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Idly flicking through the free local paper, I came across this ad: It’s for a new betting shop that’s just opened locally. Obviously that’s exactly what we need more of. But much more than that was one of the celebrity attendees to the opening. Paul Merson! He was a wonderful footballer who played for Arsenal…

11 July 2000 – Blatter backs World Cup rotation plan 12 October 2007 – Sepp Blatter … wants to ditch Fifa’s controversial [rotation] selection policy Yes – Sepp Blatter, the man who runs FIFA as his own personal fiefdom (sorry), has had something of a volte face and now wants to scrap the rotation system…

This evening, for the second time this year, it was off to see the Cowboy Junkies. This time, it was at the Royal Albert Hall, and like some of my fellow concert goers, I was at first worried about the paltry turnout. As it happened, by the time the Cowboy Junkies took to the stage,…

Why is it that so many crap ranting books are being published? It’s very disturbing to see them cluttering up the floors of Borders and Waterstones in the run-up to Christmas. And most of them seem to have been penned by Talksport DJs. If I was at that station and didn’t have a Christmas book…

Well that worked surprisingly well. Following the announcement last week that Radiohead was releasing its new album today, I went ahead and bought it, paying a reasonable £5 (+45p service charge), rather than the boastful 0.01p that so many people seem to be paying. Mind you, I’d suggest that a good number of them wouldn’t…

Here’s a question… Is the Strictly Come Dancing results show live? Well here’s the answer. No. It’s recorded on Saturday night. Previously, Strictly Come Dancing has been an all Saturday affair. After the main programme, viewers were invited to vote while they watched the National Lottery show. Then the programme returned for the results. All…

ITV paid £40m for the rights to the 2003 and 2007 Rugby World Cups. So they must be really happy when a certain Antipodean themed pub-chain replaces ITV’s ads for its own – cutting into the ad break to run them, before returning to ITV programming. While Sky Sports undoubtedly has a contract with pubs…

I saw about ten minutes of Sky One’s much trumpeted new gameshow “Are You Smarter Than A Ten Year Old” at the weekend. Based, on a format from Fox in the US, it asks contestants questions aimed at children aged 10 and under. I gave up watching because of that malaise of all recent quiz…

Living TV has for the last few years ridden the crest of a “paranormal” wave – most successfully with their “Most Haunted” franchise, in which teams of “ghosthunters” arrive at some old building and try to sense the presence of spirits from days of old. There are two key elements to these programmes: the “psychic”…

In a blaze of publicity (well, they’d bought the back pages of either one or both of the free London papers), Virgin 1 launched last night at 9pm. Virgin 1 (like most Virgin products – no relation to my employers), is partially Virgin Media’s response to the petty falling out between Virgin Media and Sky…

This is fascinating. Radiohead has suddenly announced that their new album comes out… next week! And much more interesting is their revenue model. Since they’ve been out of contract with EMI, it was I suppose, expected that they’d either re-sign with EMI or another label. But they’ve gone down a very different route. As their…

Jeremy Kyle used to work at Virgin Radio hosting the late night “Jezza’ Confessions” show where he took calls and gave advice in between playing music. But most people these days know him from his morning ITV show where his guests confront various issues. Actually that’s a pretty polite way of saying that some very…

Well the short answer is no. But since a few people I know are beginning to get tempted, I thought I’d lay out all my objections to Apple’s new wondrous piece of technology. Cost Most people in the UK who have large monthly spends are used to getting even the very newest phones free of…