OJ and I grew up there, we know these things. You might catch Marcus Trescothick, England cricketer, in the Deller's Wharf nightclub. Noel Edmonds once landed at our school in a helicopter. Michael Ancram, then Tory chairman, turned up and shook my hand. That's about it. And now I can confirm Taunton maintains this reputation in the eyes of the rest of Britain.

How do I know? Through a two-minute break in transmission during The Daily Politics on the BBC. BBC editor Jamie Donald explains what happened:

Today on The Daily Politics, Jenny Scott gave a "big board" presentation on the troubles in Gaza - the kind of item where to tell the story we run pictures, graphics and clips into a big screen in the studio with a presenter, standing in front, linking them all together live.

Suddenly, in the middle of it, a picture of a bearded man in a studio flashed up, followed by the BBC Two caption saying there had been a break in transmission. We were back on air within two minutes ... The problem was a straightforward bit of finger trouble: I won’t name names, but someone hit the wrong button in the gallery, was distracted by another problem and there we weren’t.

[source: BBC Editors' Blog - 'Break in transmission']

A comment left beneath Jamie Donald's article, by a man named Matthew, reads as follows:

Well, who was that bearded fellow? And what was the room we were seeing? It seems the BBC is in the business of giving minor people an active say in politics - witness the recent News 24 gaffe with Guy (the taxi driver, actually interviewee.) Oh, and add to that list Blue Peter's recruitment of the gafferboy.... the BBC is making stars out of Z list celebrities - the true all out commoner!

The Daily Politics' Alan Connor responds:

The room was in the BBC's Taunton studio, and the "Z-lister" was Antony Jay, writer of Yes Minister.

How nice to be part of an organisation that a) gives its editors space to talk about how they feel when their programmes go wrong, b) gives its audience the right to leave comments, good or bad, immediately below that space, and c) fosters an atmosphere where employees can weigh in with contributions like Alan did, midway through a comment thread involving editors and audience alike.

The BBC Editors' blog is definitely worth checking out, if only since the editors featured have impeccable taste. Newsnight editor Peter Barron demonstrated this today when he linked to us in one of his posts! I won't link to the article in question - that'd be some kind of bizarre reciprocal-linking-squared and it'd all end in tears. And anyway you should be encouraged to read the Editors' Blog in its entirety. Click here to read it.

Big Brother's throwing five new housemates into a brand new 'secret' house next to the old one tonight - and dumping pseudo-evicted housemate Aisleyne in there to boot. It's all sort-of exciting and sort-of desperate on Channel 4's behalf.

BUT - what's this! Prepare yourself for possibly the most hilarious claim to fame ever. The first new contestant, John or Jonathan or something like that, once danced on stage with Five Star! He's got my support already. My hero.

Germany. They just can't miss penalties, can they? I missed most of their quarter-final clash against Argentina today but I caught the penalty shoot-out and the German spot kicks were nothing short of clinical. Not a prayer for the substitute Argentinian goalkeeper, whereas the South Americans rolled a couple of England-esque howlers into the open arms of Jens Lehmann.

And from there the game quickly swapped open arms for clenched fists. Someone stuck a foot out, someone fell over, someone else waded in with a right hook and it all kicked off. Expect to hear more from FIFA about that one, even though an Argentinian sub was sent off for his involvement.

The big one tomorrow, England v Portugal. Were I gambling, my money would still be on Portugal I'm afraid. At least it'll save us losing to the Germans on penalties.

On a related note, check out the updated DayoRimet goasl per game per TV channel counter on the right of the home page. There's now just 0.06 goals per game between the BBC and ITV coverage! It's getting very close indeed but Auntie just has her head above water for now (despite the setback that was Switzerland v Ukraine).

Speaking of the BBC, I'm off to play American Football in Reading on Sunday for an article on the Berkshire website. Everything I know about American Football I learnt playing the John Madden video games produced by EA Sports, so there may be a steep learning curve. Who knows, maybe I'll adopt it full time and join the club?

We didn't post yesterday. My world is falling apart. There are elephants in my head (Parents, don't read this bit: 21/2 pints, 3 g+t and 2 glasses of red isn't a good combination!). And my God-Mother is arriving shortly and I must clean my flat... At least I'm back early-ish. Oh and I turned my fridge up (or I suppose down) yesterday and there are icy bits in my yoghurt. Ooops.

Yes, I admit my prediction was pants. Henman played really well in the first set though and then after that... it was pretty easy for Federer to win. I think my money is on Roddick. I've decided he's quite lovely.

I was looking at the SportRelief stuff today, specifically the "run a mile". However, it's on the 2nd Saturday in July and I may be involved in our County Show. If you've any ideas for either Ollie or I, or both though, I'd be interested to hear them! The madder the better.

Mr Autoglass was very satisfactory. Thumbs-up to DirectLine insurance. On another note, I need to sort a pension out for September... (OJ? Help!)

"Off to the Henley Regatta tomorrow to take photos of "fit men in tight pants". Why am I not doing Ollie's job?!! Having said that, I'm meeting a friend from Lincoln in the morning (in Kent), a friend from College in the evening (in London) and having a pedicure in the middle (in Kent). So it's going to be a hectic day! I'm sure the pedicure, spa and eyebrow pluck will be the most stressful!

On another note, I bought some gorgeous earrings and a bangle today. They match the new clothes I (substitute: my father) bought on Saturday. Now, all I need is some lovely young man to take me out so I can wear them... offers on an email please...

It's refreshing to know that no matter how bad my football predictions have been recently, I am at least on level terms with Amy "is this an opening for Henman?" Kennedy. Tim was polished off with almost machine-like efficiency by Federer, who expressed his surprise at the easy win afterwards:

"I think I just played a really good match. It's so difficult to play against the crowd and to play against a player like Tim. I'm very, very happy and it's something I didn't expect."

Which is thinly veiled code for "God, he's even worse than they said he would be".

Never fear though - Berkshire's very own Jamie Delgado is still in the competition, for another 15 hours or so at least. He's facing French no. 15 seed Sebastien Grosjean in the second round, so it's only a matter of time til the curtains close on his Wimbledon too, but at least he can now say he's outlasted Tim Henman at the All England Tennis Club.

Until such time as he bites the grassy dust I'll be keeping a sporadically updated Delgado Watch page running on the BBC Berkshire website.

Sport Relief's coming up next month - any ideas? Any wacky crusade you want to send me on in the name of charity for the BBC? I will entertain any idea sent to ollie dot williams at gmail dot com. At the moment I'm likely to be playing for a Radio Berkshire XI in a charity football match versus Calcot Hawks, but I sense the opportunity to do something a bit more daft should the opportunity arise.

Off to the Henley Regatta tomorrow to take photos of "fit men in tight pants", to quote a colleague. I'd just like to make it clear that no matter what ends up on the Berkshire website, I shall remain sure of my heterosexuality this time round. Rowers were never my type anyway.

I think we've had enough of this football. What about tennis? I must admit, I've never before been able to get enthused about tennis until the second week of Wimbledon. That's when I usually select who I'd like to win (Henman and Murray aside, obviously). However, perhaps this year will be different: today's tennis will be worth watching. Henman v Federer. Also, Venus Williams is playing, as is Sharapova, Hewitt (quite cute on a good day) and Roddick. Anyway, back to Henman. I'd like to have the confidence to say "Henman will win". But, um, I'm not sure I can. Having said that, Federer has won pretty much everything of late and is said to be suffering from "fatigue", so is this an opening for Henman? Henman also seemed pretty fired up in a BBC interview and confident that he had a chance. Surely if Henman gets over this clash, he'd be on a roll for greater success? Anyway, we may as well support him with full-force today, as we may never get another chance this tournament!

Alright, so Spain 1-3 France is not my predicted Spain 2-1 France, but that's is not the bloody POINT. Nice goal from ol' Zinedine, mind, dinking inside and coolly rolling the ball past the keeper. You'd never guess he was 57 this year.

This sets up a Brazil v France encounter next week. Those Brazilians had better shape up a bit - they've been doing an England so far, ticking all the boxes but convincing absolutely nobody that they will live up to their World Cup billing. If they get turned over by France it will bode incredibly badly. On the plus side, as with this game just gone, whichever side loses that game is one less side that can turn over England if we somehow beat Portugal.

I've been flicking between ITV and Channel 4 to try to catch as much of Big Brother as I can, having missed a week and a bit owing to World Cup action. What an impressive hatchet job they're doing on Richard this week. Granted a few people seem not to like him for being variously artificial and two-faced, as per every other Big Brother contestant in the history of the competition (as per every human being, I might venture, to a degree). Even so, I'm convinced Big Brother are trying to get this message across using every means at their disposal.

It's the little trailers at the end of each 15 minute segment which raise my suspicions. There's a quick 5-second burst of action from the next segment, under the banner "Coming Up", designed to keep you turned on, tuned in and dropped out. Twice in this instalment the "Coming Up" piece has been Richard saying something incredibly arsey. First it was him in the diary room nominating people: "Ooh, ooh, you'll like this one, hold onto your seats because you won't be expecting this one." Eejit. And second, him talking about Imogen: "Shall we watch some paint dry, or go and have a conversation with Imogen? Hmmm...". Plonker. Can't disagree with him, but plonker all the same.

Now is that Richard being so arsey so consistently that Big Brother simply can't find anything else he's done, or is that Big Brother editing the arsiness factor up a bit to compensate for the constant stupidity or tedium pumped out by the rest of them?

You know what? I'm going to make a prediction, cos I'm good at them. Must stop using italics like that, by the way, it's turning me into the blogging equivalent of Nikki, all this over-emphasis. Anyway, the prediction is that Aisleyne will get shunted into the new 'secret' Big Brother house on Friday, and Richard will depart the week after. Then he'll beat France 2-1 with a goal in the 78th minute. Promise.

Alright so it wasn't the Spanish scoring in the 78th minute, it was the French in the 83rd, but that's not the point. It hit a Spanish player last on the way in and I was less than five minutes off the time, so as far as I'm concerned I am nothing less than a World Cup psychic.

Speaking of which, the radio station keeps getting emails from a bloke called Dean who claims to be England's "lucky thirteenth man", a medium whose otherworldly intervention will guide England to World Cup glory. There's plenty of evidence cited for this ability, much of it fairly flimsy although I'll admit I don't have the email and would hate to pass comment without being able to give specific examples. I do, however, note that the press releases we get have become increasingly desperate in nature over the past week or two. The moment England get knocked out, I'll be on the phone to him.

Half time and the pesky French have ruined my pre-match prediction by grabbing a goal - it's Spain 1-1 France. Definite penalty for the Spanish which was tucked right into the corner of the net, French goal should probably have been hooked off the line by one of two defenders, plonkers.

Second half prediction so as to keep things interesting or, far more likely, rain down upon myself further humiiliation: Spain 2-1 France. Spanish goal from Torres in the 78th minute. Believe it.

Back on planet Earth and in the ITV studio, I do love these skin-coloured microphones the ITV presenter and pundits have been forced to wear. God knows why they don't just get little lapel mics like the rest of the world - no, no, they have to try to look trendy. Alas the people deciding which colour most accurately represents "skin" had failed to take Terry Venables' glorious perma-tan into account, so the mic glows an almost radioactive white against his, well, equally glowing bronzed pores. There's a lovely thought for the second half.

It's Spain v France for the last remaining place in the quarter-finals, and this ought to be a game to relish. There's the footballing side of things which should be pretty good but, more to the point, one of these two giants is going home by the end of tonight, and that can only be a good thing from an English perspective. I reckon Spain will win 2-0.

Ukraine finally squeezed into the quarter-finals last night on penalties, Switzerland valiantly but somewhat bizarrely refusing point blank to score, be it from the spot or in normal time. It's a very good contender for Most Boring Match of World Cup 2006, of 2006, and indeed of the twenty-first century to date. (There were a few in Division Two in the 1990s which trump it.)

The best entertainment that can be drawn from such a deadly boring game is watching BBC editors bitching about it on their new blog, aptly titled "The Editors". You'd think the bods in charge of Match Of The Day would feel most aggrieved at the pitiful World Cup offering the Beeb had been forced to serve. Think again. Here's the contribution today of Craig Oliver, editor of the Ten O'Clock News:

Sometimes defeat is snatched from the jaws of victory.

Home Editor Mark Easton got a great, unexpected scoop - an interview with Charles Clarke, sacked as Home Secretary last month.

Even better it was embargoed until 10pm. That meant the Ten O'Clock News would be the first programme to run with it - ahead of a longer version on Newsnight.

You may think that's of little consequence, but we editors care deeply about such things.

What we hadn't factored in was that last night's Ten would follow what was arguably the worst football match of all time: a no-score-bore that went to extra time and then penalties. That meant we ended up on air at 10:40pm - well after Newsnight had started.

I wouldn't have minded - but even the penalties were boring. Switzerland didn't even score one.

[source: BBC, The Editors - 'C'est La Guerre']

Which is quite funny, really. As the game headed into extra time, fans in Switzerland and Ukraine chewed their nails off with nervous tension, fans in the rest of the world chewed their limbs off in order to escape having to watch it, and BBC editors chewed their armchairs in absolute despair.

Best of all though is the comments section (this being a blog, there are comments! I keep promising to sort our comments out. I'm working on it). Peter Barron, Newsnight editor, has come up with this riposte:

Yes, but consider our position. I had to watch 120 minutes of the worst football match of all time and then switch over before the moderately exciting bit to watch Newsnight. Sadly, hardly anyone else did, so though we got the scoop we missed all your Ten viewers who'd normally join us for more.

I must be due a BBC weblog. In the Dayorama 'New Entry' control panel there's a place to put a small amount of descriptive text for the Dayorama search engine to use. Throughout my DayoRimet entries I've been writing "World Cup blogging from Dayorama" in it. This time round I accidentally wrote "World Cup blogging from the BBC" before noticing...

It's half time in extra time between Switzerland and Ukraine, and neither side has shown any inclination to nip up the pitch and poke the ball past the opposing goalkeeper. I know I picked out this game quite early on as a likely bore draw, but seriously, I didn't demand this level of tedium.

The one advantage of this is we're likely to see our first penalty shoot-out of the competition, so at least there's the prospect of some excitement after this rather long wait. Equally it means England won't be the first to suffer when they inevitably get chucked out of the competition on penalties at a later date.

Now, it's been a while since I trawled YouTube for interesting World Cup video clips, but needs must and with these two teams on screen, needs really must. And if you thought the referee who doled out three red cards and 97 yellow cards yesterday was bad...

Sticking with referees, here's how to dish out a red card with absolutely no remorse:

And finally back to 2002, for Rivaldo's hilarious play-acting. Remember? Turkish player flicks ball to Rivaldo for Brazil corner. Ball hits Rivaldo's thigh. Rivaldo collapses holding face, Turkish player sent off:

The title of this post comes from Mick McCarthy, who's just expressed the opinion on BBC1 that he'd rather both teams lost, they've been that bad. Sadly the real loser is the BBC in the DayoRimet goals per game per channel stakes, with ITV having a few cracking games on the way with which to catch up...

What a match Italy v Australia was - a tense 0-0 thriller until the very last minute, no, seconds, at which point the Italians dispatched a penalty to crush Aussie dreams. I only saw the highlights earlier this evening but even then my heart was in my mouth watching that spot kick. That's exactly why World Cups exist.

Forget glorious goals from 30 yards out; forget legions of fans bouncing up and down in German market squares; forget watching every goal from every angle a million times over on TV. It's about those beautiful, everlasting moments in these football matches where time stands still for hundreds of thousands of people all over the globe. There are ten seconds remaining in a game of football. One man is going to kick a ball at a net, and another man is going to try to stop the ball going into the net. One of these men will, almost instantaneously, become a hero to an entire nation of people; the other will sit tremendously, horribly alone on the floor for an eternity. And the globe holds its breath. In that silence, in that stadium, in that split second before the whistle blows for the kick to be taken, there exists magic.

In another stadium in Germany, a bit later on in the day, with two different sets of fans, there exists no magic. Instead, there exists Switzerland and Ukraine, each just rubbish enough to cancel out the other. The pre-match continuity announcer on BBC1 gave an absurdly enthusiastic build-up to this one: "And now on BBC1 it's Switzerland... versus Ukraine... LIVE!" Well, it's still on BBC1 and it's still what passes for technically "live", but it's the other sort of 0-0 - a dreary, hard-fought, talentless, unimaginative affair, a bit like John Major and Edwina Currie. (Did you see that Spitting Image tribute last night? Great stuff. Bring it back.) I need to consult my wallchart and work out if England stand any chance whatsoever of meeting either of these two teams because I swear if there's any team we could beat, it's one of these two. Sadly, I stand by my prediction that Portugal will sweep us aside next week.

Still, in other news Wimbledon has started, a far better prospect for fans of English triumph since there's none of this false hope as we know the English are going to lose heavily, it's just a matter of time and rain. We had former British Davis Cup player Mark Cox on the radio earlier, running through the trio of Berkshire-based players in the men's singles. Alex Bogdanovic, from Basingstoke, is playing Rafael Nadal, from an entirely different cosmos of tennis ability. Nadal is the number two seed. Mark Cox described this as "an opportunity" for Bogdanovic. He did not clarify as to what, precisely, this was an opportunity to do. It is certainly an opportunity to enter the record books for swiftest and heaviest defeat. Is there a Mount Murray yet to go with Henman Hill? Or is the Hill very much a one-off? I don't recall a Rusedski Rump, or at least certainly not one with a few hundred people perched anxiously on it...

Back to the football and at half time between Switzerland and Ukraine, the pundits in the BBC studio discard what few highlights exist in favour of footage of Swedish girls kissing during a match. This is a decision applauded by football fans up and down the country. Former footballer and pundit Leonardo, sat in the BBC studio, suggests the girls "now only need a Brazilian". Genius.

..crack car windscreens! Grr. Yesterday, along the M2 a stone hit my windscreen. It felt rather heavy, so I quickly looked at the windscreen to see if I could see any chips, but all seemed fine. I smiled. This morning my initial observations proved crap. The stone has chipped quite a large area by my wiper and a crack has spread about 4" up the windscreen. Not enough to affect my vision at all, but large enough that I'll need to get it sorted. I was hoping I wouldn't have to bother, but when my Dad came in he said "oh that's a bad-un, luv". Great. In the CAB again tomorrow, but on Wednesday I shall be getting Mr Autoglass to come and do their thing. Direct Line insurance are great, but I still need to find £60 to deal with my excess. When it rains, it pours! (especially since I just cut myself on a tin lid).

Why? Gorgeous day yesterday. Raining today. And what is it? Yep, you guessed it... the start of Wimbledon!

Well they tried, those Dutch, they really tried, throwing everything at the Portuguese in the dying moments of this game, but to no avail. But at least the referee didn't let us down, finding it within himself to award a second yellow to Van Bronckhorst, thereby racking up a World Cup record four dismissals in one game (and equalling the record for yellow cards). Graham Poll eat your heart out.

One of the ITV pundits before the game said England would prefer to face Portugal next week. That's nonsense, I'm bloody positive I'd rather have played Holland, who have looked like the sort of team England can beat: good, honest, hard-working play with steely determination and plenty of stamina. We can handle that, it's fairly similar to the way we play. The Portuguese, on the other hand, have got a bit of verve, a jazzy, fluid interpretation of what it means to play the beautiful game, a footballing syncopation, va va voom, call it what you will. You might want to call it 'cheating' and I'd probably agree, but they don't do anything quite by the book, and I reckon that'll completely fox England next week. I'm writing us off already. Don't say I didn't warn you.

The Portugal v Holland last sixteen match is rapidly descending into farce. The record for the number of cards shown in a World Cup finals match is 16, and we've now had at least 15 in this match if not more.

I'll have to check the statistics at the end of the game to be sure, although at this rate it'll probably be abandoned when one team drops below 7 players. It's currently 10 Dutch v 9 Portuguese, and frankly if I were refereeing I'd have sent Figo off earlier too for a headbutt-of-sorts the ref missed. The official is bound to come in for criticism after this one but the players on both sides really, really haven't helped much by being genuinely foul, artificial, conniving, cheating idiots. The game began as a great advert for football but quickly became an indictment of the spirit in which football matches can sometimes take place.

ITV also reckon there've been 15 yellow cards so far (red cards being two yellow, there's not been a straight red as far as I'm aware), so we're one off the record with a good ten minutes remaining, assuming we don't get a Dutch equaliser and head into extra time. Bags of time to smash the record.

Most England fans feel queasy going into every single game, so it's good to see David Beckham now knows how we feel - after scoring what turned out to be the winning goal versus Ecuador, Golden Balls nipped over to the touchline and treated the world to Orange Chunks (also applicable to Wayne Rooney with his dodgy tan).

Anyway, we're through. We can now spend the next few days feigning interest in the likes of Switzerland v Ukraine until we get to the business end of the quarter finals. Ticket touts throughout Germany have just risen as one in celebration, safe in the knowledge that a hundred thousand plonkers will remain camped out in a once-quiet corner of Germany for the next epic England encounter. All hundred thousand will be tipping the piggy-bank upside down and signing up to every CapitalOne mailshot they've ever had in the hope of raising sufficient funds for a seat in the stadium. As the advertising slogan goes, so goes the demand of every tout for the next seven days: "What's in your wallet?"

GOAL! David Beckham finally breaks the deadlock with a swirling free kick which sneaks in between the Ecuadorian goalkeeper's outstretched right hand and the goalpost. It's no exaggeration to say England have been at best worryingly mediocre, at worst gobsmackingly bereft of ideas in this match, but we're 1-0 up and that's what matters.

David Beckham is now the only Englishman to have scored in three different World Cups. I've always said how much I rate him. Best footballer ever, won't hear a bad word said.

Meanwhile Sven is doing his level best to resemble Mike Bassett (of the film Mike Bassett: England Manager, played by Ricky Tomlinson), thumping the side of the dugout in exasperation and pointing to a piece of paper held by Steve McClaren in a way that just screamed: "Hmm... I do not know, Steve... I'll try an A." "No boss, no As in it. You've got a head, a body and the hanging apparatus, three guesses left."

There've been ten games in the World Cup since I last updated the DayoRimet goals per game per TV channel widget on the right (I've been a bit lazy about it, I know). All ten games have been shown on the BBC, although four of them weren't on mainstream not-got-a-red-button terrestrial, so the widget discounts those four. But even in the space of the remaining six games the Beeb have shown remarkable goalscoring consistency - their average has dropped just 0.01 of a goal to 2.52.

That's over a quarter of a goal per game ahead of ITV, way back on 2.24 goals per game at the time of writing. Each channel has now carried 21 games on mainstream terrestrial television, with Auntie smacking 53 goals past various World Cup keepers compared to the third channel's 47.

ITV have only got Portugal v Holland, Italy v Australia, Brazil v Ghana and Spain v France, two quarter-finals and one semi-final to pull back that six-goal deficit. The BBC have got two quarter-finals, one semi-final, England v Ecuador and Switzerland v Ukraine at their disposal.

If England beat Ecuador then ITV will show two semi-finals, since they'll keep their "other" semi-final and will share coverage of the England one with the BBC. But that means both channels will get the same number of goals added to their World Cup tally so it's no use to ITV really. Both channels get the final too, so if ITV are still lagging behijnd after the last semi, they've no comeback (unless they've got the 3rd v 4th game I suppose, but I might disqualify that from the count on the grounds nobody cares).

Looking back at those 'last sixteen' matches, ITV should make good ground on the BBC. The Beeb have got England v Ecuador, in which England are guaranteed to make a meal out of a low-scoring affair and then either lose it or scrape through, and Switzerland v Ukraine, which somehow doesn't ring true as a goalfest. ITV, by contrast, have got Brazil v Ghana, in which the South Americans can be expected to try to burst the net, and Italy v Australia, a cracker of a game in the making. The French are notoriously rubbish at scoring but the Spanish might bring their A game to that one, and Portugal v Holland ought to have some nice attacking football. It's not all over yet.

Well I went to a hen night last night and rather like Ollie I feel as though "my body is a quivering wreck, battered simultaneously by alcohol, sleep deprivation and sheer weight of laughter". But it was a great laugh and lots of fun, even though I think I'm going to go and have an afternoon nap. I wasn't that p*ssed, but I definitely sunk an incredibly quantity of alcohol throughout the evening. At least the man of the household greeted us with pints of water when we got in and then made us bacon butties for breakfast. Needless to say I didn't rush to drive home this morning!

Prior to the hen night yesterday, I accompanied my parents into Canterbury. Actually, we went in separate cars since I would be going off to the hen night, but at least I agreed to go along. Why did I want to keep them company choosing a bed? Let me see? Because perhaps my father would take pity on me and buy me a new skirt and top? And the plan worked. I then bought myself a pair of red shoes. They're actually very tasteful (and a dull red, not bright red) but do have, as my God-Mother described, "a f*ck me heel". Woe betide the first man who sees me wearing them. My Dad passed amusing wisdom on the female psych though: why did you buy red shoes when you don't own anything red, and then get me to buy you a turquoise top and white and turquoise skirt... when you don't have anything else in that colour? No wonder women are always complaining that they don't have enough clothes that "match". Heh.

Question to the world: Is OJ alive? Has Devon engulfed him? Are you lost amid washing and gardening?!

Have you ever had one of those moments where you hear a phrase, or a fact, that you've never heard before in your life, and then hardly a moment passes before you see it somewhere else? And you think to yourself, "How come I have never come across this before in my entire life, and now it seems like it's absolutely everywhere?"

It happens fairly frequently to me and it's just happened again. Yesterday I read an article by Peter Barron, editor of Newsnight, about podcasts, which included this excerpt about the current number one podcast on iTunes:

It's something called Kitcast. Kitcast is, according to the blurb, "a ten minute weekly videoblog covering the world of sex". Each episode, it goes on, is "hosted by a lingerie clad (non-nude) hostess Ms Kitka" - a little red box warns of explicit content.

[source: BBC News - 'Top of the Pods']

Ms Kitka. "Interesting name, that," thought I. "No idea where it comes from though. Probably Russian."

Fast forward to this morning and I'm trying to find some decent television to watch (see previous post). The best Sky One can come up with is Supervixens, an exploration of comic book superheroines and the actresses who've appeared as them in the movies and on smaller screens. I only catch the very end, which is about Catwoman. I learn that at least one incarnation of Catwoman had an alter ego known as Ms Kitka!

I go 21 years and 7 months never having once heard the name "Kitka", and in the space of 24 hours I know it serves both as a disguise for Catwoman and the nom de pod for some sex-obsessed woman. Fascinating.

There is nothing on TV at this hour of a Sunday morning.

This is good news since it encourages us all to go and do something mildly productive, like write on the internet about the lack of good television on Sunday mornings. But even so.

Sky Three's "Animal Airport" looked like a viable alternative - I'm a sucker for airport television - but the description didn't really sell me. "A Mastiff en route from Prague to Boston is stopped at Heathrow Animal Reception Centre when staff think it has been over-sedated by its owner." So essentially this would be half an hour spent watching a drowsy dog.

Still, it beats Sky Sports 1: "Cricket Writers On TV". Says the description: "Paul Allott is joined by Mike Dickson, Michael Henderson and Steve James to discuss the cricket stories making the papers and the latest news on and off the field."

Well that's unmissable television. No actual cricket highlights, just three cricket pundits (have you heard of any of them?) and a presenter locked in a darkened studio for a whole hour and a half. Very reminiscent of the Sky Sports show which plonks football writers in a faux-dining room with Jimmy Hill each weekend, for an hour's heart-stopping broadcasting.

Sky have outdone themselves on this one though, since the brand new Sky Sports High Definition channel is also showing "Cricket Writers On TV"! As if ninety minutes of cricket writers talking were somehow not punishment enough, you can choose to watch the discussion with every wrinkle, scowl and nose-hair rendered in unprecedented quality! All you have to do is call 08702 404020 for further information.

Of course this Sunday's even worse than your average Sunday since we have the England v Ecuador World Cup clash this afternoon. Broadcasters have therefore made the wise assumption that most of the television-watching nation is either a) already drunk, b) off getting drunk somewhere, c) out buying supplies with which to get drunk, d) milling around (drunk) amid the wreckage of plastic chairs in a market square in Germany, trying to find a jumbotron television, or e) in a police cell in Germany (drunk) trying to find a jumbotron television.

Full DayoRimet coverage later on, of course.

Oh dear me, what a 24 hours or so. My body is a quivering wreck, battered simultaneously by alcohol, sleep deprivation and sheer weight of laughter. I don't think I've stopped laughing since this time last night, much of it Hitler-cat related.

Not all of it, mind. Some of it was definitely Singstar-related. Singstar is the PlayStation karaoke phenomenon which allows friends to compete against each other singing various eighties anthems (or other tracks depending on the version(s) you purchase). You can see on-screen how close you are to being in tune, how many points you and your opponent have scored, and watch the video for the song with the lyrics at the same time. I can't entirely remember all the songs I did but Kate Bush, 'Running Up That Hill', was definitely involved.

Singstar is great for plain old karaoke but it comes into its own with its unique, hilarious game of 'karaoke pong'. Pong was the seminal early arcade game which took the form of extremely rudimentary computer tennis, using big white blocks to smack a smaller white block from one side of the screen to another and back again. In the Singstar version you use your voice to direct your big white block - 'paddle' - up and down your side of the screen depending on where the ball is travelling (miss the ball and you lose). Emit a high note and your paddle soars upwards; unleash your booming baritone and the paddle plunges lower. It is harder than you think, not least because you end up laughing and the sound of laughter sends your paddle all over the place.

I do have a wonderful sound recording of people playing Singstar pong last night and producing a series of squeaks and growls - I'll try to rescue the audio off my phone at some point.

In other news I can tell you our Ascot Ladies' Day photo gallery received over 100,000 page impressions yesterday, a huge figure, so we're very happy indeed about that. I'll confess, I had my doubts that sixty-plus pictures of hats could hold public attention, but my god have I been proved wrong. If you know an event coming up in Berkshire that'd make a good photo gallery then definitely let me know, they're always immensely popular.

There's likely to be a lack of DayoRimet update tonight since tonight is party night. Instead I give you 'Hitler Cats', a selection of photos of cats which bear a resemblance to Hitler. Laugh, we nearly died.

Well I'm at home in Kent for the summer now (July/August). That's not strictly true I suppose. I'll be in London (or elsewhere) most weeks but I'm making Kent my base (it's much nicer, not to mention cheaper, to sponge off my parents!). I'd also really have a relaxing summer before work. There's things I need to do, people I need to see and stuff I need to sort. I can't believe it really. The working world looms (but so does finding some sexy young man to go out with... so that's quite a fun challenge too...) I'm also going to go back to the CAB for one or more days a week, and I'll be involved, rather inevitably, in DofE stuff. I know I could have build an orphanage in Bosnia, mended wells in Africa or travelled the world. But perhaps I just want to be utterly selfish for a change and just to do things I want to do and relax. So that's that really.

Daisy (I haven't mentioned her for a while) consumed a whole mouse earlier. And then she was sick. I think we have a cat with Bulimia.

Oh dear me. The English football team haven't covered themselves in glory yet but they've got some way to go before they match the achievement of referee Graham Poll, who entirely lost the plot towards the back end of tonight's game between Croatia and Australia.

The Croatians missed out thanks to an Australian equaliser (final score: 2-2) so it's the Aussies going into the knockout stages alongside Brazil. It's the first time the Australian side have managed that, and it's also the first time a player has been booked three times in a game before being sent off. The Croatian Simunic had been booked earlier in the game before being given a second yellow towards the end of normal time by Poll - but no red card, so Simunic didn't bother walking.

A few minutes later Simunic committed another offence and Poll booked him again! This time, out came the red.Better late than never, Graham.

Harry Kewell's goal - the one that took Australia through - was probably offside too. A bit of an officiating shambles, this one, but what a gripping game.

Well, I'll confess the supposed ultimate football match between Holland and Argentina became so boring I drifted off to sleep for most of the second half. I gather I didn't miss much. Occasionally the world's greatest competition can flatter to deceive (just ask Michael Owen, I suppose).

There's a lovely piece on the Mexican national side on the twohundredpercent blog:

I'm thoroughly enjoying Mexico's stay at the World Cup, because, in an era when everything else often appears to be becoming more and more homogenized, Mexico are inscrutably, indefatigably, defiantly mad. Well, they're inscrutably, indefatigably, defiantly Mexican. But it's the same difference. This is, after all, the country that gave the world tequila, chili, peyote and the sombrero. Why should we expect anything less?

Read the rest of it here.

Since it's confession time, I'll also admit my finger is slipping from the World Cup pulse day by day thanks to Royal Ascot. I'm writing daily online updates on the racing here so I end up watching horses all day instead of the football. Happily Ascot wraps itself up just in time for England to play Ecuador on Sunday so normal service will be resumed over the weekend.

Finally, off the sporting track entirely and did you notice MyCokeMusic is closing? As a subscriber with some credits left I got an email off them letting me know a couple of days ago. How embarrassing for Coke, thoroughly thrashed by iTunes despite the global marketing campaign. Not that I expect it's made too much a dent in their business. In fact I should imagine the only people left short-changed by the whole affair are the end users as per the norm.

Still, it's not stopping me enjoying music as I long since defected to the once-despised iTunes. Many purchases tonight in a fit of excess: Keane "Under The Iron Sea", Nelly Furtado "Maneater" (oh how I love her), Captain "Broke" (keep getting sent their press releases so I thought I might as well, and it's quite good), The Automic "Monster" (saw them at T4 On The Beach and liked it), Nerina Pallot "Everyone's Going To War" (heard it on the radio so often I've started enjoying it, which is the exact opposite of the usual effect overexposure has on me) and finally Hope Of The States "Left". That's an entire new album and my god I'm so pleased. I played their first album, "The Lost Riots", to death two years ago. That was when I was in Portugal for the European Championships. Hope Of The States are obviously a band who like to release their records as soundtracks to major footballing competitions.

Sweden have equalised. My World Cup predicting ability - see below - remains in tatters. It's 2-2 and within minutes England are right back in the mire of media cynicism and speculation. It's not been an overly convincing performance anyway, without letting in a soft goal from a throw-in.

And there's still some injury time left. Those Germans are lurking in the shadows at this rate...

A Steven Gerrard header! There's an unlikely one. Normally when he scores it's from 40 yards out and becomes a guaranteed goal-of-the-season/tournament/decade/millennium contender. This one was solid if unspectacular, but it'll certainly do.

So, 2-1 to England! Five minutes remaining. Before the game - and Amy can attest to this - I predicted a 2-1 England win. It's looking like for once in my life I'll have been bang on the money with a prediction. Shame I'm not a gambling man (and neither's Sven - Gerrard on instead of Walcott much to my disappointment, but look how that's paid off).

Marcus Allback's equalised for Sweden, so to cheer you up here's Joe Cole's goal from the first half:

Well what a goal that was.

I have always said Joe Cole is rubbish. I saw him play for West Ham against Manchester City a good few years ago and he had an abysmal game - I couldn't understand why so many people rated him. And I never saw an improvement at Chelsea either. I've been talking rubbish, the man's a living legend, I'm converted. I'll even stick an England flag on my car for him.

Why no Theo Walcott when Owen went off injured in the first minute? Crouch is on a yellow card so we're risking his participation in the first knockout game by sending him on as a replacement. This would have been the perfect game to send young Theo on and give him some experience, or even a goal if he got lucky. It seems a shame he's missed out - maybe he'll get a chance later on though, with the second half just underway.

As for Amy, sod Top Of The Pops. Popworld is where all the cool kids are at these days in terms of clunky old terrestrial music shows. The BBC are now going to be able to drop the ailing behemoth and focus on nimble, fleet-of-foot broadcasts - from big events like Reading festival to smaller affairs demanding ease of mobility like guerrilla gigs.

As I type, England have just scored a goal against Sweden. The commentator has just said, "who needs a right leg when you can do it with a left leg like that". Whatever. Anyway, apparently it is a "major goal of the tournament". Anyway, I've just got back to London from Kent. 45mins flat. No traffic. Nothing. It was wonderful to drive when everyone else was watching football! I sincerely recommend it!

In other news, Top Of The Pops is being axed after 42years on BBC. A sign of the times I suppose, but a whole generation of children will grow up without it! Travesty!

So, you thought people with England flags on their cars were beyond help. And you were right. But spare extra thought for individuals so consumed with inflagtuation that they end up in this state:

No, you know what? Forget that. Tonight is Hopeless England Flag Amnesty Night (HEFAN for short) and England will be hoping for a heavenly victory, or even a point, against Sweden. We've not beaten the Swedes since the dawn of time so it could be a tall order - Peter Crouch pun here - but it's got to be worth trying. If we win or draw we get Ecuador in the next round; lose and it's Germany. Losing is not an option.

Over the weekend I forgot to mention a lovely bit of radio I heard last Saturday. The BBC Big Screen had turned up at RAF Fairford, the US airbase tucked inside British soil, ahead of the Italy v USA game. But Portugal v Iran was the first game of the day to be shown on the screen, and the Big Screen team have a policy of hoisting the flags of the two competing nations on either side of the jumbotron during the match. Thus Radio Five Live asked the US commander at the base for his thoughts on the inevitable raising of an Iranian flag on US military soil! A concept he actually handled incredibly well.

A spot of admin: the DayoRimet goals-per-game-per-TV-channel count has now been updated after a few days' neglect. Where a channel has more than one game being broadcast simultaneously (e.g. ITV have tonight got England v Sweden on ITV1 and Paraguay v Trinidad & Tobago on ITV4), only the game carried on terrestrial television will count towards the goal totals.

I'll be back after the game to preview the next step in what must, surely, be England's year. Arf arf.

Back to the DayoRimet action then, after a short interlude during which I popped up on a beach in Somerset listening to what youngsters today might refer to as, er, bangin' choons. T4 on the Beach was an extremely good day out and it comes recommended by me to anyone, especially if you've got a family to entertain.

So we've missed a few matches during my absence but if we're honest, no one really cared about them anyway, bar the game involving France since a good number of English fans wouldn't mind seeing them leave the competition. Not that this should be much of a shock given the mighty struggle the French endure simply to score a single goal in the World Cup, let alone qualify for the knockout stage or win it. Spain look like more of a threat, as do Italy, and that's without even leaving western Europe. One look at South America and the English have tail firmly between legs.

Let's hope we buck our ideas up against Sweden tomorrow. On paper they're the first side we're facing who could do real damage, particularly given our abysmal track record against them, so we want no larking around, an early goal and a clean sheet for Robinson.

The BBC put together a beautiful montage of World Cup highlights so far to mark the halfway stage in the competition. If it surfaces on YouTube - unlikely but not impossible - I'll link to it, it's well worth viewing. Almost enough to bring a tear to the eye. Especially if you're the poor BBC employee sat there piecing it together for two days only to see it frittered away like a Montgomerie lead in a major at the end of Spain v Tunisia.

On YouTube tonight we have two hilarious ladies from oop north who are so famous, they're in the Rochdale Observer. Earlier they posted an anti-World Cup song on the internet which had something to do with sealions. Forget that, I'm not going to show you that. This is their second video, where they bask in the glory the first one brought them:

And from Germany itself we have your worst nightmare. An endless conveyor belt of Dutch football fans. Seriously, hell hath no fury like a never-ending orange mass of Holland hopefuls and hooters:

More tomorrow night during the England game of course.

Not quite as dramatic as that, actually. My exam today was a real b*tch. Some questions which you just knew you had nailed, and others which you had no idea about. We aren't allowed to leave in the first 30mins, or the last 15mins. With 20mins to go I had done all I could. Even if I had done more work this weekend, all things considered I doubt I would have answered the questions any better. I may perhaps have been able to spend the remaining 20mins perfecting my answers, but I wasn't in the right frame of mind. I left with 16mins to go. I aiming for 51%. Let's keep those fingers crossed. The hardest exam is on Wednesday. Then I too will probably have a drink or two. Lucky OJ for finishing already! B*astard!

So I've finally finished my course, with a three hour exam this morning. In the spirit of finals last year, here are my questions:

Section A

1: Was Frederick Jackson Turner's noton of the 'exceptionalism' of American experience his most valuable contribution to historical scholarship?

7: How advantageously did Bernard Bailyn and those influenced by his work weave a consideration of ideology into their studiyes of the revolutionary era and the early republic?

Section B

9: Have the New Western Historians suceeded in transcending a 'good guys/bad guys' approach to their subject?

These were the three questions I wanted to come up. The first two were great but, despite at least three weeks of study on New Western History, I still don't have a clue about what the hell they are talking about. I assumed they were talking about Indians, and wrote as much as I could in the half hour I had left. Eheu. The first two were good though. Anyway, after a week without alcohol, I'm off to get even more drunk! Woo! Have already done punting and pool...

For OJ, I send Ollie and I's best luck for his exam tomorrow and also the wisdom (from OJ) that I certainly need to get me through the next few days:

"It's just a walk in the park Kazanski"

I feel as though it's a walk in a mountain range. But heh. At least the sun is shining. Guess we have to go kick ass and not crash and burn...

This is a Dayoramoblog post from Ollie, who has reported back by phone and can't edit the text of the post.

Instead, you can listen to his report using the Audioblog player you should see in this post somewhere.

He'll probably change this text to reflect the contents of the report when he gets a chance.

Enjoy!

This is a Dayoramoblog post from Ollie, who has reported back by phone and can't edit the text of the post.

Instead, you can listen to his report using the Audioblog player you should see in this post somewhere.

He'll probably change this text to reflect the contents of the report when he gets a chance.

Enjoy!

It's odd. We all know I've had an eating disorder, so it comes as no surprise if I have days where I don't eat much (very rare though now). However, ironically when I'm down/low/depressed I generally comfort eat. But this weekend is the first time that events have meant my body has been in utter turmoil. My stomach is a knot. I just don't want to eat. Everything makes me feel sick. And I've an exam tomorrow so have to work and need the energy to get through the next 24hrs. And what do I turn to? A good old tin of Ambrosia rice pudding. Forget the advert on TV for "we all love clover" where everyone cries. Rice Pudding is by far the best thing!

The Post Office. Been on their website lately? You wouldn't ever guess that the Post Office actually sold stamps and sent post around the country. No wonder the damn post never arrives - the Post Office seem to have forgotten that they should be dealing with it. On the website until you actually scroll down the page, all you can find out about is insurance, phone contracts and "flowers and gifts" (? wtf). Even on google the description of the website reads "The Post Office - Providing home, car and travel insurance, foreign currency exchange, banking, investments and bill payments." Nothing to do with the actual post then? I had to scroll down the front page and then click through three different pages before I found how I could send something with guaranteed next day delivery and how much it would cost. Incidentally, it's £4.10 to send something Special Delivery. Serves me right for forgetting to send a damn good luck card sooner.

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It would appear that the Royal Mail is the best place to look. But answer this. If you want to track something it asks you for your "13 digit reference number". Well, my "13 digit number" actually includes four letters. But apparently they are now numbers. Go figure.

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With the contents of this post, and the last... I don't think anyone should cross me today...they won't know what has hit them!!

Yesterday I went to the Michelangelo exhibition at the British Museum. For anyone who has been in London lately you won't have been able to miss the posters in the tubes, the adverts in Time Out or the free books about Michelangelo with the Standard. So, since I adore the Sistene Chapel, and since it seemed the exhibition of the season to go and see, we trotted off yesterday. OK, so the exhibition has had amazing reviews, so much so that they are opening until Midnight on the last day due to high demand. And it's clear to see why. The sketches are amazing. The detail, the study of the human body (especially male) are incredibly impressive, especially when you step back and realise that these were drawn in the 1400s-1500s. But that aside, the exhibition annoyed me. Forget the quality of what was being displayed, just think about the display itself. The area of the exhibition was tiny considering the amount on display and the volume of people visiting. Just because the sketches are small, doesn't mean you can't give them lots of space. The comments on each drawing were annoying too - they weren't remotely critical. Every comment seemed sycophantic and after a while I wanted to read something critical. I mean, he clearly couldn't draw women (unless you've seen lots of women with breasts stuck on the body like tennis balls and spread so far apart across the chest that the look as though they are about to fall off) but did anyone recognise this fact? No, they simply tell you he was homosexual and this is meant to excuse him from drawing women. So that was that. Amazing, but I think the British Museum could have done better with their presentation.

And then weI went to see the Taming of the Shrew by the Shakespeare Company at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. Amazing. I'd never been to RP before, and it's lovely. It has beautiful rose gardens, flowered avenues and lovely fountains. Quite different to any of the other London parks. And of course it is in North London. So that means that there are fewer tourists and more locals. Since yesterday was such a lovely day the park was very busy - reading groups, yoga classes, anything which would generally be associated with the slightly more bohemian and relaxed side of North London. It makes West London seem worlds apart. The snobbery and the Sloane expression miles away. The Theatre itself was very enjoyable. The production itself was great and the atmosphere in the Theatre itself was wonderful - very relaxed, very united, you could enjoy your picnic in the grounds around it. Certainly something I would go and see again without a doubt (different play, of course!).

BBC News Online headline: "Search widening for girl in car". You'd think there's only so many places she could be. Have they tried the boot?

All the talk this morning's about that twenty-four pass Argentina goal (see earlier post) and the Angolan goalkeeper Ricardo.

Ricardo doesn't have a club at the moment, you see. And it's been that way for over a year. He now trains at a small Portuguese club named Portimonense, roughly their equivalent of someone like Lincoln City, without actually having been offered a contract by Portimonense or anyone else.

That didn't stop him throwing himself around like a goalkeeper possessed last night against Mexico, and he got a clean sheet for his troubles (the nil-nil draw was Angola's first ever World Cup point too). Watch the video below for highlights from the game and watch out for Ricardo in his yellow jersey, particularly at the very end.

Just to brighten your morning up when you read this, it's one of Argentina's six goals versus Serbia from yesterday. There are no fewer than twenty-four Argentinian passes leading up to a goal already being hailed as the best of the tournament. Enjoy!

There is trouble brewing for Nike.

The final advert in their Joga Bonito campaign - which includes the commercial showing Ronaldinho as a kid and as he is now, being bloody amazing on football pitches great and small - was set to feature Eric Cantona praising Ronaldo. Yes, the chubby embarrassment put out to pasture in the final third of the pitch by Brazil a few nights ago. Once upon a time he was a good player, you see. Here's his Nike ad:

Nike's problem is obvious - Ronaldo is currently the laughing stock of world football. A spokeswoman for Nike said:

"A number of ad spots, eg: Rooney "Heart", Ronaldinho "Joy" and Brazil "Team" have been filmed as part of the Joga Bonito campaign and are being hosted on joga.com. "A spot has been filmed with Ronaldo, but to date, it is not confirmed when it will run."

It hasn't been confirmed when Ronaldo will run, either. Happily a group of young blokes with a camera and the music for the Nike ads have come up with a replacement:

Have you been keeping track of the DayoRimet goals per channel per game stats? They're off to the right on the Dayorama homepage. Argentina's 6-0 thrashing of Serbia earlier today has seen the BBC leapfrog ITV - they're now 0.15 goals per game ahead. It's a close old fight, this one.

ITV will I'm sure be hoping there are goals galore to even up the balance in their next game, Holland versus the Ivory Coast. And quite literally as I typed that last sentence, Robin Van Persie crashed a thundering free kick past the Cote D'Ivoire keeper to hand one set of orange-bedecked fans the lead. The stadium is a sight to behold since both sets of fans hold the colour orange so dear.

For some, however, the football is golden:

That video clip shows Unibet's "golden football" plummeting to earth from its lofty vantage point, 663,546 seconds after having been encased in ice. Over at goldenfootball.net all becomes clear - it's a competition to guess how long the ball would take, in seconds, to drop. A Mr Meeuwissen from Holland is the winner, and since the Dutch have just smacked a second goal past the Ivory Coast it must be a good day for the Netherlands.

Our very own Golden Balls helped England to victory yesterday with a cross for Peter Crouch, before this Steven Gerrard strike sealed the deal:

But forget that, take another, closer look at the Crouch goal. Watch his hand and the hair of the Trinidad & Tobago defender:

The video calls him the "hair stroker" - if you ask me that's a full-on grope! As if the boy Crouch needed any help getting himself above defenders for headers.

Finally, the rest of yesterday's photos from the BBC Big Screen at Theo Walcott's old school can be found here. Oh,and the Ivory Coast have got a goal back. Tell you what, this is a good game we're watching!

The title says it all. England have now played two games, scored three goals, conceded none and qualified from their group. This is fantastic. And yet neither performance has done anything to reassure many fans that the team have what it takes to go all the way. Personally I'll be intrigued to see what happens against Sweden, since the Swedes' last-minute winner against Paraguay means that last match now counts for quite a lot.

I spent the day at the BBC Big Screen, which pitched up at the Downs School in Berkshire - Theo Walcott's old school. No Theo appearance to send the gathered schoolkids into raptures, but we did plenty of outside broadcasts from the screen all afternoon and took literally hundreds of photos. It was a fun occasion despite the game turning into something of an anti-climax for the first hour or so.

More photos online over on the Berkshire site tomorrow.

I spent some time voxing the kids, who were very vocal and declared Theo Walcott's absence to have been a shame, in the words of one girl, "because he's fit". If I had the inclination of the Channel 4 show from which the following clip comes, I'd have edited the vow to have her saying Peter Crouch is the new Adonis...

Finally, I made my debut on national network radio today. Use the BBC Radio Five Live listen again panel to find it - you want the Anita Anand show at just gone 10.30pm on Thursday 15 June. Anita says the station asked people at its big screen in Newbury what they thought about bunking off work to watch the World Cup. I'm the last voice you'll hear (and it's quite an extensive clip too!).

It'll only be up until the end of this week so you'll have to hurry. (Being a vain sod I'll be snaffling a recording of it if you're that keen.)

I spent my afternoon down at the BBC Big Screen at Theo Walcott's old school, for the England v Trinidad & Tobago game. Use the audio console below to listen to my pre-match thoughts from the shadow of the big screen, and click here to take a look at photos of the big day on the BBC Berkshire website.

There won't, as previously advertised, be audio updates from a BBC big screen during this afternoon's England v Trinidad & Tobago game due to circumstances beyond my control.

Instead, all being well, I'll be live on the BBC itself from the screen at various points during the afternoon, probably from 4.30pm-ish onwards. Tune in here to listen.

If you were South Korean and you'd beaten Togo in the World Cup, I'm sure you'd be dancing on a car just like the girl in the video above.

Speaking of which, I had an extra go at the newsroom World Cup sweepstake today. A few people had thrown in an extra pound to draw another team, and when I threw my hat back into the ring three teams remained: Argentina, Italy and Togo. I'm sure you can guess which team I drew.

Amy says her "finance is bloody hard". I know the feeling, so's mine. So much so, I parked at the Oxford park and ride earlier tonight to discover I didn't have enough cash for the bus into town. Some people would have driven back out of the park and ride and tried to find somewhere closer to the city centre to park for free. Not me. I've yet to fully appreciate exactly what cars can do. I walked for an hour from the other side of Headington. At least I should have shed a calorie or two.

All of which explains the lack of DayoRimet today, but I can promise you a bumper day tomorrow with - hopefully - a Dayoramoblog from one of the BBC's giant World Cup screens at an as yet undisclosed location somewhere in the country. Tune in for that! England and Trinidad & Tobago kick off at 5pm so I should have filed a pre-match report on here by then. I'll try to do goal updates as well although I do have a job to perform at the same time.

Highlights from Germany v Poland below. The Germans snuck it with a last-gasp goal, but watching the video the number of golden opportunities they had to score is mind-boggling.

Spain on the other hand looked bloody good as they thrashed Ukraine 4-0, and might for once live up to their dark-horse-for-the-Cup reputation. There've been plenty of very, very good goals in the competition so far but my pick of the opening matches is Fernando Torres' glorious effort below:

Torres is sporting an understated but nonetheless impressive mullet this tournament, too. Full marks to the boy. Tonight's final video gives a nice impression of what it's actually like to be inside a World Cup stadium (it shows the opening anthems before Spain and Ukraine kick off), something I reckon the slick TV coverage occasionally fails to reflect.

Enough for today. Remember, near-live audio blogging from the BBC big screen tomorrow from around 4pm BST.

Just another amusing legal website I promised one of our special readers I would link too...

So, instead of writing anything vaguely sensible, I'm just going to link to a couple of legal blogs.

Firstly, my favourite: the famous anonymouslawyer, which has been described as putting "-a certain firm- right into the satirical frame" with the posting of 25th May 2006 (you need to scroll down the page, almost to the bottom to read it). It's an interesting blog for anyone who keeps their eye on the activities of the main law firms.

There's also a uklawstudent blog, amusing to read for anyone who has searched for a training contract and gone through the necessary milkround of "how to get through interviews" and "which firm to apply for".

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I'm really enjoying this revision thing. Reading thelawyer is such a great excuse not to work: I feel like I am working, because I am reading about legal issues, even if they are not directly connected to my exams. I even cut a few articles out of this week's edition and sent them to the b/f with the note that he "was free to throw them in the nearest bin, but he may find the articles vaguely interesting". Isn't he a lucky thing! Actually, the revision is "going badly" (to quote the Curl). Where is my G+T comrade when I need him, eh? Damn him working in SA. My finance is bloody hard, the advanced facts are totally confusing and I've just had to have a lesson with my Father about how to calculate percentages (they were complicated ones, OK!).

Brazil held on to their 1-0 lead - Kaka's decisive goal is shown in the clip below, complete with authentic over-excited Brazilian commentary.

We also learn tonight that Gary Lineker doesn't know the meaning of the word "blog". Presumably he's far too busy snaffling crisps off an unsuspecting public to mess around on the internet. Click here to watch a short clip of Iain Dowie wandering around in the background of the Match of the Day set on his mobile phone, causing the on-air Lineker some consternation.

Half time in the Brazil v Croatia game and all the talk is about how Brazil have disappointed by being merely very, very good rather than the unspeakable force of brilliance anticipated beforehand. Well, almost all the talk is about that. The rest of the talk is about Ronaldo being a fat pie, or words to that effect.

"He just looks so big!", quoth Alan Hansen.

"He's just not with it, he's not at the races, he looks like somebody whose girlfriend's dumped him just before the game," adds the ever insightful Ian Wright.

"He'll probably score a hat-trick now," concludes Hansen. Ronaldo is the last to trudge out for the second half.

And now, as promised, footage of another team in yellow and green scoring. This was the Togo goal against South Korea earlier today. Watch the celebration, which looks for all the world like a series of mini-kangaroo hops. I have no idea what is supposed to be going on.

Well, I've de-camped with all my revision to Kent. It's certainly nicer to revise at home, rather than being stuck in London on my own. I'm seriously distressed thought: there is no Neighbours for the duration of the World Cup.

I'm slowly filling up my summer, and keep having to ring various Aunts and God Mother's. It's all very confusing.

I've purchased Coldpay's X&Y (sorry, OJ - just be grateful I don't have the freedom to add it to your i-tunes anymore...). I think "Fix You" will be added to my all time favourite depressing songs - along with Belinda's "In Too Deep".

A friend has just sent me a text to say that he's revising for Criminal Law (on the GDL) and just read the facts of a case called Bourne, 1952 and had been reminded of hour "foul a species" we can be. Curious, I looked it up. A man forced his wife to have sexual intercourse with a dog. She was not charged with a criminal offence but her husband was convicted of aiding and abetting an illegal act. How lovely.

It doesn't seem that long ago when I was contemplating a training contract, drinking bubbly and deciding that it may be worthwhile to work for someone called Flom. Today I chose the first seat for my training contract... daunting yet exciting stuff.

I was given an alarm clock over the weekend (by the same people who gave me my avocado plant, and most recently my peanut plant - grown from one of the parrot's uneaten peanuts). It has several functions you can wake up to including "seagulls" and "jungle" (not the music, the rain forest noises). It was given to them as a free-be. No wonder, do you really think people buy these things. It amused me on Monday to wake up for my exam to the squawking of seagulls. Rather like listening to Sarah Kennedy, but without the jokes.

I washed my car earlier. Well, my Dad and I did. He complained that it was held together with mud and it was about time we did something about it. He took charge of the sponge and soup, whilst I had to continually fill the watering can (we have a hosepipe ban) from the water butt. Anyway, I managed to cover myself in water more than the car. I then had to have a conversation with our neighbour, where she asked me whether I had wet myself. Great.

Oh and I haven't mentioned how I nearly got thrown out of Tesco on Saturday. I was buying some strawberries, cream and some sparkling wine. I got to the till and was asked for ID (you need to look over 21). So I handed over my driving license to this stern looking cashier, who didn't look as though she believed I was over 18, let alone 21. Anyway, she asked me how old I was, and I said 21. She replied that my driving license said I was 22. I chuckled and said, "oh yes, I am... I just forget sometimes". Ooops. Then I failed to enter my correct pin-number (my b/card is different to my other cards). I chuckled (again) and said, "oh I'm always doing this" and then entered the correct number. The cashier looked most impressed. She then proceeded to tell me that I needed to be 18 to have a clubcard (I have one of their little ones that you put on a keyring. The main account belongs to Jane). I said, "oh, but it isn't mine". Not looking impressed, the cashier said "oh, is it your Mother's". I said, "no. oh, yes, oh, OK, yes, it's my Mum's". The cashier seriously looked as though she was about to call security. I grabbed my keys, cards and bags and ran like the wind. Oh dear.

British commentators are taking great delight in the bore-draw that has so far been France v Switzerland. The French seem strangely becalmed, the Swiss - unsurpsisingly - a model of military precision.

Mick McCarthy, on BBC1, professed to have missed a corner through having fallen asleep.

Alan Green, on Five Live, has spent an inordinate amount of time discussing FIFA's policy of removing the labels from bottles of water if they are not manufactered by the official supplier to the World Cup. Green, momentarily eschewing traditional BBC policy regarding commercial products: "For all of you at home mine was Highland Spring and we'll have none of this FIFA sponsors nonsense."

I caught moments of the Togo v South Korea game earlier, which looked a far finer spectacle - particularly both South Korean goals and the Togo celebration. I'll try to track down video clips of the lot for tomorrow. YouTube and Google Video tend to operate about 24 hours behind, thus I'm now able to present to you highlights from yesterday's games. In Spanish. (After all this is the World Cup, it's all about expanding cultural horizons...)

USA v Czech Republic

Italy v Ghana

Japan v Australia

Speaking of expanding horizons, I now know where Togo is. Previously I'd no idea it was such a thin sliver of a country wedged into West Africa:

I've also discovered the name for people from Togo is "Togolese". This after suggestions in the newsroom of Togonese, Togoans, Togans/Togons (starting to sound a little like Vogons, a different concept entirely), and Toboggans.

Click here to watch a short video clip of Togolese folk playing football back home, on a pitch which makes Chelsea's infamous sandpit look like a lush meadow. It's not a bad goal, either...

Ghanaian defender Sammy Kuffour's just got away with the footballing equivalent of murder, scraping his studs down the back of Vincenzo Iaquinta's legs with the latter clean through on goal. Iaquinta hit the deck immediately and was stretchered off (he's back on now). Straight red card, surely? Nope. Turns out Iaquinta was offside. This means Ghana nearly put a top Italian forward out of action for the rest of the tournament at absolutely no cost.

That's not stopped the Italians rolling a second past the Ghanaian keeper as I write. Not even cheeky stud-scraping can stop the trusty Italian World Cup war horse rumbing on.

Sadly the BBC won't be screening England matches live on their jumbo TVs in Canary Wharf or Liverpool any more, after violence there in the past couple of days. Always the minority spoiling it for the rest. This video, of admittedly shaky quality, gives a rough idea of the trouble in Liverpool at the Paraguay game:

One of the comments added beneath the video on its original page reads:

Why did you run, you should have stood your ground and fought.

This is what is wrong with our country.

John Motson's on form tonight.

"A pearler from Pirlo!" he screams as the aforementioned rifles home the sweetest of strikes, giving Italy a handy advantage over Ghana just before half time. Ghana have been performing remarkably well all things considered. Perhaps we stuck-up "olde worlde" footballing nations ought to stop writing off the likes of Angola and Ghana on the grounds we can't find them on a map (despite being the ones who crudely carved the continent up in the first place).

More Motty magic earlier in the game - actually this one's primarily Mark Lawrenson, described elsewhere as being "not so much Motson's co-commentator as his guide dog". This exchange accompanied a replay of a crunching challenge on Ghana's Michael Essien:

Lawrenson: "He's taken his standing leg, look - that could have been really nasty."
Motson (referring to the tackle): "That's the one FIFA want to see stamped out."
Lawrenson: "What, his foot?!"

Also filed in the taking-things-a-little-too-literally department, the new Greenpeace advertising campaign. Have a gander at this seemingly innocuous Subbuteo match and then, Question of Sport style, try to guess what happens next. Volume up for full effect and hilarity as the short film reaches its climax.

Finally, a shame to see the USA crash to such a hopeless defeat against the Czech Republic earlier today. There I was laughing at my colleague for drawing Angola in the World Cup sweepstake, and now the USA are behind them on goal difference.

You can learn much from standing near station staff during a crisis on the railways.

A signal failure at Neasden Junction effectively shut down London's Marylebone station for around an hour this evening, in the baking heat and with thousands of commuters - myself included - piling into the terminus. This was not good news. Eventually at 5:55pm it was announced, at the very last moment, that a service to Kidderminster would additionally call at High Wycombe to relieve some of the sheer volume of people now waiting for a train. Cue a desperate race to the appropriate platform and a sardine-like crush for 45 minutes inside a sweltering carriage.

Once at High Wycombe, the fun didn't stop. If I'm going into London I use Saunderton station, just outside High Wycombe, because no one ever uses it and the parking is free. Despite its lack of popularity it gets trains to London every half an hour which take about 40 minutes to get in, not a bad service at all.

Alas, when the points have failed and the entire Chiltern Railways network is in disarray, Saunderton is practically last on the list of anyone's priorities, so I had a wait on at Wycombe. It was here that I realised just how little station staff know when something major like this happened.

For a start, I had never previously realised that the gentleman in charge of the station announcements and departure boards is not even in constant contact with those staff. Instead they phoned him up every ten minutes or so, trying to hunt down some wayward train or other which had failed to appear on time. No one knew where any of them were. One member of station staff bearing a vague resemblance to Bruce Forsyth spent hafl an hour directing dozens of passengers through an underpass to platform 3 for a service to London, only for everyone to be told by the announcer - one minute before that train was due to arrive - that it was fifty-five minutes late. It had previously been displayed as "On Time".

The next train to London now departed from platform 1, back through the underpass again. Poor Bruce had to endure a steady stream of passengers and vitriol as they marched back from whence they came. Nice to see you, etc.

Eventually, some ten minutes after that train was due to have arrived, the announcer returned - bearing greater similarity to Marvin the Paranoid Android with every message. "The nineteen oh-six service is now, finally, approaching platform 1. I do apologise to you all for the, er, severe delay to your journey tonight. It's been a difficult day for everyone."

"He'll shoot himself next," quipped Bruce.

If he'd had the afternoon I had he might have given it serious thought. The heat and the trains were almost the final straw after an epic battle with technology back at the LCC - this being my final final day there, honest. I was putting a TV piece together but the damn camera had somehow conspired to cause some of my footage all manner of problems, from skipping video and audio to downright unintelligible segments which had to be abandoned. This was less than useful when I had just today to finish it (everyone else, in the absence of a job, has til Friday, not that I would trade). The end product is ropey to say the least but ought to suffice.

The good news: we're getting a new camera at the Beeb some time in the next couple of weeks. I fully intend guarding it like an obsessive-compulsive rottweiler with Tourette's. This is a proper camera with the ability to record sound and video, something sadly beyond the previous, decrepit machine. You can't hold me back from video journalism forever, I'm afraid.

Vote results from the BBC's World Cup website. I can't help but feel the result may have been slightly influenced by the vote's location. A bit like asking England fans who they'd rather see win the World Cup - England or Germany.

I tried to find an identical poll on the ITV World Cup website without success. But then I doubt they'd reach a quorum.

The first reports of English arrests at the World Cup are coming through (see video above for prime example of the breed - those are England supporters in Frankfurt earlier).

A pair of fans from Bolton have been detained by German police for sporting body paint in the form of Nazi symbols - the wearing of which is against the law in the World Cup host nation. From the BBC report:

Robert Schaefer, the operational commander of German police in Frankfurt, said they were among a total of 13 England fans arrested in the city on Saturday for offences including assault and criminal damage, being drunk and disorderly, trying to steal match tickets, and possessing cannabis.

There were also eight arrests in Cologne early on Sunday outside the railway station for public order and assault matters.

[source: BBC News Online - 'Nazi symbol body paint fans held']

Back to the football and Angola gave Portugal a far sterner test than most expected, losing to a single Pauleta goal earlier tonight; Iran equalised against Mexico just after my last post but were eventually comfortably dispatched 3-1; and the hopelessly biased Martin Jol presided over a Dutch win against Serbia & Montenegro in his position as pundit for Five Live. You can distinctly hear Jol exclaimed "Yes!" as the Dutch winner hits the back of the net, and he spent the rest of the match as Chief Dutch Information Officer, briefing listeners against just about every adverse decision the referee made.

Japan make their World Cup entrance tomorrow against Australia in Kaiserslautern. Let's just hope Roberto Carlos hasn't been giving the Aussies any hints - in the commercial below he's shown coming up with a cunning plan to defeat the Land of the Rising Sun...

Thank you Ollie for doing the world cup stuff... even if it isn't " ain't [your] responsibility to come up with something".

I had a weekend in the sun and I'm a little pink. I've avoided watching the football, but have followed it. I think it is highly amusing that our only score so far comes from an own goal. Long may we stay in this competition.

Gin and diet coke is an interesting combination.

The Mexicans are currently being held to a 0-0 draw by Iran midway through the first half of their group stage encounter, and the Iranians are looking like no pushovers either.

Even Iranian women are up for the Cup, despite being forbidden to watch matches in their home country. New film "Offside", released two days ago in the UK, tells the tale of three such ladies determined to subvert the religious authorities in Iran and get in to a game.

Much of the film was actually shot during a real-life Iran v Bahrain match, and the reviews are near-gushing. It's a real shame I can't find a trailer but it's certainly a film I'll be making time for during the next few weeks if I can. To quote The Independent film reviewer Jonathan Romney:

[Director Jafar Panahi] has made a comedy: mocking, farcical, celebratory. Cultural specificity notwithstanding, you might call it a ladettes' rallying cry. Offside is a brilliant example of film as opportunism, shoehorning his story into a real event, giving the fiction a sharp documentary edge.

Political cinema is rarely this much fun; films about football never are.

[source: The Independent - 'Offside']

As I finish this post, Mexican Omar Bravo sneaks in at the far post and pokes the western hemisphere into a 1-0 lead. The finest football film of the summer is 'Offside' but, sadly for Iran, Bravo was clearly on.

Much is being made of the weather at the World Cup and England's ability to cope with it.

During yesterday's game with Paraguay there were times when the referee seemed to stop England players gaining access to water at the touchline. The FA's Adrian Bevington says the team will consult FIFA about it:

"We will make a communication to Fifa ... because the medical staff were concerned. We went through 70 litres of water when normally we go through something in the region of 20.

"That shows how much fluid was required and it is important the players can access it as soon as possible. It is also important referees take this into account when you are playing in such severe heat."

And midfielder Joe Cole admitted the heat had an effect:

"I don't want to sound like I'm making excuses but the conditions definitely played a major part. I know it's the same for the other team, and we'll definitely get better with the heat, but I hope the temperature drops."

I've consulted the scheduled kick-off times for the rest of the group stage matches, and I wonder if this is an excuse for failure in the making. If, by some horrendous mishap, England don't qualify for the knockout stages, they might point to these kick-off times and the stifling heat.

England play one game at 2pm (Paraguay), one at 5pm (Trinidad & Tobago) and one at 8pm (Sweden). However, both Sweden and Paraguay have two 8pm kick-offs in cooler evening conditions, while Trinidad & Tobago won't play any game in the afternoon 2pm heat.

That said, it could be worse for England. Serbia & Montenegro, Togo and Japan all have to contend with two 2pm kick-offs in their groups, while a number of other teams have both 2pm and 3pm kick-offs (e.g. Ukraine).

If England make it through the group stage, they won't have another evening kick-off after the Sweden game unless they make it all the way to the semi-finals. Whether they finish top of the group or as runners-up is irrelevant - both their last-sixteen and quarter-final matches would take place at 4pm (whereas half these matches are scheduled to take place at 8pm).

Of course the many fans England took to Germany will be able to vouch for the intense heat and sticky conditions. It's just a shame none of them were oscillating, or they'd have been more use.

How kind of the Silverstone GP to move its start time to midday - now we can all vegetate in front of sport for practically the rest of the day, with the World Cup back in action the moment anyone but Michael Schumacher hopefully takes the chequered flag.

Above: replays of the England goal with almost impenetrable commentary from an Asian TV station, which ought to remind OJ of the fun to be had playing the Japanese import version of International Superstar Soccer all those years ago. Listen out for the name "Michael Owen!" time and time again, implying the pundits hadn't spotted Carlos Gamarra's final touch.

One blog reckons Gamarra's delightful glancing effort yesterday is the quickest own goal in World Cup history, a record sure to thrill him. And the blog goes on with impressive detail:

England have twice benefited from own goals in the competition. The first was scored for them by Josef Barmos of Czechoslovakia in 1982. But Italy have benefited most of all – four FIFA World Cup own goals have worked to their advantage.

The first ever FIFA World Cup own goal was scored by Switzerland’s Ernst Loertscher v Germany in 1938 while only one game in FIFA World Cup history has featured two own goals – the clash between Portugal and USA on 5 June 2002 with Jorge Costa and Jeff Agoos the luckless pair.

[source: fifa2006worldcup.org (unofficial)]

So now we know.

Saucepot - an individual with a thesis on their mind, which ought to chime with a few people here - was left distinctly unimpressed with the England performance, but also relayed the pain of having to read the BBC Online text commentary at 4am Japanese time.

Itisi focused on Mexican referee Marco Rodriguez, something of a maverick individual with a penchant for the over-dramatic - and hence a perceived bias in favour of the distinctly over-dramatic Paraguayans. Rodriguez also seemed oddly opposed to the idea of players taking on fluids during the game:

[Rodriguez] bore a remarkable resemblance to a vampire, which may explain why he was so against the players nipping to the sidelines to grab a drink of water – obviously he thought they should stick to blood.

[source: Itisi - 'England 1-0 Paraguay']

Finally a second video. This one's entitled "Mansfield market after the England v Paraguay World Cup match". Sounds quite tame, doesn't it? Listen with the sound up, but beware mildly offensive vocabulary.

More later on today. Post title taken from the Japanese version of ISS, where the commentator frequently seemed to be saying either "long torpedo!" or "Princess Diana!" but quite clearly wasn't, since neither were on the pitch.

Carlos Gamarra's smacked the ball into his own net so as I write, a third of the way through the game, England are doing a fine job of protecting their 1-0 lead over Paraguay. Joe Cole's just gone down injured but Paraguay have already lost their keeper.

Things aren't great for Paraguay, then, but for Togo they're even worse. With the World Cup already underway and their first match looming, the Togo coach has resigned! Boss Otto Pfister, quoted on BBC Sport, explained himself:

"When I started to be manager of Togo, I was promised that bonuses for the players would be cleared. That is still not the case, so I decided to quit immediately. It has destroyed a dream of my life.

"I'm not going back and I am giving up my work as national trainer. I won't be messed with any more. The players boycotted training sessions and with that my basis to work has been removed."

[source: BBC Sport - 'Togo coach Pfister quits over pay']

Pfister was only appointed in March, but now he has Togo. See what I did there?

Seeing as England are relying on the other side to score goals for us so far this tournament, we might be needing Wayne Rooney back. And now you can do your bit.

Go to www.healrooney.com and get to work rubbing your cursor up and down on the base of Wayne's foot when it appears on the screen. For every meter your mouse covers, Wayne can take one step further from FA headquarters to the Commerzbank Arena in Germany. As I write he's only about a third of the way there - 229,143m out of a total distance of 790,056m - but I've contributed 8m so if we all chip in, he'll be fine.

German news agency DDP reports there were 17 arrests at the opening match yesterday, a start regarded as "relatively quiet". No word on English arrests today but there's plenty of time and beer remaining.

Right, off to watch the rest of the game and see if I can do something about my horrendously sunburnt arms. I was out filiming girls' football trials for an online piece all morning, which was great fun, but I hadn't put "hottest day of the year" and "football" together to reach "sun cream". Amateur mistake. Ow ow ow ow ow...

The video to "In Da Club" by 50 Cent, versus the theme tune to Thomas the Tank Engine. Inspired.

Ooooh, look what they've done with the Golden Housemate!

As you may have noticed over the past few weeks, Big Brother's run a Golden Ticket competition. Suzie is the lucky lady to have won, but now she's living under a brand new set of rules which only apply to her:

- her own "Golden Quarters"
- her own gold clothes she must wear at all times
- her own "Golden Shower" each morning (can you even begin to imagine the hilarity at Endemol when they thought that one up)

And - this is the good bit - she's the only one doing the nominations for eviction next week. A fact of which she's not aware, but everyone else in the house knows it only too well. Davina promises life will be "hell" for the Golden Housemate throughout the next seven days. This will mean flicking between the World Cup and Channel 4 all week long so as to be able to maintain the public service that is Dayorama updates on both topics...

I got harassed by email today because Dayorama wasn't doing anything special for the World Cup. So now we are. On the right hand side of the homepage for the duration of the competition we'll be keeping score between the BBC and ITV coverage - who'll get more goals? And every day I'll be posting a DayoRimet round-up of worthwhile World Cup tidbits I've found.

It's not been a bad opening day at all, has it? Ecuador are clinging to a 1-0 lead over Poland as I write, but the big story's the tremendous tournament curtain-raiser between Germany and Costa Rica. The Germans took the honours 4-2, the highest scoring World Cup opener in the history of the competition.

Miroslav Klose was the Germans' hero - on his birthday, as well. SoccerBlog has a compilation video of the man, mocked by some in the last tournament for terrorising Saudi Arabia and only Saudi Arabia, but this time round he looks like he means business.

Meanwhile one Charlton fan is already hankering after Costa Rican (and former Manchester City striker) Paulo Wanchope following his brace:

Paolo Wanchope would like to return to English football. After the two excellent goals the 30 year old striker scored against Germany in the World Cup opener today, would it be worth Charlton taking a look?

[source: Addick's Premiership Diary]

As you must by now know it's the opening England game tomorrow, versus Paraguay. I'll either be in the newsroom or at Newbury racecourse for it - they're opening early at Newbury so people can watch the match on a giant screen, which is a tempting thought. Either way I'll be back here tomorrow night and every night for the next four weeks of football. Enjoy!

News is reaching us on the wires that last night in the Big Brother house - i.e. coming up in tonight's TV episode - there was a drunken game of Spin The Bottle. This resulted in Glyn/Lea and Nikki/Lea pairings. I am also informed that Sam - in the house as a girl though actually a man - will be shown doing something entirely untoward.

This may well be unmissable television. I am not exaggerating when I tell you people in the newsroom are ringing their friends and cancelling their Friday night plans to watch this. Permission to despair granted.

We've also held our World Cup sweepstakes. I drew the USA, which could be infinitely better and infinitely worse - it's safe to say I'm unlikely to win, particularly with "Captain America" Claudio Reyna underperforming for Manchester City all season let alone on a world stage.

Still, could be worse. My esteemed colleague Linda drew Angola.

It's a year since I finished Finals. I can't quite believe it. A year since the ducks. And the M+S picnic set. Blimey.

Naturally. But I actually mean the other kind of OJ, otherwise known as orange juice. Anyone who knows me well will be quite aware that I rarely drink orange juice or apple juice or any other kind of juice come to that*. Sainsbury sugar-free e-number fuelled orange squash is another matter though... Anyway, recently I can't get enough of the liquid OJ (enough, enough now... Ollie, shush). Why? I don't know. It'd be a miracle if I was pregnant (again, OIlie and OJ... stop sniggering), so it can't be that. I've no idea. But anyway, to cut a meaningless story short, I'm now working my way through different types of orange juice. Whether I'll end up such a connoisseur as OJ, who knows, but I could try.

Mum: perhaps I'll drink that damn pomegranate juice you bought over Xmas now because it was "healthy" and has since sat in its packet at the back of the cupboard.

Everyone else: to put the above comment into perspective. It was 23rd Dec and my Mum and I were in S/bury. Mum wanted some pomegranate juice. Why? Who knows. I said it was pointless and would never be drunk. She said it wasn't etc etc We had a blazing row and the juice still sits in the cupboard...

*although I was kindly given some lychee juice the other week, and that was rather delicious... perhaps that started me off!

All this flying the St George flag around at the moment... forget football... the below story is just another reason why we should be proud (in a slightly odd way) to be British...

(lifted from the Telegraph online... because they have a nasty habit of denying access to articles after about 7 days and then all of our links fail and we look sillier than normal...)

"For 30 years villagers had wanted a road sign to direct lorry drivers to a nearby bacon factory. It belatedly went up this week. But there was no rejoicing among the residents of Elmswell, Suffolk.

"We've had years of putting up with lorry drivers coming through the village and asking where the factory is," said Andy Taylor, 41, who has lived in Elmswell all his life. "I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw someone finally putting up a sign." The sign, pointing the way to Grampian County Pork, where 380 people are losing their jobs, was one of 16 put up around Elmswell by Suffolk county council this week as part of a new one-way route for lorries."

Fame for my left hand - holding a penkife sent by a company to a school in Berkshire, offering children cheap knives. The company has since apologised, the full story is here.

I've got a great, flawless theory... (context: revising for my exams - corporate finance is clearly getting to me...)

Students are under performing apparently, right? People spend too much over Christmas? People are getting skin cancer from too much exposure to the sun (this is my flaw...)? People are getting fatter as a rule?

So, you move all exams to December. This way no one wants to go out in the cold and wet. Thus, they are forced to stay inside in the warm, eating mince pies, and working. Therefore they perform better in exams. Since they have to work, they are also less tempted to go Christmas shopping and therefore they spend less money and don't end up in such high levels of debt. They may end up slightly fatter from being sedentary and eating mince pies (but surely this energy is burnt off revising?)

If you have exams in June/July, no one wants to work inside - therefore they study less. They also eat too many ice-creams (compensation for exams) and end up with over exposure in the sunshine anyway - you see they go outside to work and forget to put suncream on. They spend more at Christmas because they aren't distracted by exams and probably still eat mince pies anyway (double the eating on mince pies and ice cream)

Therefore, having exams in December would mean that the country is wealthier, more intelligent (if not slightly fatter from mince pies) and whilst they will have exposure to the sun in summer, they may remember to put sun cream on. Having exams in summer means that no body works, therefore the country is thicker. They eat too many ice-creams, spend more money at Christmas and still get sun burnt anyway.

I say we move exams to December. Sod's law this should be the last of my summers which are obliterated by exams. The other 70+ will just be obliterated by working. When you're on the 23rd floor in a tower in Canary Wharf with a/c, I don't suppose it matters what the weather is like.

I'm not bitter, honest I'm not. So, how do I apply for listing on the stock exchange, what requirements must my prospectus fulfill and what disclosure obligations must I comply with...

----

And in the space of our comments, here is one oposing view (I don't have permission from the author, but I'm sure they won't mind...)

It seems to me a question of whether you can enforce productivity. To turn this on its head, you could say that it's easy to work in winter, so that's taken care of - the question is how to prevent students wasting time in their summers, when the lure of Grove Quad is strongest? The answer being, you give them exams. You say people don't work, but that's not really accurate, is it? Now people might work 20% less hard across the summer because of the distraction of the sunshine, but it's better to have that amortised by consistent work across the winter plus that Great Summer Cram. The alternative is that students do absolutely no work across the summer, because there is no incentive, and then have to work across the winter.
100% being maximum effort,

Summer Winter
Current: 80% (Damoclean fear) 70% (won't go out anyway, "cold and wet".)
Your Way: 20% (no fear, & strawberries) 100% (all pressures combined)

It would also mean starting the academic year in January, in order to finish in December,
which means the summer break's halfway through the course, and your big welcome/fresher's photo is held in the January downpour. Nor, most importantly of all, will the novices be trained up in time for Eights.

So there we are. Now, a few readers should be able to work out who wrote that. Hint: another bored trainee lawyer currently sitting exams...!

Earlier this evening, having played an epic game of football in the back garden, three of us were in the kitchen listening to Five Live. A World Cup debate of some description was taking place. My dad and his friend John both bemoaned the blanket coverage of the World Cup on stations like Five Live when the tournament doesn't even start for another couple of days.

It's a tricky issue. No radio station, and certainly not one like Five Live whose reputation is staked on news and sport, wants to be seen to be ignoring the World Cup. For many radio stations this is taken to mean devoting bags and bags of airtime to an event this big, so that no one can question where the World Cup coverage has gone. If someone tunes in to Five Live this week and thinks the station isn't bothered about the World Cup, that would be tantamount to suicide as far as the station's concerned. Thus the World Cup saturation - to make sure you know damn well where to find World Cup coverage once it starts.

That doesn't mean the 'filler' World Cup radio leading up to the competition has to be formulaic, though, and it's difficult coming up with new ways to flog the horse until it can safely be left to expire on Friday. Which is why I was so pleased to find out Berkshire's plans for the World Cup campaign. Local radio stations have an even harder time than network - fewer resources, less pulling power - so they have to make the best out of whatever can be drummed up.

And here, occupying the same huge building as BBC Monitoring comes into play. Outside the Berkshire front door is a large, immensely well-informed team of journalists and researchers constantly monitoring the output of hundreds of media organisations around the world. If you want truly involved, global World Cup coverage, these are probably the people you want to come on your radio show and talk about what's going on. And that is exactly what is going to happen. Commentary clips from overseas radio stations, descriptions of the prevailing mood following each national side into battle, analysis of the foreign media reaction, the lot.

Local radio is often accused of being parochial, insular, a glorified community notice board. If you listen to it long enough you'll catch occasional moments which reinforce this perception, but how better to demolish it than expose Berkshire listeners to World Cup tales from across the globe, not just a narrow Eng-er-land obsession. It's going to sound brilliant.

(And finally, surely this must be almost the last usage of 'wireless' to mean radio in this day and age. Who knows what it'll mean a hundred years from now.)

For those going to the Reading festival this summer - and I appreciate, knowing most of our seven readers on first name terms, this is unlikely - we at the Beeb have taken the liberty of preparing you in advance.

The Carling new bands stage will be alive with talent over the three days, so the two of us in charge of the Berkshire website have selected our own personal favourites from the relative unknowns on offer.

Click here to read the article. If I have yet to persuade you to look, there is also a small yet excruciatingly formed photo of me accompanying my choices. We had trouble fitting my face plus my hair in the frame. That, as much as anything, is reason enough to pursue a haircut at the first available opportunity.

And you thought Peter Crouch was a trendsetter. The video above shows Shaun Wright-Phillips, in his Manchester City days, scoring against Manchester United before performing what is now Crouch's trademark celebration.

Now all Shaun can do is sit popping lonely shapes on the Chelsea bench while Crouch plies his trade on the world stage. What might have been if he were still at City...

You may have heard about Google's latest trick - Google Spreadsheets. Various websites have interpreted this as an "Excel-killer", an attempt by the big G to inflict a deep wound on Microsoft by striking at its Office-based heart.

I'm not about to go that far, although it does look very swish, as you'd expect. Of course, the key advantage over Excel is the ability to share spreadsheets with other people really quickly - set up your spreadsheet, send an invite to your friends, let your friends either a) view or b) edit it. In my experience Excel has a far more cumbersome approach to sharing, whereas with Google it's an assumed priority in whatever they now do. If you have any reason in life to share a spreadsheet, Google is going to be your way to do it.

For example I imagine this would have been a godsend when I ran my fantasy football league. I could have dumped the complex spreadsheets I used online via Google for the dozens of people taking part to see, and allowed a trusted few complete access to help improve the way the game worked. Instead of sending out reams of information each week, most of the data people needed on a day-to-day basis could have been manipulated and sorted at their leisure.

If anyone comes up with a good idea for a Google spreadsheet, let me know. I bet there's all kinds of fun to be had with a bit of creativity.

As described here by the BBC, a survey has been done ranking the "poshest" surnames. So, how did we all do? Well Wooding, unsurprisingly, is the least occurring surname, and Williams the most. There are 44 occurrences of Woodings per million names, compared to 7179 Williams. Kennedy is in there at an average 856. However, in social rank it is Wooding who comes first - on 33% have a name with a higher social-status, whereas this figure is 50% for Wiliams and 85% for Kennedy. I "share a staircase", Wooding lives in "semi-rural seclusion" and Williams is an "Upland Hill farmer". Clearly I am common as muck! (but I make up for it with brains and beauty, of course...!)

Press releases. Traditionally tedious, hurled at journalists by press officers in the hope of hitting one with a deadline looming and nothing else in the can. But not always. Try this one:

Who is that guy with all the eggs on his head that you see at all the bestest festivals in South Africa? His name is Gregory Da Silva - an artist, comedian, storyteller and dancer from Benin, West Africa.

His outfit always turns heads and each day it boasts a new feature, a new symbol of an African culture or practice. His headdress weighs up to twenty five kilograms, his body is armoured with artifacts and his face painted with tribal patterns and an undying smile.

Each day, Gregory Da Silva presents the city centre with a new display of his symbolic art. Gregory's voice is lively and he repeatedly offers phrases and words in French. Born in Benin, West Africa, 1979, he was trained in computer science at university, but went on to found a theatre group in Benin called 'Voice of Spirit' or 'Voix de l'Esprit'.

He explains the eggs on his head dress as being symbolic of life and says "everything must be life, everything must shine, [and] be positive". Next his hands grab the arcane black bottle near his waist to explain that in his culture, the Sangoma people would place "good spirits" in a bottle, with which they would "heal sick people [they] passed while walking on the roads".

When not walking St George's Mall or Green Market Square, Gregory features at the Grahamstown Festival, the Hermanus Whale Festival, has been hired to receive guests at hotels and airports, and has also appeared on SABC 2 and E-TV news.

Thoughts:
- The first sentence, with its intriguing use of "bestest", has clearly been added to the top of an otherwise rather eloquent article about him (which I've subbed down a bit or else we'd have been all day, trust me).
- He was trained in computer science at university?! Bloody hell. Who was the last computer science graduate you saw with eggs on his head dancing their way around Africa? Although we should note that with Guy Goma bursting onto our screens on News 24 recently, these computer science folk are starting to lead the way in all things weird and wonderful.

Personally I'm no longer an egg man. I did indulge in quite a few while I was in Somerset but I've gone all Fruit & Fibre this week. There was never a more gorgeous cereal made. Whisper it, but I go to sleep happy in the knowledge that the first thing I'll wake up to the next day is a bowl of that stuff. It's the little things in life, you know...

Oh, and my BBC badge arrived. The power! Yes, the power I can wield. The power to open the little security gate myself instead of whimpering like an abandoned puppy at reception each morning. The power to nip out for some lunch without being shut out of the newsroom for ten minutes til someone notices and lets me in. The power to open the car park entry barrier without having to line my window up with the little security speaker, misjudging it, then stalling when I try to edge the car forwards a bit. The badge is already a lifesaver.

This is a little bit of advice for anyone out their who a) owns a fridge and b) eats salmon.

On a Saturday morning two weeks ago I decided to get some salmon out of my freezer and defrost it in my fridge. That evening I ate one of the salmon steaks, planning to eat the other one on the Sunday. However, I didn't get out of bed on the Sunday and felt pretty rotten. The salmon was left uneaten. I knew I couldn't eat it on the Monday, so made a mental note to throw it away. By the Tuesday evening I was packing clothes ready for going away the next morning. I turned my water off, I made sure all plugs were turned off at the wall, I had a check-list of things such as "make-up", "toothbrush" etc etc. I also made a mental note to throw away the salmon. When I came home last Monday evening (so that Salmon has been in the fridge for 9 days now), all was well. Until I opened my fridge door. And there was the most almighty stench to end all smells. The salmon - now a shiny silvery, greeny blue - was whisked out and thrown directly into the main bins (so I apologies for all other BQ residents for the smell!). Would the smell go with "oust"? No. Would it disappear with Mr Muscle something or other? No. Did it disappear with lemon and vinegar? Yep. So there we are. Never leave salmon in your fridge for such a long period of time. Always write down your "things to do" rather than relying on a "mental note" and always keep vinegar and lemon juice handy... just in case!

If you were an MP, would you use all the influence you could muster to try to land yourself some World Cup tickets? Of course you would. Since twenty-three-and-a-half hours in each MP's day are spent being publicly ridiculed in some form or other, some nice seats in Frankfurt for England's opening game - courtesy of McDonald's - would provide welcome relief. Let the eleven plonkers on the pitch suffer the humiliation for 90 minutes, then back to the daily grind.

Of course, not everyone sees it that way. 23 MPs have snaffled tickets off the burger chain, worth £70 each but going for four figures on the black market. Cue Kevin Miles from the Football Supporters' Federation:

"They've got the tickets because they're MPs, but the biggest crime is that McDonald's is in the position to give them out. They're doing it to buy themselves influence, let's make no mistake about it."

Only one of the group has spoken out to defend the ticket snaffle, and that's John Leech. You know, the John Leech. No, of course you don't, because there's six-hundred-odd MPs and John Leech is one of the many who quietly get on with being MPs without playing at being a kitten on television.

If McDonald's have given him a ticket thinking it'll safeguard their right to render us all hideously obese, I strongly suspect they've got a surprise coming. I imagine John and his friends, having landed the tickets, will now go and enjoy the World Cup. The moment it's over I am sure they will not give a monkey's about McDonald's. You wait til John ends up at Membury services and discovers they've only got a Burger King. See how long the Big Mac influence lasts then.

Maybe, just maybe, I'm defending John and his pals because of his eloquent defence as follows:

"I've been a season ticket holder at Manchester City for 22 years. I can safely say I'm a proper football fan. The tickets that have been provided for us would have been given out by McDonald's to somebody else, and I'm sure there's plenty of fans that would like to see the game as I would. I fully understand people's frustration, but it's not up to us who gets the tickets."

Which, roughly translated, means: I've suffered enough, you'd have done the same, and all we did was ask nicely. Having had to watch City for far fewer than 22 years, I think World Cup tickets are the least the man deserves.

My God, that Lisa's a conniving little bitch.

For those with lives, tonight's events:

The housemates are set the task of seeing who can shout the loudest - Big Brother measures each of them, in decibels. Richard is the winner. His reward is a dinner for two with champagne. Richard has to decide who to invite to this dinner. I scream "Imogen!" at the television, because he fell out spectacularly with her last week, before Imogen's best buddy Sezer was evicted.

Richard, being a warm, friendly gentleman, invites Imogen as directed by me. Richard says he wants to make it up to her and get to know her better.

After the dinner Imogen, thoroughly ungrateful wench that she is, tells Lisa - fellow member of her little 'group', which used to include Sezer and George before they left, and still includes other airheads like Nikki and Grace - that Richard is simply playing for votes and that it is somehow a victory for them over him and his 'group'. Yes, Richard's invitation to Imogen does smack of "look at me, I'm so big-hearted and keen to just get along with everyone". But he didn't have to do it.

Lisa then ends up talking to Sam, the new and universally despised contestant (along with Aisleyne, also new and also universally despised). Lisa and co have previously ridiculed this girl - 'girl' used in the loosest possible sense - and called her every name under the sun. Then Sam said she quite liked their group. After which Lisa said "we'll look after Sam now". Lisa also threatened to dump all Richard's clothes in the swimming pool, for no real reason other than irrational, blind hatred.

This programme continues to plumb the grim depths of human stupidity and artificiality. Nikki and Lisa are not only ignorant and false beyond any previous measure science has devised: they also both possess accents designed to make you wish yourself dead a thousand times over with every sentence uttered. I am also appalled at how quickly the house has divided into these two 'groups', with no prospect of a resolution.

That said, I know which group I'd be in. Lisa and co are referred to as the 'plastics'. This, of course, refers to their personalities, but - like plastic - they are eminently expendable.

There's a thunderstorm rumbling by outside, so this seems like the perfect time to remind you that the 2006 hurricane season officially started as of 1 June.

As you may know, I had a thing for hurricanes when I was younger. Their spectacular satellite imprint coupled with the whole naming culture thing gave them an awesome power and mystique as far as I was concerned; add to this the happy knowledge that I don't live in the path of any of them, and the hobby of hurricane-spotting is born.

What this actually entails is checking the National Hurricane Center website every now and again, going 'oooh' and 'ahhh' at the satellite photos, then forgetting to check for another month or two. Dedicated storm-chaser I am not. However, we are promised a 'very active' hurricane season this time around according to the official forecast, which reads as follows:

"For the 2006 north Atlantic hurricane season, [we are] predicting 13 to 16 named storms, with eight to 10 becoming hurricanes, of which four to six could become 'major' hurricanes of Category 3 strength or higher.

"On average, the north Atlantic hurricane season produces 11 named storms, with six becoming hurricanes, including two major hurricanes. In 2005, the Atlantic hurricane season contained a record 28 storms, including 15 hurricanes. Seven of these hurricanes were considered "major," of which a record four hit the United States."

All of which probably means the remaining residents of New Orleans will be kept firmly on edge untl the season ends in December, given that their city is allegedly sinking even faster than previously thought. We've yet to have any storms this season, so you can get in on the act from the very start and follow it all here. (There's even RSS feeds on the site these days.)

Here's a quick recap - previous posts of mine on the subject of storms:

23 Oct 2005: It Ain't Alpha Big Year For Hurricanes
2005 becomes the biggest year for hurricanes on record.

19 Oct 2005: Fred Had Better Watch Out
Hurricane Wilma brings all manner of Flintstones puns.

28 Jun 2005: War Against Sleep
About the band of same name, as a storm rolls past my window (much like it's doing now).

9 Jun 2005: Garfield's Girlfriend Takes On Texas
More storm name-related hilarity with Hurricane Arlene.

21 May 2005: All Hail
Photos from a hailstorm over Oxford.

4 Jun 2004: Horrorcane
Exactly two years ago today we saw the film "The Day After Tomorrow", and didn't much like it.

If you know us fairly well, you're probably aware that something of a friendly rivalry has existed between myself and OJ since, well, the dawn of time.

This occasionally extended to the sports field. Rugby was a no-go zone for me whereas OJ excelled at it, leading to hilarity when the school mistakenly engraved my name onto the 'Most Improved Rugby Player' award. Football wasn't OJ's game - too busy with rugby and hockey - but it was pretty much all I ever did after school, playing in some old hockey nets until it got dark.

So it was the cricket field where we could both claim a modicum of skill. I stress modicum because neither of us were especially good, and our skills tended also to be our shortcomings. OJ had a lot of strength and could easily blast a junior cricket ball out of the ground, but this often led to a massive hoik at thin air with the ball bumbling past onto the stumps. I was pretty good at defending the ball and never went for the big shots, which meant I stayed in bat while the rest of the team crumbled, but often meant the team crumbled because I wasn't scoring any runs.

OJ spent much more time than yours truly in the top teams at school, a decision probably justified in hindsight (my opinion of my cricketing ability at school was far higher than my opinion of it since). But this must haunt me somewhere deep in my subconscious. A couple of days ago OJ wrote about his recent - highly successful - cricketing adventures. Lo and behold, last night I was wracked in my sleep by dreams of OJ playing for England.

I didn't get the chance to see him bat for them, thankfully (that would have destroyed me), but he bowled a couple of solid if unspectacular overs and then, horror of horrors, proceeded to take a one-handed catch at Deep Long-On. That just wasn't funny. If there was one plus to my cricketing ability at school it was catching; OJ's weakness was his fielding. Having to endure him soaring through the air by the boundary, plucking the ball from thin air to dismiss one of the Australian opening pair (my subconscious clearly doesn't rate Sri Lanka highly enough for inclusion), was neither expected nor welcome.

Mercifully I didn't see much else of that match or I'd have woken, screaming, in floods of tears. However this does heighten the urgency with which I must execute my plan to join a local cricket club around Reading. If anyone can recommend a team, let me know. I must put this horrifying experience behind me as soon as possible.

Continuing my trawling operation through the murky waters of Google Video, Youtube and the like, I present a university-student pastiche of the famous Nike advert in which Thierry Henry dribbles a football through a house - pursued by a load of Manchester United players. Nice and topical with the World Cup round the corner. (On that note I've seen a photo of Peter Crouch celebrating one of his three goals today, and it looks very suspiciously like he's doing that bloody body-popping again. This is not going to go quietly.)

This time round it's a Matthew Hoggard-a-like with decidedly less va va voom playing the lead role, but it's equally good and some of them do actually seem to possess nice skills! This coming from a man with a keepie-up record of about, oooh, seven. Enjoy.

Mister Dog has been evicted from the Big Brother house, to general fanfare. Dog, sometimes referred to as Sezer, garnered more than a whopping 90 per cent of the public vote to kick him out of the house. Uri Geller says he was "mindblown". What the hell is Uri Geller doing on this show? Does spoon bending not fill the coffers any more?

It now seems as though Pete, the nice young man with the swearing problem - "I love it when my Tourette's is in context", quoth he, hilariously - is odds on to win. In fact he's not just odds on to win, it will take something truly spectacular to stop him walking away with this. None of the remaining housemates possess an ounce of the endearing qualities Pete displays on such a regular basis (to quote fellow blog Londonist, "how adorable he looks in his geek-attire propellor cap").

Not since "Nasty Nick" has the small section of the British public watching this thing - namely anyone with an England flag attached to their car plus a small number of mildly interested bloggers (I watch because it's work-related... ahem) - reacted in such violent, negative fashion to one housemate. From what I can tell, the previous best in earlier series was set by Oxfordshire businessman Stuart Hosking at 86 per cent. Even then the landlord of his local pub proclaimed him "well-liked in the village". No such defence forthcoming for Mister Dog who, as a stockbroker by trade, was always going to be a pretentious, sleazy gobshite anyway.

Some small consolation: I have not been watching the worst thing on television this evening. I'm not sure Celebrity X Factor was on, in which case it would claim that title, but I know for a fact that Team America: World Police was on Sky Movies. I watched the first 15 minute or so. It was genuinely, quite palpably pathetic. This is what happens when the Americans try to do something that involves irony. They should be stopped before they humiliate themselves further.

Filed immediately in the "genuinely hilarious" category is this email exchange. Step up Erica Davies, fashion editor at The Sun, emailing her brother Gareth about his antics in the bathroom among other things. Except she's actually emailing an entirely different Gareth Davies by mistake...

From: Davies, Erica
Sent: 02 June 2006 10:15
To: Davies, Gareth
Subject: 2 things
1: can you PLEASE stop drowing the bathroom with water and wee every morning???
Everyday I wipe up the puddle of wee around the toilet and have to stop myself slipping cos you haven't used the bathmat. Last night's puddle of wee actually indicated that you hadn't managed to get ANYTHING in the toilet...YUK
2: Can I send you your dry cleaning as I haven't got a car and am going out tonight so don't REALLY wanna take your suit to the pub...

Anyway hi xx

Erica Davies

Fashion Editor
The Sun
1 Virginia Street
London E98 1SN

-----Original Message-----
From: Davies, Gareth
Sent: 02 June 2006 10:19
To: Davies, Erica
Subject: RE: 2 things

Eh? Do I know you?

-----Original Message-----
From: Davies, Erica
Sent: 02 June 2006 10:30
To: Davies, Gareth
Subject: RE: 2 things

Ok sod you then, won't bother sorting out YOUR dry cleaning

-----Original Message-----
From: Davies, Gareth
Sent: 02 June 2006 10:37
To: Davies, Erica
Subject: RE: 2 things

Don't get me wrong - it's very kind of you to sort out my dry cleaning - but I don't think we've ever met.

-----Original Message-----

From: Davies, Erica
Sent: 02 June 2006 10:39
To: Davies, Gareth
Subject: RE: 2 things

That's it then
I get home late from a very LONG day in Paris
I have to cope with a puddle of wee on the floor
before I can even go to the toilet
I sort out your dry cleaning
I then worry about how to get it to you
And you're being silly???
Forget it
You can wear your sodding jeans

-----Original Message-----
From: Davies, Gareth
Sent: 02 June 2006 10:45
To: Davies, Erica
Subject: RE: 2 things

Listen... some poor fella is getting into awful trouble here.

But something tells me you've got the wrong man, even though I DO have a pair of trousers at the dry cleaners. Check the e-mail address!!

-----Original Message-----
From: Davies, Erica
Sent: 02 June 2006 10:48
To: Davies, Gareth
Subject: RE: 2 things

Oh My God!!!! how embarrassing, so sorry!!
But yes, he IS in serious trouble!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SORRY!!
Ps always remember not to wee round the toilet!!

-----Original Message-----
From: Davies, Gareth
Sent: 02 June 2006 10:52
To: Davies, Erica
Subject: RE: 2 things
What?? I'm afraid to go to the loo ever again after this!!

-----Original Message-----
From: Davies, Erica
Sent: 02 June 2006 10:53
To: Davies, Gareth
Subject: RE: 2 things
Ha ha!
I am bright red and mortified with embarrassment! So sorry for bothering you with this!
His address usually comes up straight away hence my confusion - REALLY sorry Gareth

-----Original Message-----
From: Davies, Gareth
Sent: 02 June 2006 10:58
To: Davies, Erica
Subject: RE: 2 things
No worries. And here's to a nice, clean bathroom tomorrow morning.

Can you believe that it is June? So cold, wet and windy. But at least Lance Armstrong has been aquitted of any drugs misuse in the 1999 Tour de France. Perhaps now people will universally admit that he really is a thoroughly amazing athlete and person in his own right. We can only hope.