I just ate a tin of mandarin segments and now it's raining. That'll serve me right. I'm still hunting for the bastard that broke Charley Stanley's nose so if you hear 'owt let me know. MTV just called to see if they could pimp my ride and last night I came downstairs to get a glass of water and caught my Mum playing Grand Theft Auto (I think she does have a penis). James Murphy on page 49 of this weeks NME - PHWOAR!!!! (nice nails and a thick neck). Tom has moved to Moscow, I've got a new phone and Darren is getting better. Lamb Madras tonight then off to Florida. Back in two weeks. Be good.

"Jinkees!"

More hoovering, dusting, tidying, hiding porn, washing bedding (not because of the porn) and putting bleach in the loo. Mum and Dad arrive tomorrow for a five day visit. Yes, five days! Thankfully we go on holiday here the day after they leave. We did some shopping last Saturday for their visit and it's been s-h-e-e-r h-e-l-l trying to not break into the McVities milk chocolate digestives.

Cracking weekend. Got drunk on Friday night with some fellow degenerates. Cleavage, new teeth, tardy timekeeper, my future wife, straight totty, neighbours, new boy, boss man and someone not so invisible now. Twas lovely to spill beer on you all.

Saturday was hangover day. We went to the supermarket for bread and milk and came out with a heaped trolley and a bill for £150. That’s a lot of bread and milk (good job I was fully stocked up on yummy hunny eh!). Went for a curry with Darren and Tom on Saturday night. Curry house was heavin’ and very noisy. The table next to us was occupied by a bunch of straight porn actors who had been making a ‘movie’ across the road in Raquels Health Club. They all shook the waiters hand when they left.

Sunday was quiet. I hoovered, wrapped some presents (I’m annoyingly organised), walked the dog, ordered pizza (free next time as it was late), had a bath, made popcorn, watched Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (very poor) and The Cooler (marvellous) then went to bed. Darren has a cold. I’ll send him your best.

It's been raining since I got up. The sky is dark and low. I took extra care and an extra ten minutes to drive to work. I haven't eaten my lunch (Heinz tomato soup) as Mars employees were giving away free chocolate bars outside the office and I ended up with four. Two of which I ate and two I gave to colleagues. I took the bus to Oxford Street at Lunchtime and watched Tom blow £500 on shirts and a suit. I was just about to accept his offer of lunch in the Selfridges cafe (hot salt beef sandwiches) when my boss rang to say that I was needed back at the office. Traipsed back, calmed him down, sorted the problem and had a cup of tea. Ho hum.

Blackpool is on TV tonight. I thought that the first show was marvelous. I was dreading watching it last week as I feared that the town would be made to look like a cheap joke. No need to worry though, Blackpool looked great, David Morrissey looked sexy, bursting into song during the drama wasn't tacky at all (it actually validated the excitement this seaside town can generate in folk) and even if it was a bit Dennis Potter-ish there's nowt wrang wi' that.

I can't believe they're making me work so hard this week. Bloody cheek! I don't think I'm paid enough to work this hard. AND big changes are just round the corner. Changes that will see me lose my whole portfolio of struggling and underdeveloped markets and have them replaced by a GIGANTIC (and much more corrupt) nation (no, not the USA). Whatever.

The good news this week is that the junk we recovered from under the spare bed (in preparation for my parents visit next week) has yielded enough cash on ebay to pay for two weeks in LA and Vegas next February. 20 years collecting vintage 501's, NME's, and Face magazines has proved quite lucrative.

Utterly shit day at work today. Can't even bring myself to write about it. *throws back last gobfull of cheap red wine*

Nice weekend though. Went to the tip on Saturday with some rubbish. Watched movies:

Day After Tomorrow - sixoutoften
Football Factory - sevenoutoften
All Or Nothing - eightoutoften
Radio Days - nineoutoften
Mean Girls - nineoutoften
Ed Gein - fouroutoften

Went strolling with me fella and our dog in Epping Forest on Sunday. Delicious sunlight and crispy winter air. Pictures here and here.

Going downstairs now to watch 50 First Dates and eat organic rice cakes smothered in dark chocolate.

Back Fuck The Bid. All these ‘support the Olympic bid’ banners flapping in the London breeze are really getting to me. The one that annoys me the most is the one that reads ‘make Britain proud’. I want to commission my own banner and strap it to a lamp post on Embankment. My banner will read ‘make me proud to be British’. Instead of spending billions on making London magnificent for some athletes and tourists for the short period of one month why don’t we just spend the money on making the UK really nice for the folk who live here? Let’s build more hospitals, prisons and borstals. Put down some new train tracks and build lots of overhead monorail lines in our cities. Initiate ‘how to discipline your child’ courses in every town and city in the land. Reinstate the labour-exchange and adopt a sensible immigration policy (or even just an immigration policy). Allow anyone to marry whoever they like (including those poor souls who want to wed their donkeys, dogs and llamas). Stop paying single mums to stay at home. Build crèches and pre-schools where they are needed. Ensure our nurses get paid more than our MP’s. Stick our pensions offshore and get Butlins to build and run old peoples homes. Put wind farms on every hill and wave generators round our coastline, then scrap our defence budget as we won’t need to kill for oil. Become a packaging-free nation.... oh, I could go on but I don’t like to moan. I realise that these gripes are a bit childish and absurd and that those in favour of the ‘bid’ will say that most of the money will be privately raised but I don’t care. Why can’t we have the McDonalds borstal or the Virgin prison or the Vodafone hospital or the Bodyshop high school? Invest in Britain and we will invest in you.

Lovely piece in the Independent today bigging-up Blackpool. Last week it was The Times. And a new BBC drama starting tonight called 'Blackpool'. The White Stripes new movie is called 'Under the Blackpool Lights'. The Kings Of Leon will rock the beautiful Empress Ballroom in Blackpool just before christmas and the spellcnuts will eat their turkey dinner this year in the shadow of that tower.
Squeky voiced Emlyn Hughes started his career with The Seasiders.

Blackpool is the most searched-for British town on the internet.

More lottery winners choose Blackpool as their favourite British holiday destination than any other.

Each year, 10.5 million sticks of rock are sold.

Blackpool Pleasure Beach attracts six million visitors a year, making it Britain's top free attraction.

At the Pleasure Beach each season, 47 miles of hot dogs, a million ice-cream cones, 550,000 burgers, 2.5 million portions of chips and 500,000 sticks of candy floss are sold.

Two million postcards are sent from the town every year.

The world's largest mirrorball is here; 47,000 mirrors on a six-ton, 20ft sphere.

Friday is the donkeys' day off.


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The first three pictures are views from my office (we have North and South facing windows). I know these should have been added to a 'post a view from your office window' site that BW mentioned a few weeks ago but I've forgotten it. The next four pictures were taken during our last visit to Blackpool. The hunk in the bottom row is my Dad on his honeymoon and next to him is little old me being blown out of a deckchair, somewhere in Scotland, whilst reading Kafka's The Metamorphosis.

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A cabbage on a stick makes a really good weapon.

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Rob Da Bank will be John Peels replacement on Radio 1. Good choice methinks.

Alan Ball has confirmed that Six feet Under will end after the next series. Boo! The good news is that HBO have commisioned a sixth series of The Sopranos.

The Producers is to get the Chicago treatment. The theatre version of the 60's film will be filmed again with Nathan Lane, Mathew Broderick and Nicole Kidman. It will be directed by Susan Stroman who directed the stage shows.

Booker prize winner Alan Hollinghurst has been nominated for the Whitbread (that should please TD).

Ewan McGregor will be on the London stage next year singing and dancing in Guys and Dolls.

Awfully good film maker Michael Winterbottom has been replaced by Judge Dredd director Danny Cannon to helm a trilogy of films called 'Goal!'. The films will follow the progress of an American latino playing in the premiership. Shooting will begin soon in Newcastle and at St James Park. Diego Luna stars. Beckham has a role in the movie. *pray for shower scenes*

There is new evidence that eating bogies and masturbating are actually good for us (yes, even at the same time).

Blimey! A rollercoaster operator sent the first car of the day off with eight riders in it without realising a 16ft section of track had been removed the evening before.

If any of you are hospitalised this weekend just pray that you don't get put into the same ward as Paul Weller and Keane singer Tom Chaplin. Both of them have been hospitalised with throat infections. Imagine being in a bed next to those two dullards.

I’m busy rediscovering the beauty of Husker Du. Greg was always the one I fancied but Bob was the one I wanted to read the Sunday papers with (on a huge sofa in our underpants while drinking coffee). Bob is the one who said “forget where and when punk started, the important thing is why…”. I loved the complicated structure Bob created in his songs and the speed and lyrical content (public transport problems, environmental issues, sexual politics). Husker Du and their hardcore mates (Meat Puppets, Dead Kennedys, Black Flag) put punk back underground after it had reached the bargain bins in Woolworths. At the same time in England we had Discharge and The Exploited but they were a joke, their followers were glue sniffing, ugly, part time vegetarians with a contradicting swastika on one arm and an anarchy symbol on the other (and not a tune between them ). Husker Du imploded in 1987 and if you fancy taking a listen I suggest you start with ‘Warehouse’ and work your way backwards. Husker Du translates as ‘do you remember?’ in Norwegian or Swedish (I forget which). Bob Mould has a blog nowadays and you can read it here.

We dressed up and went to the bally. We had cocktails in the Eagle first then wine and antipasti in a cosy Italian cucina near Sadlers. Bravo show seats. Primo view. 12 lords a leaping, much clapping, him and him looking sooooooo good as the gay boys in the Cole Porter piece. Swamp was stunning (posh people actually do shout “bravo”). Tension and anxiety edged the troupe to a climax of four duets, all on stage at the same time, and all intermittently mirroring each other. Breathless I was. Super sexy evening.

Blimey! Sore head. Leaving 'do' yesterday for desk-neighbour. Pub from 1 till 9pm. Much drunkenness of the "you're my greatest friend/I want you to be my best man when I get married/please be godfather to my kids/I love you but I'm not a bummer/do you take it up the chuff?/aren't my girlfriends tits great?/let's do dinner and the theatre with our partners/ blah blah blah". Our boss was hosting a fireworks party for his family last night (start time 7pm). He was still in the pub when I left at 9. Oh dear. *rubs hands excitedly and looks forward to juicy gossip on Monday morning*

The spellcnuts are off to the ballet tonight. Modern stuff though. Ballet Rambert are doing a programme that features 'Swamp', a Michael Clark tour-de-force, which he created especially for Ramberts 60th birthday. Music by Bruce Gilbert (aka DJ Beekeeper and Wire bassist), costumes by 80's party monsters Bodymap and lighting by Charles Atlas. Incidentally, Ballet Rambert kicked the teenage Clark out of the company in the early 1980's because of his drug and punk rock lifestyle. (fantastic review in the Guardian)

Famous people I've nearly mown down on my Vespa (part 17):

Keith Allen. This morning, crossing Upper Street in Islington, chatting on his phone, green cords with brown shoes (yuk!).

Previous near death encounters - Paul Morley, Paul Whitehouse (with child) and Gary Oldman.

Back at work after a hectic, but highly enjoyable, long weekend. Friday was the Scissor Sisters in Blackpool. The gorgeous ballroom was rammed with glammed up nutters drunk on glitter and lager. Support act Kiki and Herb confused a large part of the congregation but made Darren and I howl with laughter at their priceless Jewish-homo-retard humour. They are sick, irreverent and rude and we love them. We squeezed our way down to the front for the Scissor Sisters entrance at 9pm. A huge white curtain was erected over the stage with the SS logo projected onto it. Suddenly the lights were dimmed and there they were, silhouetted behind the curtain. The crowd went crazy, the curtain fell to the stage, the band blasted into ‘Laura’ and we hoped that the sprung dancefloor was meant to bounce like that. We watched a few more songs down at the front then retreated to the ballroom bar to watch the rest of the set with the other old gits.
We were already drunk when we stumbled into the after show party at Sugarbear where the Scissor Sisters DJ, Sammy Jo, was spinning his trademark NYC funk/punk stuff. Blackpool’s beautiful people were out in force and even we were shocked at just how many and how stunning they were. I don’t remember much more of the evening as lager consumption had reached critical level (apparently I was wandering around the club telling beautiful girls from Halifax that they should get an agent, move to LA and do sex with film stars).
I found gravy on my t-shirt next morning so I’m guessing chips, and possibly a battered sausage, were involved in the walk home.

Saturday was mainly a day for nursing tender heads but in the evening we took a stroll down to the Pleasure Beach where we had tickets for ‘Eclipse’ at the Globe Theatre. The show was very Cirque Du Soleil including acrobats flying around on bits of string and doing implausible things while balanced on tiny bits of wood. The costumes were stunning, the stage set was impressive and Vladimir (direct from Las Vegas!) didn’t disappoint as the strutting primadonna star.

Sunday was a day of rest followed by the drive home to London in the evening. Monday saw us heading into the west end for a very gay night out. We went to Joe Allen for dinner (theatre luvvies hangout, Elaine Stritch did a shit there once) and then to Drury Lane to see The Producers. Nathan Lane and Lee Evans were great, Victor Meldrews wife and Barry Cryer were in our row, the bit where they sing ‘Springtime For Hitler’ was spectacular, the ice cream was three quid a tub and the theatre radiators were set to ‘fry’ (I’d forgotten my lace fan too). Recommended show.

*writes note to santa requesting NOT to turn into a Sondheim listening, theatre programme reading show-queen*