The Bugging Parrot is my new favourite cartoon character. There he is, on the left, with his good friend and acquaintance the owl.

To think that before iPlayer came along, I'd have missed this stuff. The brilliant thing about iPlayer is that while most people will want to use it for the prime time shows, it also captures a good deal of morning and afternoon telly - so almost everything from CBBC is downloadable too.

When I had a browse this evening, I saw a little screengrab of a cartoon owl and had to find out more. Each episode only lasts a minute, featuring a long-suffering pink owl in one of a series of mishaps. In this instance, the Bugging Parrot's party mood results in a number of minor confrontations. I know exactly how the parrot feels. It is horrible when you're suddenly mindlessly optimistic about life, the universe and everything, only to discover that no one else in the room has been smoking the same substance.

Talking of mindless optimism, I've settled down in front of Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack in the hope it will improve on last night's launch.

Alas, we're half way in and it's letting me down badly. So far all we've had is highlights from last night's show, the drudgefest in which Matt Lucas laboured the same horrible joke for more than ninety minutes.

I hate the way Big Brother always do this - showing the launch, then using the following night's show to air what is almost a clip show, with no new content. It gives them a convenient day's buffer of material for all their future shows but for anyone who steeled themselves and sat through the initial pile of shite, having it all hurled in your face for a second successive night is an appalling abuse. And it's that which often kills off any lingering enthusiasm I had been desperately nurturing.

This morning I wrote a quick piece about the boxer in the house, Anthony Ogogo, for the BBC's 606 website - you can have a read here. Some lovely, and indeed lively, comments as a result!

Now the new Big Brother stuff has started. God, it's so dull. I'm going to have to switch this off. I tried. I really tried. But I'd much rather watch the Bugging Parrot.