Four shots of port and a bottle of WKD

Director General
BBC
That Building That Roy Castle Did The Tap-Dancing Outside Of
(Although More Likely One Of Those Dull Buildings You Can See From South Africa Road)
Shepherd's Bush, where there used to be a football club and that
London
W12 4WW, or at least it should be anyway

Dear D,

I'll be honest, D, it's been a pretty good week for me. I've been engaging in many of my favourite activities, spent time in the company of some splendid people, and all soundtracked by a new Los Campesinos! mini-album or whatever it is. Moreover, because I've been busy, I've been largely able to ignore this contretemps that's been going on with your lot. Admittedly if I'd actually cared about anyone involved I could have chosen to develop some sort of Opinion about it, but given the characters and the newspapers involved I thought it best ignored.

But now, right at the end (hopefully) of it all, I've become annoyed, and I've ended up having Opinions, and I'm even more annoyed that I've ended up having Opinions about something this feeble.

For starters, I'm really pissed off that I can't enjoy the woman who ruined 6 Music losing her job. What should have happened was for you, D, to listen to George Lamb one morning, think 'what the hell is this nonsense?', look at the Sunday schedule and wonder why anyone would give a show to a bloke whose band have been ignored for about 12 years and lop off half an hour of the Freak Zone to do so, and then boot her out without references. If that had been her downfall I would have bought some bunting just so that I could have brought it out to celebrate. But after this business I'm in the position of having sympathy for her, and that rather palls.

Moreover, D, I'm annoyed at you for your total lack of a spine and the feeble kow-towing to a few thousand shitrag readers and the various elements of the press that don't like you, ie all of them. For goodness sake, if you're not going to call these people out, point out the nasty little agendas at work here and actually stand up for yourself and the people that work for you, then nobody's going to do it. Plus it leaves you open to attack by anyone who might be even slightly disgruntled.

Like me, for example.

You see, this week hasn't all been gravy. On Monday night, for example, I was doing the ironing and, as I only had a couple of items left to do, decided not to watch another ep of Flight Of The Conchords and instead stuck on the new panel game thing on Dave. Now, all right, I should be wary of and panel game but maybe the heavy advertising affected me and, well, I was in a good mood. And so it was that I was treated to two minutes or so of the comedy of Marcus Brigstocke.

Now, I've always regarded Brigstocke as being slightly irritating without being utterly hateful, but actually watching him here didn't so much as tip me over the edge but fling me over screaming. Two minutes of the weakest jokes about politics imaginable, delivered in a manner so poor that it would have killed the greatest routine in the world stone dead. Maybe it ended with him undercutting everything he'd said before; I don't know because I'd turned my television off and was sitting in a chair feeling bewildered. And then angry. So, so angry. The anger of a Daily Mail reader frothing about immigrants and foreigns and the gay mafia and long haired comedians was nothing compared to the anger I felt at that moment.

Now, D, you may be wondering what this has to do with you given that Argumental isn't one of yours. To which I say: the BBC is entirely responsible for Brigstocke's career. Would he be where he is now without the patronage of Radio 4? No, of course not.

And as you've created this monster, D, it's up to you to destroy it. No more appearances on Radio 4, snarky little comments about how crap he is on programmes he might have previously appeared on, George Lamb saying that he's really funny - anything to undermine his 'comedy'. I'm not a cruel man - I don't mind the odd repeat of Giles Wembley-Hogg Goes Off on BBC7 at 3am on Sunday to give him some royalties to keep his family in Waitrose ready meals, if Waitrose do such a thing, but other than that - no Brigstocke whatsoever. And if you don't do it I'm going to ring up Richard Littlejohn's answerphone pretending to be Chris Moyles and leave a message shouting that he has sex with billy goats. So do it now, or else.

Yours sincerely,

MS, BSoI, TAo... actually, this should probably be anonymous, shouldn't it? Drat. Never been good at threats.

Justin Lee Collins' runty little nephew

I have an ISA.

(I had a horrible moment of realisation last week, when it occurred to me that not only am I not as funny as I used to be, but that I wasn't funny enough in the first place to get away with not being as funny as I used to be. I mention this now because it seems that anything I write these days is likely to be not funny, thus making this like all of the pages where people sincerely share their opinions on matters of the day, ie loathsome and pointless, until I delete everything I've ever written when I realise what I've become. This still makes me better than Marcus Brigstocke. Anyway, the point is "I have an ISA" is the funniest thing that I'm about to say. It's not funny as such but does at least deserve your derision, in the manner of pelting someone who's been put in the stocks for a fairly minor crime.)

I took it out a few years ago, when I received a sum of money in exchange for not working for my previous employers any more. I went to the bank to ask what would be the best thing to do with it, and they told me about the ISA, with its lack of tax and excellent interest rates. And, because I'm a greedy, easily-led cunt, I signed up. Last year, with quite a lot of money in my bog-standard savings account, they suggested I add some more to the ISA. I, being a greedy easily-led cunt who'd kept an eye on how the ISA had been doing, readily agreed.

(The warning signs were there last year. When I first went to see the man in the bank he mentioned various other products I might be interested in. When I went back to sign the bit of paper there was another, older fellow in the room who was assessing the man's work; when I raised the various other products he swiftly passed them over as if they were a crazy idea that I'd just come up with. I ignored this, though, because I am a greedy, easily-led cunt.)

Now, the thing is, I brought up to distrust investments. Partly because we never had much money while I was growing up and so would never have become involved in such a thing, but also because it was the 1980s and any mention of stocks and shares automatically brought up mental images of a lot of braces-wearing Thatcherite cunts with their brick-sized mobile phones. My dad received shares from the company he worked for and he sold them more or less straight away because they were more trouble than they were worth. And when I had money I ignored my parents because I am a greedy, easily-led cunt. Moral: never ignore your parents.

As the markets crashed I didn't panic, because the little booklet they send me every few months to update me on how my ISA is doing tells us not to. "If you had invested in 2000 then sold your holdings when the market bottomed out in 2003, you would have lost a lot of money. If you had left your money invested, by 2007 the markets had picked up again to the level they were at in 2000." There's an authoritative graph and everything, and below the graph the words "past performace isn't a reliable indicator of future results". This last eventually began to nag at me a little, and so last week I went to the bank for reassurance. I went in entirely prepared to accept that this wasn't something to be worried about, and left flustered by the woman I'd spoken to panicking when I brought the subject up.

After speaking to my parents I decided that I no longer wanted to be a part of it, and so this morning I called to get the details of what I needed to supply to them to move what was left to my good, honest, savings account. The man I spoke to tried to dissuade me, and despite him grudgingly giving up the details and fax number I went along with it even though I'd already heard about the Asian markets crashing overnight. I managed to convince myself that I was a bit worried about not getting a copy of We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed and that this had affected my judgement. Of all the spectacular lies I've told myself down the years this was possibly the biggest: I wanted to believe that somehow, eventually, despite the forecasts of years of recession and the apparent cluelessness of everyone supposedly in charge of the economies of the world, I was going to get my money back. This is because I am a greedy, easily-led cunt.

If I take my money out now I'll have made a loss; not as much as it could have been, but, well, enough to have bought a new Macbook anyway. I keep thinking I should take this as my punishment for getting involved in a business which the likes of me shouldn't be involved in, for selling myself out to a lot of greedy self-interested fucks. And the little nagging voice at the back of my head tells me that I'm a fool to myself for even thinking about it and that I should wait it out because there'll be jam tomorrow.

So tomorrow morning I may send the fax ending it all, or if the Asian markets are down I might decide to hold on, or if the Asian markets are up I might decide to hold on, all the while thinking that I'd rather not give a fuck about the Asian markets anymore.

A special type of Anderson Shelter they make skanks live in

Bumbling. I don't want to be a bumbler. I try to avoid being a bumbler. It just happens. I can't help it. It comes naturally, or maybe the dignity and grace required to avoid being a bumbler don't come naturally to me, I don't know.

(Point No.1: the bit in Drop It Doe Eyes which goes "we move with such elegance/with such grace/with all our dignity just in place" still always makes me smile, partly because of the inelegant way in which the lines are performed and partly because of my total failings in this area. Point No.2: my spellcheck recognises both "bumbling" and "bumbler". But not "recognises", because I haven't put a 'z' in it.)

I'm not sure if losing my debit card the day before pay day counts as bumbling, but it falls into the same sphere of general haplessness that I seem to cultivate, and so I'm going to call it bumbling because I can. It's been four days now and already I'm beginning to look at cash machines as if they're mocking me. It's incredibly annoying.

I know that I can go and get money within normal banking hours, but it's still a pain to stand in the queue and hand the slip and your ID over and then stand there while someone counts it out for you. Plus I always have the nagging feeling that they could tell me at any moment that actually I can't have the money after all. I suspect that this was far worse in the past when the people the other side of the counter were bowler-hatted gents rather than people in identical uniforms and ties who may as well work in Lidl for all of the authority that their clothes convey, but still.

I was going to go and see The Lovely Eggs, but I forgot

I've had an industrious day today. I've had my hair cut, I've got the shopping, the bathroom is clean and the floor is hoovered. I still have to see if I can do anything to stop my computer freezing and look up the price of a new one, do some job hunting and see if I can work out how to make my phone send text messages again, but that still leaves plenty of time tomorrow to do... well, something.

Now, I am admittedly not keen on spending more than the £6.37 I have in change (because there's a week until payday, I still haven't received my ticket for HMHB and I probably need to buy a new computer) (if anyone has any thoughts on MacBooks, by the way, your comments would be appreciated) but I have a Travelcard and that still leaves lots of options. Too many options, in fact, because after an hour of looking at various possible places to go, I still haven't the faintest idea what to do.

I'm not very good at spontaneity. (Possibly because I can't spell it, and have just had to look it up after three unsuccessful goes at it. Other words I can't spell include unnecessary, conscience and specific. You may read into this what you will.) I might wake up in the morning and decide that I want to do something, but I can't leave the house without having a distinct plan as to what I'm going to do as otherwise I tend to lose my nerve on the way to the station and end up going to the shops and buying some crisps instead. I suspect there's some deep-seated psychological reason for this, or maybe I'm just crap, I don't know.

I should just get a train into London, follow some signposts and see where I end up. I won't, of course: I'll find somewhere to buy some crisps and then come home. I know me too well.

It's supposed to be Kate Silverton but all I see is grinning vapour

I've been trying to write something about much I detest National Express by The Divine Comedy. I've been trying to do this since yesterday morning, when it came up while I was listening again to a Gideon Coe show from the week as a soothing accompaniment to cleaning the oven, because I hate cleaning the oven and need soothing accompaniment to it. Unfortunately, as I was scrubbing away at the bits of food seemingly welded to the bottom of the oven, he announced some live music from The Divine Comedy; I managed to get through the first song, but the horrifically jaunty opening bars of the sneering hateful contempt for humanity coach-travel song was enough to decide that the risk that I might destroy my computer by dripping Mr Muscle on it would be a small price to pay for not hearing any more.

(In my research for my thing about how much I hate National Express by The Divine Comedy, I discovered that not only did it have a Wikipedia page - NOT NOTABLE NOT NOTABLE NOT NOTABLE - but that this provides a handy link to some flimsy justification, on the grounds that the things in the song are things that Neil Hannon had "seen". So if you "saw", say, an awful, criminally overrated Irish singer-songwriter being attacked by toughs, there would be no difference between, say, calling the police or applauding wildly and offering to join in, for example.)

Then I realised that getting upset about a nine-year-old song probably wasn't worth quite as much time as I was devoting to it, and gave up. So, instead we shall consider people who go one stop on the bus and then get off and walk back in the direction that the bus has come from. Because, of all the things that have raised my ire of late, and goodness me there's a lot, this is the most ire-inducing. (*) I can just about accept people getting on a bus, going one stop and then walking in the direction that the bus is traveling; it's annoying but there may be a good reason - you might be in quite a hurry to make an important appointment or something, and that vital few seconds saved may make all the difference.

But getting on a bus and then walking back in the direction that the bus has come from... given the slow speed of the bus and the distance you have to walk back, chances are that you could have walked that distance in the same time, and that the only reason you've caught the bus is because you're a lazy bastard who hasn't considered the extreme annoyance caused to people who have to sit there while the bus slows down, stops, and then doesn't move for a minute or so while it waits for a gap in the traffic. How do you know that there isn't a Nobel-prize winning scientist sitting there, on the verge of a major breakthrough, desperate to write it all down but forgetting all-important details in that extra minute it takes him/her to get home and get a pen and paper handy? See, people who take the bus one stop and then walk back in the direction that the bus has come from? You're destroying the planet, and when they come and make us all live in cardboard boxes to offset the effects of the credit crunch on rich people, I'm going to come round to yours and piss on it. Oh yes.

(*) Well, all right, second to the police still insisting that it was that bloke they shot's fault that they shot him because of the way he got on and off a bus, but hoping for people who go one stop on a bus and then walk back in the direction that the bus came from to be shot might be a bit excessive.

I saw them

The doctor bade me sit down in the chair and asked me how I was. The older nurse who'd led me down went about her business. All of this was normal. The student nurse sitting in the chair observing the process was a new addition, and it was almost certainly this that made me suddenly self-conscious about taking my top off and allowing my hairy, gross stomach and the weird scars that I was here to have examined and poked at with a needle to be exposed.

This was pathetic enough but worse was to come: you see, the thing about injecting into a weird scar is that it's quite a painful process, and so it causes me to wince, clench my fists and make various wimpering noises in a frankly rather unmanly way. However, with a nice young lady looking on intently, I felt obliged not to make a big deal of it and pretend that it wasn't hurting, only occasionally wincing and suggesting that maybe it did hurt a little.

(While he's doing the injections the doctor will ask me if it's hurting. I'm not sure why he does this; first, he should be able to tell from my various sharp intakes of breath that it's painful; second, it doesn't stop him from doing it. I suppose I could ask him to stop, but then that rather negates the point of going to the hospital in the first place.)

Of course, what would have been really pathetic would have been if I'd gone into work the next day and made a big deal of not making a big deal of it in an attempt to impress upon my workmates what a manly chap I am, but fortunately the person who I would have been making a big deal of not making a big deal of it in front of wasn't around much, and I was feeling oddly lethargic and unsociable even by my standards, which was probably just as well.