Thursday's Trivia

For those who share my antipathy to Bill Oddie (and I know there's at least one) I am compelled to issue an urgent Oddie Red Alert.
There's a total of 4 hours 20 minutes of the little bugger on BBC2 today.
Surely this must be a breach of at least one of OFCOM's broadcasting codes?

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I still can't believe this is true but apparently the BBC is getting Graham Norton, who they paid squillions of pounds to defect from Channel 4, to read out viewers' letters on Points of View in the wasteland of Sunday afternoons.
So let's get this right. You spend millions of licence payers' money to poach an outrageous, gay, late-night TV performer who says f**k and c***t and discusses vibrators with cabinet ministers, you leave him twiddling his thumbs for months, then give him a crap dance competition at Saturday teatime and then, in a masterstoke of matching performer to programme, you get him to read letters from the Home Counties green ink brigade.
What do you need to be a BBC executive? Shit for brains, as they say in my village.

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Another gem from St Bob's gob was his appeal to owners of flat-bed trucks to drive up the M1 and pick up dozens of G8 protestors.
This was a novel re-working of a phrase Bob often used in his younger days: 'I suppose a truck's out of the question?'
It is of course highly dangerous and illegal to ride up the motorway on the back of a flat-bed truck.
Or to travel in any vehicle, other than a coach, without a seat belt.
I once travelled in the back of a van and the girl driving made me lie flat on the floor to prevent any passing police seeing me.
I hasten to add that we weren't engaged in any criminal activity. She was just giving me a lift and her girlfiend, although dressed like a commando, refused to give me the passenger seat and lie in the back in case it made her combat trousers dirty. Which proves you can take the heterosexual out of the woman but you can't take the woman out of the lesbian.

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Like most things, 'being broke' is a relative concept. Never more so than when applied to Michael Jackson.
If you're sitting on several hundred acres of Californian real estate, co-own the Beatles back catalogue and have a steady income from record sales and royalties from the songs you wrote yourself, I wouldn't fancy your chances on getting Income Support.

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At a recent press conference, Blair was asked about some comments by Peter Mandelson. "I haven't read Peter's speech so I can't comment on that" he said.
This is one of those evasion tactics that so pisses people off with politicians. It leads to this kind of thing:

John Humphreys: Prime Minister, the former Minister Ronald Runt said in a speech that you wouldn't recognise the truth if it was served to you at the River Café with a side salad of rocket and balsamic vinegar.
PM: Well I haven't read Ronald's speech so I can't comment.
Humphreys: Later in the same speech he describes you, and I quote, as a 'lying scumbag'.
PM: As I said, I haven't read the speech.
Humphreys: But those are direct quotes from Mr Runt.
PM: I haven't read the whole speech so I don't know the context in which those remarks were made.
Humphreys: 'A mendacious, monkey-brained leader with a meretricious, money-grabbing wife', he says, just to give you a little more context.
PM: Look, I've known Ron for over twenty years and he's someone who expresses himself forcefully. But, you know, hard-working families aren't interested in personalities but in record low interest rates, low inflation and millions of new jobs created.
Humphreys: But isn't it damaging when someone who's known you for twenty years describes you in those terms?
PM: I haven't read the full speech so I can't comment on that.
Humphreys: Thank you, Prime Minister.