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.