Spare a though then for the husband of home secretary Jacqui Smith, who had to face the nation’s press at the weekend and apologise for purchasing “jazz” movies on his wifes expense account, presumably for the purpose of “having a game of solitaire” whilst watching them.

Richard Timney’s cringeworthy apology is one of the news highlights of the week and I felt the need to blog about it. Poor sod. Having to stand in front of the press corp and admit you’ve been having one off the wrist.

Mortifying.

(Full video of Mr Timney’s humiliation here – warning, difficult to watch…..)

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Anyway (and stop reading now if you don’t appreciate toilet humour), in I go and find a free cubicle. So far so good.

So I’m sitting there and I become very aware of the guy in the next cubicle. It would be difficult not to. He sounds like he’s giving birth to a baby elephant. All grunting and straining. Poor bloke sounds like he’s in labour.

All of a sudden, over the top of his wounded animal cries, I hear Boston’s “More than a Feeling” blaring away. The ringtone on my neighbours mobile phone. It goes for ages before he answers it.

Next thing I know, he’s having a full blown business meeting on the phone in the bogs at Queen Street station. What’s more, it sounded pre-arranged. He’s gone to the bog in the full knowledge that a client or supplier is going to be getting on the blower to him any minute.

Made me think twice about phoning anyone again. You never know what they’ll be up to. To be fair, after all his grunting it sounded like he needed to be phoning an ambulance rather than taking an incoming business call.

Fast forward a day, and I am sitting in the living room at daft o’clock watching “Bullseye” on Virgin TV. It’s a new, revamped version hosted by Dave Spikey of ‘Phoenix Nights’ fame.

Poor old Dave. He puts up a brave fight but the programme is dead in the water. You can only sound so excited about a pair of contestants winning £108 between them before being eliminated. I’m sure back in 1981 that was a lot of money, but these days that won’t cover their rail fares to appear on the show.

Funniest moment had to be the lady who, when asked to spell cafeteria, offered up the amusing C-A-T-H-E-T-E-R-I-A. There’s on to have you clutching your urinary tract (if possible). Maybe the only cafe she’s been in was run by a woman called Cath. You never know I suppose.

Needless to say, she was eliminated early doors.

On to the red/black board. “Keep out of the black and into the red, you get nothing in this game for two in a bed.”

The prizes on offer on the special prize board looked like an Argos fire sale. I half expected a job lot of Elizabeth Duke jewellery. Instead, we were treated to such delights as a frying pan set, a retro atari console and a hoover. The prizes had “straight onto eBay” written all over them.

Embarrassing.

The special prize by the way was a “games room set”. A blue baize pool table, a cheap table football game and a bloody awful “American 50s Diner” style juke box.

Poor old Bully.

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I used to be a huge Paul Daniels fan as a boy. I watched his show religiously and always strived to collect all of his range of Paul Daniels magic kits. I remember my Granny taking me to Petersons toy shop in Musselburgh where they had a huge range of his stuff. An endless array of polyester “silk” handkerchiefs, balls and cups and double sided ace playing cards, accompanied by instructions which were indecipherable to the ten year old me. I still loved them all the same. The holy grail was the metal rings which appeared solid but became interlinked when banged together. That trick was in the repertoire of every good television magician of the early 1980′s.

The blog is actually a good enough read. I must however, question his decision to post a couple of photos of Debbie McGee in a bikini. Not a good move. Paired with the photo of himself on a beach in Barbados wearing a balaclava? WTF?

Dignity Paul. Not a lot. But dignity required nonetheless.

On a completely different note, I saw graffiti on a wall in Leith today which said “Prince Michael of Albany”. Young, upcoming band or heir to a Hapsburg-like empire? Maybe he’s descended from the Stuart kings and we stand at the beginning of a new Jacobite Rebellion?

Let’s burn Derby to the ground.

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Part of me was proud at his ability to watch and learn. For weeks he has been trying to turn it on but he has either not had the strength to push against the spring on the button or has possibly not been pressing the button in the optimal spot.

Last night though, he got it just right. Spot on. On came CBeebies.

The other part of me is horrified though. When kids can’t turn the TV on then you have some control. Now if weleave him alone for 5 minutes we run the risk of (with a few random remote control button presses thrown in for good measure) coming in to find him glued to ‘The Exorcist’ on TV on demand. A milestone has been reached. A line in the sand has been crossed.

We’ve always been advocates of a little bit of TV doing no harm. Anyone with kids will know the kind of breather which 20 minutes of ‘In the Night Garden’ can give you. It’s educational to an extent as well I suppose (honest!).

I remember when I was a boy, my parents were friends with a family who didn’t have a television. I remember lots of families when I was growing up who didn’t have a phone (it’s unthinkable now, isn’t it) but not to have a television? Turns out they were completely fucked up religious nuts. ‘Coronation Street? Not for us. We’ll have a reading from the Book of Corinthians thank you very much’. We’re not talking your average church-goer here. These were slightly more into it than that if my memory serves me correctly.

The last few days I’ve been messing about with Spotify. I’ve been a big fan of Last FM for a long time and this seemed like a variation on a theme with the subtle difference that you can pick the actual track you want to listen to. Not bad. I’ll keep you posted. The down side is that every half a dozen tracks or so, you are subjected to an advert (only about 20 seconds long) from the likes of the Energy Saving Trust or Spotify themselves advertising their subscription (ad free) package. I can see this sort of thing being the way the music industry is going though. I personally don’t have the same cash to spend on CD’s these days.

Back to the subject of TV – grown up TV this time – we’ve recently started watching ‘The Wire’. My wife and I have fairly different taste in television so it’s a rare occurrence when we both find a series that we are really into. Previously it was the Sopranos. About 74 hours of our life which we’ll never get back but it was unadulterated class. We are now into season 2 of ‘The Wire’. Slightly different from the first series in terms of character focus but it’s warming up nicely.

Wonder what we’ll be doing this weekend…..

Incidentally, this is the first post in 4 days which isn’t a list. Bet you are glad.

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I actually can’t remember the product now, but the basic premise is that a large, female penguin (I should add that this ad is animated) is doing housework whilst her two kids and husband are doing stuff in the background. What I found hilarious and slightly confusing in a cross species relationship sort of way was that the husband was a bear.

Now I’m not one for being down on mixed marriages. If a penguin and a bear want to get married and set up home then more power to them. I’m not sure whether they would be the most sexually compatible but I’m sure they could work it out.

I didn’t do much biology past my fourth year at high school. It didn’t really interest me. However, if it were possible (and I’d say it’s highly unlikely) for a bear and a penguin to mate, I’d expect the offspring to be some kind of bear/penguin hybrid – the type of creature horror movies are crying out for.

What I would not expect is for the kids to be piglets, which is what they were in this advertisement.

It’s not right.

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I’ve not felt inspired to post this year. I’d love to get all deep and say that the prospect of 2009 and the credit crunch became too much for me and I couldn’t bring myself to put my head above the parapet. The sad truth however is that I just couldn’t be arsed. That and doing a bit too much relaxing.

New year was really relaxing. We did nothing. That may sound shit to everyone else but for me it was great. Having a 15 month old means you are up early and by extension usually struggling to stay awake at the end of the night. Hogmanay is no exception. Besides, anyone who has lived in Edinburgh for any length of time will be acutely aware of how fucking annoying the city can become at New Year when the pissed hordes from all over the world descend on the place.

The run up to new year was nice and relaxed. All very calm. The only incident of any worth to report was “the security van robbery that wasn’t”.

Venturing out of the flat between Christmas and New Year, I heard a strange siren and a repeated automated message saying “Help, help, this security van is under attack. Please call the police”. Standing outside (the now defunct) Woolworths was a security van with all doors open and no-one in sight.

Polis were duly phoned.

Cue a screeching of tyres, blues and twos and a lot of running and shouting as 3 squad cars came flying in from all directions, much to the bemusement of a slightly embarrassed looking security guard (who had now appeared on the scene) who spent the next ten minutes getting the “waggy finger” from the polis about turning his alarm off the next time he accidentally triggers it.

Other than that it’s been quiet. Back to work yesterday.

One observation I’ve made since walking to work in the last couple of days is the huge number of shitey wee dogs which seem to suddenly have appeared post-Christmas. All either wearing stupid wee coats or being carried in peoples arms as they go about their journey to work.

This is Edinburgh. Not Hollywood. Gonnae no dae that. You look like a complete fool.

Talking of complete fools, anyone seen Coolio on celebrity big brother? I’m embarrassed for the lad. It’s still entertaining though. In my wildest dreams I couldn’t have imagined a house populated by LaToya Jackson, Coolio, Ulrika Jonsson and Tommy Sheridan.

Who do you think Tommy will proposition for sex first? My money’s definitely not on Coolio.

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In fact, I can’t stop laughing at the “Gonch’s Toast Bar” episode. In particular at the young kid who, whilst Gonch is surrounded by hungry youths in the playground, repeatedly asks “Got any cheese?” in the most ridiculous high pitched voice for about five minutes. He’s shot down in flames eventually by Gonch who replies “Don’t do cheese”.

I feel sorry for the actor. That may have been his only ever acting role. I can picture him in nightclubs in the early 1990′s, trying to pull girls with the chat up line “I used to be in Grange Hill”.

“Oh, so who did you play then?”

“Well, I was the guy who ask Gonch if he had any cheese.”

At this point she’s already copping off with his mate. Poor sod. That kind of fame isn’t worth having. It’s like being the first person voted off Big Brother. You’re part of it but at the same time you are not. An impostor. In his case, an impostor with a squeaky voice.

On the subject of funny voices, we discovered last night that if Sam is slightly upset about something, speaking to him in a Mr T voice seems to work wonders. A quick “I ain’t getting in no plane fool” and he’s rolling about laughing. Funny how it is.

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I used to think that ‘Derby Day’ on the ZX Spectrum was magnificent. It wasn’t. It was shite. Just a collection of random number generators and graphics of horses with unrealistic joint action in their knees.

I was Sport Billy this weekend. Three different sports watched in one weekend. Not bad for me. Saturday was Scotland’s disastrous start against Macedonia. I mean, Macedonia…. what happened there?

I’m afraid Georgie Burley may have been on the paint stripper again, particularly after the selection of Kirk Broadfoot to the squad. Don’t book your tickets to South Africa just yet. In fact, judging by press reports, don’t book your tickets to South Africa at all. It seems that by all accounts, Eyemouth will be in better shape to host the 2010 World Cup than South Africa if what we’ve heard from FIFA observers is true.

Sunday saw the All-Ireland Hurling Final with Kilkenny beating Waterford in the biggest hammering since David Baillie kicked seven bells out of ‘Mad’ Mackie in a playground fight in my 3rd year at high school. Wasn’t so mad after that. Just daft looking. As were Waterford yesterday. Humped. Well and truly. Nowhere to hide.

Sunday night saw me watch a double header of NFL action. Very enjoyable, although I am now massively sported out. Anyway, must fly. Here is a screenshot from the aforementioned ‘Derby Day’ to remind you how bad video games in the 1980′s could be.

If you need further reminding of how bad it was, you can actually play it here:- http://www.zxspectrum.net/

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I spend my time trying to hear him say ‘Dada’. Half the time I kid myself that I can hear it in amongst his mad baby babble. He’s doing good though and he cheers me right up when I get home at night.

Given that this is one of my reknowned double title posts, I should probably move onto the second half of my post. Plain and simple, Mikey to win Big Brother.

I know it’s knives in the eyes TV but lets face it, when you’ve fed and wiped the arse of a ten month old all night, you want something mindless. And we enjoy it. For the uninitiated, Mikey is a blind, cross dressing, 33 year old stand up comedian from Kilwinning in Ayrshire.

I’ve found him highly entertaining from the start but perhaps his finest moment came in recent weeks when, whilst cooling off in the swimming pool, he was whacked in the back of the neck by a baseball thrown by Darnell, another housemate. The sheer, unadulterated fucking bizarreness of a blind swimmer being hit accidentally with a baseball thrown by an albino black man would blow even the most imaginitive of minds but it’s the ensuing swearfest from Mikey which makes it special.

The resulting stream of expletives uttered by Mikey was a joy to watch and absolute proof that you can take the boy out of Scotland, but you can’t take Scotland out of the boy. Enjoy.

In fact, it may only be bettered by the moment when he ate an entire Scotch Bonnet Chilli like it was an apple. Magic as well. Vote for this guy.

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What I can’t understand is what inspires people to appear on TV, drop their drawers and display their wart ridden genitalia to the British viewing public. I mean, last night someone came on and complained of incontinence. A quick prod around and the diagnosis provided matched the title of this post.

Who does that? As a nation, are we now so absorbed in the reality TV culture that we need to air our most embarrassing illnesses on TV? Do they go on in expectation of perhaps landing a talk show host role on the back of an infected sphincter?

Come on people. You should never let anyone called Pixie loose with surgical gloves and your genitals. I mean, it’s just not right is it.

Has this nation no shame?

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