30th November:

Most of the world's most famous comedians, satirists and all-round-generally-funny people have at one time or another lampooned organised religion. And for every Dave Allen or Billy Connolly or Mel Brooks who has taken a pop at the big man upstairs or, more likely, his followers down here, there has been the predictably outraged gang of people 5 steps behind calling for the offender to be censured, castigated, larched or, if they are Liberal Democrats, thoroughly frowned upon. Meanwhile, those sensible people who are secure in their faith have sighed and wondered what all the fuss is about.

See, the fact is that most religions have survived pretty well for a few thousand years or so, despite the naysayers and comedians queueing up to poke sticks at them. Which makes the response of certain Muslim communities to recent events in Sudan all the more bewildering. In summary, a British woman has been jailed for 15 days in Sudan because she allowed the class of children that she was teaching to call a teddy bear Muhammad. Senior clerics in Sudan have apparently said that this action was part of a Western plot against Islam. And this is my problem. Just exactly how insecure and paranoid would you have to feel to claim that giving a stuffed toy the same name as your prophet is a calculated move by a group of foreign nations designed with the express intention of wiping you and your fellow believers off the face of the map. I mean, that's the sort of nonsense you might expect from the Americans, but the Sudanese...?

Journalistic-types have suggested that this is just another example of Islam having a sense of humour breakdown when it comes to the principle of free speech and taking every opportunity to fuel the "nobody likes us, everyone is out to ridicule us" anti-Western card - the very same tactics that helped prolong the protests against the cartoons in the Danish press last year. And to be fair, reactions like those of the clerics in Sudan do suggest that your average devout Muslim is rather po-faced about his religion and could do with a right good tickling to lighten him up.

In the spirit of international harmony and social cohesion, I therefore propose National 'Tickle a Muslim" day.

28th November:

People who have no interest in Scottish football, please look away now.

A deal is a deal. A gentleman's word is his bond. A contract is a contract. Until, apparently, it isn't. Which is usually when a bigger (i.e more lucrative) club have made enquiries as to your availability and you can see the Pound signs floating in front of your eyes. In which case, fuck any piece of paper that you may have signed - you're off.

Walter Smith turned his back on his country and quit the job of national team manager to return to his 'beloved' Rangers. Right at the time when things were going rather well. And the press and the public let him away with it. By and large. This week comes the news that Big 'Eck (a man whose managerial track record perfectly epitomises the word 'mediocrity') has only gone and done the same thing. And before anyone starts getting all pissy, please bear in mind that he achieved absolutely nothing at Motherwell (a triumph of journalistic spin and plaudits over facts - the statistics speak for themselves) and inherited a premier league side at Hibs just as they were going down. He then got bounced from Rangers (where he was clearly mollycoddled until it suited David Murray no longer) and was still staring at his P45 when the SFA came calling.

So the message is clear - you can take the post of national team manager when you've been out of work for a while and you can stand in front of the cameras telling everyone how great an honour it is and you can even sign a bit of paper saying you'll be in the manager's seat for the next 3 years. But as soon as there is the slightest sniff of a proper job coming your way, you'll be straight out of the door. And to hell with contracts, honour, decency, doing the right thing and the aspirations of all those members of the tartan army who happily spend large chunks of their salary following the team around the globe, wherever they may go.

How Messrs Smith and McLeish can even look at themselves in the mirror is beyond me.

20th November:

The Queen's 60th wedding anniversary has occupied many a column inch over the last couple of days, with the tone of the coverage hovering somewhere between nauseating and sycophantic.

One expression that keeps cropping up time and time again is "quiet dignity", the suggestion being that Liz and Pip (or should that be Pipos?) have held together as couple and taken life's ups and downs with a kind of stoic, stiff-upper-lip acceptance that should somehow serve as an inspiration to us all. Presumably, being one of the wealthiest women in the world and the largest private landowner in the UK also helps to see Her Maj through the hard times. At least you have a choice of flunkies to call on when you need a Kleenex to wipe away the tears of despair.

Personally, I resent any suggestion that the Royals have a hard time of it. OK, they may have a long list of public duties and engagements to carry out, but what else would they do with their time (and the taxpayers money) otherwise? Even taking these weighty responsibilities into account, they are still living lives of enormous privilege and to somehow suggest that we should be thankful for the fact that they are just getting on with it rather than publicly larching each other on the balcony of Buck House just makes me laugh.

It's also quite laughable to suggest that Pipos has been some kind of marital bedrock standing quietly in the shadows, always 3-paces behind our dear old Queen. The European press have openly reported tales of extra-marital shenanigans over the years in a way that the UK media have not, so he's hardly a choirboy, is he?

So there you have it - hats off to everyone's favourite Saxe-Coburg-Gothas. 60 years of behaving like relics from another generation: aloof, out of touch and apparently about as cuddly and affectionate as frostbite. A testament to the values of 21st Century Britain and truly an example to us all.

14th November:

In a wide-ranging speech on national security today, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown outlined tougher security measures at airports, railway stations and ports to combat the global threat of terrorism. However, he also promised a relaxation of the restriction on the amount of hand luggage that air travellers can take on-board with them. So that means more security and more bags to check. Common sense, innit?

Has anyone else noticed that there is a fatal flaw in the thinking behind the security measures implemented at UK airports? Simply put, there is an assumption that all passengers pose an equal threat and therefore should be subject to an equal number of security checks. Which is patently bollocks. I'm sorry to break the bad news to the BAA and Her Majesty's Government, but even the most deranged faction of Al Qaeda is not going to bomb the 07.00 flight from Stansted to Magaluf out of the sky. No, really. What value is there is wiping out 200 pikeys from Essex ? Hardly a PR coup for jihadists everywhere, is it? OK, it might put a small dent in the viewing figures of "I'm a Celebrity" but it's hardly going to take the programme off the air. You'd need to take out most of the Midlands and the North East for that.

So there you have it - let's have a bit of common sense and an acknowledgement that a plane full of 3-piece suits travelling to New York is inherently at a greater risk of terrorist attack than a plane full of badly tattooed blokes called Kevin going to Prague for a pivo-fuelled stag weekend.

Come to think of it, maybe we should divert that second plane to Saudi Arabia and see what happens. Sounds like a win win siutaiton to me.

9th November:

I worry about not getting enough exercise.
I worry about drinking too much.
I worry about getting a bit fat.
I worry about being a compassionate husband.
I worry about being a patient and understanding father.
I worry about getting the right work-life balance.
I worry about not helping out enough around the house.

Apart from that, everything' is fine.

7th November:

Our local neighbourhood has now recovered from a weekend of fireworks frenzy that, at times, made me think we were actually living in Kabul rather than Cambridge. The odd thing is that some people were still letting off fireworks last night, an act that seems about as rational as opening your Christmas presents on the 26th. Or maybe I'm just missing something.

A couple of months ago the media got terribly excited about Radiohead's plans to release their new album as a digital download and allow fans to pay anything from zero to one hundred Pounds for it. Many publications commented on the decline of traditional CD sales or focused on how the Internet has up-ended the traditional methods of gaining exposure and being successful for musicians and other creative types. Reports that the Daily Mail asked "What is an album? Is that a bit like an LP?" may or may not have been exaggerated. However, any way you cut it, it was interesting stuff. Now, however, the verdict is in. Over two thirds of people who downloaded the album paid nothing for the privilege, and the average price paid amongst the rest was about £2. Which is a bit of a shocker when you consider that the average album on iTunes costs almost £8.

So what is the moral of the tale? Well, Radiohead spent years building up a fanbase the old-fashioned way so could clearly afford the risk of making no money on the album and using the accompanying tour to generate revenue. You might even suggest that the band were happy to use the download strategy as a pure PR exercise and accept any actual sales as a bonus. Either way, it's not a strategy that is likely to work for the up-and-coming artist, and Radiohead have now agreed a deal to distribute physical copies of the album to stores despite suggesting they would not do so, which in itself might be an admission that the exercise has not been a success.

Perhaps more important is the philosophical question of the value we place on the music in our lives. The iPod is undeniably a handy little device, but the ease with which music can now be browsed and accessed has perhaps only served to make it much more of a disposable commodity - just that little bit less 'special' than I feel it should be. Personally, I associate many pieces of music with certain times in my life and feel a strong emotional connection to particular artists and albums. What value can you put on that kind of enjoyment and satisfaction over a lifetime?

Hopefully more than just £2.

1st November:

At the risk of engaging in the kind of water-cooler celebrity tittle-tattle that I've frequently decried elsewhere on this site, I do find the soon-to-be ex-Mrs. Paul McCartney a bit of a strange fish.

Given that the British tabloid press have never expressed any interest in my life whatsoever, I am certainly not able to comment with any authority on what it must be like to have your personal circumstances and character raked over by the red-tops. However, I would assume that the sensible thing to do in these circumstances is ignore it until it goes away. Ms. Mills, however, seems to be on a perpetual one-woman mission to correct, amend and complain about every single comment ever made about her in the press that she feels is incorrect or unfair. Indeed, she has a whole page on her own web site devoted to countering some the myths she feels the press have perpetuated about her. And she wonders why they don't like her...

If I do know one thing, it is this: the more you complain about your treatment at the hands of the press, the harder they will keep biting you. They love a good fight and once you get on their bad side your odds of beating them are very slim indeed.

When Michael Jackson's name started to be seriously dragged through the mud some 10 years ago, he reacted with the kind of bemusement that is reserved for the most A-list of celebrities - a kind of incredulity at the very idea that people might not worship you and think you walk on water. And it is this very "I'm a really good person so why doesn't everybody love me" bleating that has caused the media to take offence at Heather Mills and turn on her. In a recent TV interview she suggested that she is guilty of nothing more than falling in love with a cultural icon, but in actual fact her crime is far worse: that of assuming that anyone actually gives a fuck. Today's news really is tomorrow's chip wrapper, and every ounce of energy she expends trying to 'clear' her good name in the press just makes her look increasingly paranoid and self-important.

Really want the press to leave you alone? Stick a pin in a map, get on a plane, get a job and get on with the rest of your life.