It's the Sun wot done it

In the wake of last week's arrests, I was wondering whether the Sun newspaper would have enough journalists left to make up this week's news.

It turns out I needn't have worried. This morning's Sun shows absolutely no change in quality or impartiality:

Lags moan: Our hot chocolate’s too hot
PAMPERED lags are costing taxpayers thousands of pounds through trivial complaints like their COCOA being too hot.

60 stone British man is fattest in the world
A BRIT weighing nearly 60 stone has become the world's fattest man — after the previous record-holder went on a DIET.

Pizza diet could kill me, says scared Claire
A WOMAN who has eaten only cheese and tomato pizza for 31 years has been told she could DIE unless she quits her bizarre dining habit.

New dog food advert is mutt-see television
VIEWING figures will go through the woof tonight — with a telly commercial only DOGS can hear.

Witch-hunt puts us behind ex-Soviets on Press
THE Sun is not a "swamp" that needs draining. Nor are those other great News International titles, The Times and The Sunday Times. Yet in what would at any other time cause uproar in Parliament and among civil liberty and human rights campaigners, its journalists are being treated like members of an organised crime gang.

We can all sleep soundly in our beds, knowing that the Fourth Estate is still holding the world to account on our behalves.

Fascinating stuff, though. Do you think that, if Claire were to give up pizza, she really might live forever?

The price of penguins

BBC: UK sent nuclear sub near Falklands, says Argentina
Argentina's foreign minister has accused the UK of sending a nuclear-armed submarine to the South Atlantic, after making an official complaint to the UN over the Falklands dispute.

This one has manufactured Olympics boycott written all over it. Remember, you heard it here first.

Incidentally, have you noticed how every time the BBC reports on the Falkland Islands, it feels compelled to explain that they are known in Argentina as the Malvinas? What's that got to do with the price of penguins? Whenever they mention Germany, they don't feel the need to explain that the country is known in France as l'Allemagne.

We'll always have Charnock, Richard

An empty restaurant; a romantic table for two by the window; soft music; sweeping, panoramic views towards the setting sun.

Who says I can't show a girl a good time?

Stense at the Charnock Richard Service Station (M6) yesterday.
Stense at the Charnock Richard Service Station (M6) yesterday.

We had planned our tryst with military precision. Stense was heading down the M6 from Scotland. If she let me know as she was passing Killington Lake Services, I could drop everything and bomb down the M65 for an illicit liaison midway between junctions 28 and 27. We only had an hour or so, but we had to seize the opportunity while we could.

It was just like that movie, Ferris Bueller's Day Off Brief Encounter, only relocated 40.4 miles south from Carnforth Station to Charnock Richard Services. Stense, obviously, was reprising Celia Johnson's role, and I was Frankie Howerd.

Who says romance is dead?

Cheap at half the price

Sainsbury's MagazineI am indebted to Jen for drawing my attention to a truly great offer from Sainsbury's.

You can currently take out a subscription to 12 monthly editions of their excellent magazine for just £20. The usual cover price is £1.60.

That's a yearly saving of −80p.

In which I Carter a phrase

We were watching Heston Blumenthal do weird shit with potatoes on telly last night. At one point, Heston and a bunch of mates he had never met before cried out, “Here's one I made earlier!” Heston explained that they were coining a phrase.

No, they weren't. When you coin a phrase, you invent a phrase that nobody has ever used before. For example:

  • degaussing the ocelot;
  • unfolding the Queen Victoria;
  • seeing the back of one's forehead;
  • hat, kettle, dumpling, bun-bun-bun!

(Don't bother Googling them, I've already checked.)

What Heston and his cronies were really doing was employing a cliché. And, if I wanted to be really pedantic, I would point out that “Here's one I made earlier!” isn't a phrase at all; it's a fully formed sentence!

Yes, I know, everyone—including myself—says to coin a phrase when they really mean to employ a cliché. The people who originally used the phrase in this way were probably being ironic. But nobody seems to think about it these days; to them, to coin a phrase actually means to employ a cliché! Which is the exact opposite of its original meaning. How ironic is that?

Anyway, I've had enough of this nonsense and confusion! I am inventing a brand new phrase which, from here on in, means to invent a brand new phrase. And you are not allowed to use that phrase ironically, because I have copyright on it, and only permit you to use it in a totally non-ironic sense. And that phrase is:

  • to Carter a phrase.

(Don't bother, I Googled that as well.)

Immortality at last!

Lip candy

Jen and I recently watched two new, highly acclaimed BBC TV dramas, Great Expectations and Birdsong.

I don't think it would be overstating things to say that our enjoyment of these otherwise excellent series was totally spoilt by the unfeasibly large lips of both of the leading male actors:

Great Expectations / Birdsong
Unfeasibly large lips.

"Who the hell do these pretty boys think they are, with their ridiculous, fat lips: Burberry models or something?" I complained, sounding frighteningly like my dad.

It turns out that both of the actors concerned, Douglas Booth and Eddie Redmayne, have indeed been Burberry models.

I do hope this isn't the start of some regrettable new trend.

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