofing. So I was delighted to discover that there's now a National Bubble Wrap Awareness Day in the US (January 31st). MoMA New York even celebrated it in a recent exhibition. US radio stations now run Bubblympiads for amateur poppers. And Montclair State Uni provides Bubble Wrap walls for stressed students. Bubble Wrap was invented in 1957 in a garage in New Jersey. Engineers Marc Chavannes and Al Fielding were trying to develop a new type of bubbly wallpaper. But they soon realised plastic bubbles had other applications and Bubble Wrap was born. If you enjoy popping it (who doesn't?), I suggest you click on Virtual Bubble Wrap Popper and, with the sound turned up, pop till you drop.

According to my source (Ariel magazine), the BBC Online search engine received some very odd queries last year, including:

What is a dog?

What are the contemporary issue in nurses?

What is the number four in the number 400532308090?

and

How can I fold a serviette like an elf's boot?

What's so funny about that? Surely it's normal to ask what a dog is. And to make napkins into the shapes of elves. It certainly is in Hertfordshire.

I recently saw this advert in a magazine. It might have been Mens Health. Can't quite recall. And it's been ruffling me ever since. Why are there just 44 cockerels left? Is there a rush on cockerels that I'm not aware of? If so, why? Or has the farmyard hen, which has a haughty look about it, done away with some of them? Why is the kitten being submissive to the thrush? What are the identical hedgehog twins up to? Why does the bear collect ceramics? And why is the terrier wearing a saddle and totally ignoring the Australian fairy wren?

'Chav' is apparently the buzz word of 2004 (see BBC Online). Yes but no but yes but no...it is. The OED reckon it's from Romany, but I heard it ages ago in Newcastle ('Charver') and I'm prepared to bet my Burberry baseball cap it's a Geordie word. There's even a Newcastle-based Charverwatch site. We also have one or two Chavs in Hertford. They're normally to be found on the Chav leyline which stretches from McDonalds to Greggs. If you want to learn more about them, go to my favourite Chav site Chavscum which even gives you a name for your Chavlet baby. If I had one, it would apparently be called 'Wayne Damien Peacock'. I'm not sure my pets Bollinger, Moet and Florence would approve, even if Wayne was just a gerbil.

The National Gerbil Society Website has some great gerbil wallpaper and many useful tips on gerbil-related things.

(1) You believe in Santa Claus
(2) You don't believe in Santa Claus
(3) You are Santa Claus
(4) You look like Santa Claus

I overheard the following conversation in a cafe this afternoon -

Pompous businessman - 'What's in the Lemon Meringue Pie?'

Waiter - 'Lemon and meringue.'

Pompous businessman - 'I see. Well I'll have the coconut cake then.'

Here are some more LPs from my collection. People are often reduced to tears by my beautiful collection of album covers.

Early 20th century Vorticist Wyndham Lewis clearly had a premonition of George Michael when he painted Tyro. If you want to see more extraordinary art lookalikes, including my hero and occasional colleague John Peel, go to www.robmanuel.blogspot.com and click on Classic Lookalikes (which I got my George pic from).

The new Honda TV commercial Hate Something Change Something is a wondrous thing and has a fine cast of rabbits, peacocks and penguins. It also features the voice of Garrison Keillor. If you haven't seen it yet, watch it now on Honda Change

Yet another one from my lovely collection. Just click on pic to enlarge.

Another classic from my collection.

More to come. If you look like your pet, please send me a photo.

Just click here then type in your name.

Welcome to a new feature. It's the "album cover of the week". Just click for a larger pic.

Recent headline in The Telegraph:
Countryside Is Unsafe Claims Man Mistaken For Fox

I've never understood why they put labels on fruit, announcing what the fruit is. It's like putting a label on your cat saying 'cat', just in case you mistake it for a sheep. I also don't entirely get the point of these (real) safety labels...

Warning: may cause drowsiness (Nytol Sleeping Tablets)

For indoor and outdoor use only (Christmas Tree Lights)

Product will be hot after heating (M&S Bread Pudding)

Do not iron clothes on body (Rowenta Iron)

Not to be used for the other use (Japanese Food Processor)

and

Do not attempt to stop the chain with hands or genitals (Some Husqvarna Chainsaws)

A company director from Derbyshire England was recently convicted after threatening a bell-ringer. He lived near a church and claimed the bell-ringing was driving him mad and preventing his children from revising. As I write, a ghastly little man is drilling at the bottom of my garden and has been for several hours. I now have a hellish headache and my rabbits have run for cover. If he fell off his nasty aluminium ladder and became impaled on his Black-and-Decker, I, for one, would not rush to his assistance. Church bells are slightly less irritating than drills, but it's odd that we're so tolerant of bell-ringing practice sessions. Imagine the uproar in Middle England if our twee-and-tweedy campanologists were replaced by muezzins. I was once listening to Radio 3 in my house in Cambridge when the Salvation Army turned up outside and started blasting hymns at the front door. It reminded me of US troops using rock music to drive Norriega out of his palace. So...I ran out and told them to stop abusing me with their tubas and to inflict their hymns on someone else. They looked rather crestfallen, but I feel God was on my side. I'm sure He prefers John Tavener to Onward Christian Soldiers. Drillman has now stopped. He doesn't appear to have actually drilled a hole at all. Perhaps he's sponsored by Neurofen.