27th January:

One of the comedy side-effects of young children is that rather than watching the football highlights on Saturday night, you get to watch them at 7.30 on a Sunday morning. Oh, how times change...

Anyone working in the world of retail must marvel at the "Ikea effect" - that strange ability that Ikea has of parting you from 3 times the amount of cash you were intending to spend when you set off that morning. I still haven't worked out how they do it. You go to buy a small office chair and come off with bags full of stuff. And meatballs.

I recently spent a week in Las Vegas attending a large trade show. Vegas, for anyone who has never been, is a gold-plated turd. Yes, the level of detail that has gone into re-creating the Eiffel Tower and St. Mark's Square is quite extraordinary, but you only have to look at the number of disabled people playing slot machines at 8am on a Sunday morning to realise what the town is really all about. Sin City it may be, but there is also a definite sense of quiet desperation in the oxygen enriched air.

A true story: one of my colleagues was sitting in his hotel room at 11pm one night when there was a knock at the door. He opened the door and there was a tall blonde woman standing in the corridor. Without being judgemental about it, she was clearly a sex worker. "I'm here" she said. "Yes, so you are", my colleague replied. "But I'm 99 per cent sure I ordered the Pepperoni".