31st May:

The joys of low-cost air travel have already been espoused by many an eloquent commentator, but the actual experience itself never ceases to amaze.

One major low-cost carrier (hint: Ryanair) no longer allows families with infants to board the plane before other passengers. Much better, they think, to charge people a supplement for a 'prioity pass' that grants first access to the best seats. Or would do if 75% of the plane hadn't also bought the same ticket. The infant issue may not seem like a big one, but it's just another example of that carrier screwing money out of customers through the back door in order to improve revenue whilst keeping published fares low. Frankly i'm fed up with it and also with those people who excuse the airline's behaviour with the same old tired and trite "it's only a short flight and it was dead cheap so i'm not really that bovvered" cliche. I've said it before and i'll say it again: if you are competing purely on the basis of price, you have nowhere else to go. You don't have to be the cheapest to succeed, you just have to be cheap enough and offer better service than anyone else.

Vote for me.

In other news, the United States now apparently wants to engage with the rest of the world on the issue of climate change. Bush has called for a summit (as if you would even trust him to call for a pizza) and wishes to bring 14 major countries to the table to seek 'common ground'. Unfortunately, however, that common ground is likely to have Old Glory planted firmly on it, and will not involve the US cutting its own emissions nor joining any global carbon trading scheme. This being the case, it would appear that many of today's news headlines noting 'Bush urges new greenhouse gas goals' have clearly forgotten to add the words 'for everybody else'.

23rd May:

It was widely reported yesterday that scientists in Argentina claim to have dramatically reduced the effects of jet-lag in hamsters by giving them the drug Viagra.

Quite apart from the obvious question as to how widespread and debilitating the effects of jet-lag are on the hamster populations of the world, one must examine the links comprising this chain of lunacy and ask:
1) Who thought that these experiments would be useful?
2) Who gave these people money to fund this research?
3) Which news editors thought it would be a good idea to tell us all about it?

Delving more deeply into the story reveals that the hamsters only felt better (??) when Viagra was used in combination with light therapy, and only when the jet-lag was caused by losing hours through travelling East. So clear benefits to the whole of humanity there, then.

One can only assume that there is a Ministry for Useless Studies somewhere that funds this kind of stuff: the same people who brought you the story that drinking 7 litres of lime juice per day can cause blindness and that goth kids have a greater tendancy to suffer from depression.

Frankly, it boils my piss. Which also gives you cancer, apparently.

22nd May:

Someone vaguely famous once said that house guests are a little bit like fish - they go off after 3 days.

In other news, your congenial host recently found himself at Stansted airport at 5.30 on a Saturday morning preparing to board a flight to Amsterdam. Wearing a shirt and tie. An interesting experience given that the other passengers seemed to be either hungover rugby players going on a stag weekend or dreadlocked counter-culture-vultures with more body jewellery than teeth, whose views of the Dutch capital would be continually obscured by the small cloud of green smoke around their sizeable hats.

Amsterdam is a curious place. Even walking amongst the tourists on the cobbled streets bathed in sunlight there is still a slight sense of decadence in the air, as if somewhere not too far away there is something either illegal or immoral going on. Or being watched. Or even filmed. Of course, in this sense Amsterdam is about as representative of Holland as Tikka Masala is of Indian cooking, but it is fascinating viewing for the amateur psychologist and casual observer alike. Chocolate sprinkles, anyone?

I also wish to take a moment to eulogise about the film Solaris, which I watched again for the first time in a long time after my Dutch trip. The film is science-fiction but in the best way insofar as there are no ray guns or warp engines - the future setting simply provides the backdrop for the exploration of themes that are both touching and timeless. Dealing with love, loss, selfishness, fear, guilt and suspicion, it's a thrilling and often tense film that leaves just the right number of questions unanswered to be very satisfying and rewarding. I commend it wholeheartedly to anyone who hasn't seen it. A bargain, too, on Amazon for only 4 of Her Majesty's Pounds.

17th May:

There is something strange about human nature that seems to make people clamour to associate themselves with the victims of terrible crimes.

The father of missing child Madeleine McCann is Scottish but the McCann family live in Leicestershire, England. However, this has not stopped sections of the Scottish media from adopting the poor little girl as one of their own and reporting every move in the police investigation to find her as if the story was particularly local in nature. I'm not suggesting that the Scottish public should have no interest at all in these events, and every person of decency naturally hopes that the child is found alive and well, but there is something a little cloying in the reporting and the seeming attempts to take ownership of the story. It feels like....artificial tartan-isation, for want of a better expression. It's also arguably very lazy journalism.

Conservative MP Boris Johnson was forced to apologise to the people of Liverpool a few years ago when he accused them of overreacting to the death of local aid-worker Ken Bigley in Iraq. I'm not saying Boris was right, but I do remember being surprised myself at the time - all that public grief being displayed by people who didn't even know the man, on the basis of some vague sense that he was part of the community. One of them, whether he actually wanted to be or otherwise.

When a serial rapist is caught in a provincial town, the local community usually breathes a sign of relief rather than feeling some shared sense of responsibility for his actions. The moral? We associate with people selectively, and sometimes our associations tell you more about us than them.

16th May:

History is littered with examples of people who have reacted to persecution by going on the offensive.

From Jewish prosecutors chasing Octogenarian Nazis across South America to the Church of Scientology pushing their cameras in the faces of investigative journalists, defence is sometimes the best form of attack. Or is it?

Many religions advocate turning the other cheek. Others prefer to espouse the virtues of working up a good thirst for vengeance, getting tooled-up and hunting down the offending party like the dog they undeniably are.

The BBC programme Panorama’s recent investigation into the aforementioned Church of Scientology was refreshing not for the information that it uncovered about the Church itself, but for those moments during the programme when the presenter, a professional journalist, got extremely narked and blew his top. Regrettable his conduct may have been, but I think we’ve all found ourselves at some point or another talking to someone whose sheer smug conviction that they are right and unwillingness to let you even express your point of view, let alone consider its merits, made us want to slap them. And lo, so it was when John Sweeney met Scientology PR man Tommy Davis.

Rampant atheists tend to regard deeply religious people as being somehow soft in the head – afflicted with some kind of mental weakness and using religious belief as a compensatory crutch. This view is extreme and equally as patronising as the opposite end of the spectrum where religious zealots harangue ignorant unbelievers and damn them to hell. Or press a detonator and cover them in chapatti flour before running off red-faced.

Either way, people of opposing views tend to eventually figure out that peaceful co-existence requires dialogue, compromise and compassion. It's just a shame that sometimes it takes years of armed conflict and thousands of broken families to get there.

9th May:

Some nut in California has started an online petition seeking a pardon for Paris Hilton who was recently sentenced to 45 days in jail for drunk driving. This pardon is demanded on the basis that she, and I quote from the petition itself here, "provides hope for young people all over the US and the world. She provides beauty and excitement to....our otherwise mundane lives". Hope? Beauty? Excitement? Oh, where to begin...

I'm sure teenage girls all over the world longingly peruse those pictures of Ms. Hilton leaving L.A's glamorous nightclubs pissed as a fart and with her norks hanging out thinking "my life may be a disaster, but this is proof that all is not lost for me". Quite where anyone would find any crumb of comfort in images of a vapid socialite born into a life of enormous privilege pissing her evenings away in a worthwhile cloud of cocaine and Cristal is anyone's guess. Yes, truly an example to us all. One day, my daughter, if you work hard at school and get good grades, you too might reach these heady heights.

Ms. Hilton has apparently even endorsed the current petition personally, which really takes her off the International Scale of Risibility. As someone who has had first-hand experience of what happens when drunk drivers meet innocent bystanders, I have little sympathy for anyone who is guilty of this offence. In fact, I was sorely tempted to start a competing petition demanding that the case be reinvestigated and the sentence increased. Until I visited the ipetitions web site and found out that hundreds of people had already shared the same thought. Which is nice.

My life, which is far from mundane, really doesn't need the kind of excitement that Ms. Hiltons' exploits apparently offer, and if her PR agent has any decency whatsoever he will take a very long jump off the nearst short pier at the first available opportunity.

In other news, the Queen arrived in Washington yesterday and met President Bush. Rumours that she announced an end to the 200+ year-old social experiment and asked for the keys back remain unconfirmed.

8th May:

On behalf of metrosexual males everywhere, I wish to issue a plea to the makers of skin creams, balms, gels and potions. Especially Biotherm. Please, please, please stop selling your stuff in big tubs with screw-top lids. They are no use. Really. Tubes or pump-nozzle bottles only. Honestly, you get the lid off, have to scoop the cream out and then fiddle about trying to get the top back on again with a big dollop of cream on your fingers. Rubbish. And they never fit into your wash bag when you are going away anywhere. End of plea.

In other news, the makers of the 'hit' TV show Lost have finally announced that the show will come to an end. In 2010. ABC have acknowledged that viewers may drift away unless the show concludes. Which they have been. Because it hasn't. And because the writers have clearly been making it up as they go along and the audience have sussed that it's a load of old arse-grapes. And telling us we have to suffer another two and a half years of it is hardly going to help. Must be one hell of a finale, though, if they are starting the build-up 30 months in advance...

Now don't get me wrong, I take my hat off to the people who managed to get Lost on air because the concept was clearly drawn up on the back of a beermat one afternoon after a very long liquid lunch. How they managed to convince anyone to give them money for it is anyone's guess. What a meeting that must have been. Fair play to them. But really guys....stringing a one trick pony out across 16 episodes a series for 5 years?

Stephen McPherson, El Presidente at ABC, said: "Due to the unique nature of the series, we knew it would require an end date to keep the integrity and strength of the show consistent throughout". Integrity? Strength? Mr. McPherson has clearly been taking the same drugs as the writers.

If you wanted a cult classic you should have killed it stone dead after 2 series.

But i'm guessing cult classics don't make any money.

2nd May:

Yesterday's piece got me thinking about the whole nature of celebrity and what makes particular celebrities more enduring than others. A quick look over the shoulder back to the golden age of Holywood might suggest that the strong and silent approach is the way to go.

Back in the 80s, Sting got understandably annoyed about the dstruction of the rainforest and regularly appeared on the telly to tell us all about it. Accompanied, if memory serves me well, by some small brown bloke with a wicked bowl cut who appeared to have had a CD surgically inserted into his bottom lip. Bono has done similar stuff in recent years to highlight the issue of AIDS in Africa. All to the good, one might think. But do we really expect or want those who grace the front pages of our tabloid newspapers to have a conscience? The Bonos and Geldolfs of this world are clearly driven to behave in the way they do, feeling that they can use their profile for the benefit of those less fortunate. Which seems fair enough, because these guys have a 'been around the block' credibility. There is something distinctly naff and calculated, however, about seeing the current boy band du jour poncing around on Comic Relief (Simon Cowell rubbing his hands together just out of shot).

From the 1920s through until the 50s people expected their movie stars to be movie stars, and little else. Holywood was all about escapism and the Marlene Dietrichs and Grace Kellys were expected to be the embodiment of glamour, romance and sophistication - a celluloid ideal of perfect pores and champagne parties. One could, of course, argue that the social mores of the day did not require A-list celebrities to have views on poverty, famine or homelessness, but the top actors were managed as studio assets and were certainly discouraged from having much of an opinion about anything. And their legend lives on.

Mass media and the pervasiveness of celebrity have changed all of this. Now, we don't just want remote glamour. We want in-your-face, no-holds-barred close-ups. We demand to know where they shop, what they smoke, who they sleep with and how they look without any make-up. We want their opinions and we scoff at their pleas for privacy.

Fortunately, a strong antedote to the cheapening of celebrity can be found in the shape of one Ms. Barbra Streisand, whose pedestal is so high that she presumably gets constant nosebleeds and has snow on her head. Tickets for her forthcoming London concert will soon be available to devoted fans at a starting price of £100. The best seats in the house could cost up to £500. A spokesman for the artist defended the prices, calling her concert "a momentous occasion that ranks up there with seeing Elvis or Sinatra".

Both of whom are dead. Take note, Barbra, take note.

1st May:

Yesterday, the High Street fashion chain Top Shop launched its new clothing collection designed by that seminal luminary of the fashion design world, Miss Kate Moss. Ahem.

The latest collection has apparently been designed by Kate (ahem) exclusively for Top Shop and has been inspired by Kate's own wardrobe. Which is presumably full of expensive stuff that she bought elsewhere. Previously. When it was fashionable.

It really says something about the cult of celebrity here in the UK when lines of surly-looking 13 year-old girls will queue up for hours to buy stuff that is practically identical to what they are currently already wearing (cause they love yooo Kate!) on the premise that it has been designed by someone who, at the last count, had bugger all to say about anything. True to form, Kate turned up at Top Shop's flagship London store yesterday, looked enigmatic, pouted a bit, said nothing and was then rushed back into a waiting car by a team of security heavies.

Curious, also, is the implicit suggestion that years of traveling around the world as a collagen-enhanced coathanger provides you with the insight and expertise required to then design your own clothing collection.

Maybe i'm being a bit hard on the pontoon-eyed (one is sticking, the other twisting) Croydon chav done good.

But it is a bit like Ron Jeremy announcing a second career in Gynaecology.