What to do when the incompetence of press officers has left you with no story to report?

Report your inability to report, of course, as the BBC's environment correspondent Sarah Mukherjee has done.

She attended a press briefing on the Stern report into climate change - a briefing supposedly intended to be the first, and only, place where journalists could learn what news the report contained. It was to be held behind closed doors with no mobile phones allowed.

But when Nicholas Stern himself went on the Today programme- before the briefing - to reveal many of the report's secrets, the journalists locked inside the briefing room went a little berserk:

By now mutinous journalists left their contemplation of the Mendelsohn model (page 147 of the Stern report) to engage in a vigorous argument with the Stern review team about the nature of the word "embargo".

We began to feel, (ironically, given the subject matter) like airline passengers - parked for hours in a large room with no information and only a boring book for entertainment.

At nine-thirty-five, we were allowed to go to the loo - in a "controlled fashion" (that referred, I hope, to the numbers allowed out at any one time).

Too late. Journalists slipped away from their minders and started hunting, increasingly frantically (and with a lot more shouting), for the lady with the phones.

[source: BBC News - 'Digesting a report in record time']

Sometimes I wonder why we bother watching television.

Last night's Mysterious Creatures, on ITV, was a case in point. Billed as a 'tale of family tragedy', it was more a tale of sheer, relentless, unremitting woe for 90 minutes. Had a bad day, have you? Want to settle down in front of the box, do you? Well here. Have this, and see what these people had to suffer. You ungrateful shite.

It's a true story, just to tip you off the bridge of despair and into oblivion, of how two parents try (and fail) to deal with their daughter's many and varied addictions. Ostensibly these include spending money on shoes and cuddly toys, but they are more demonstrably seen to include throwing violent wobblers in the middle of packed high streets, and escorting parents to failed suicide bids.

My stepmum, bless her, stuck with the whole hour and a half of this. I don't know how she did it. I only properly caught the last half an hour and, by the end of it, I'd have gladly gunned down every character to have appeared in it.

But tonight I pop into the living room and what do I find - more woe! This time it's Tripping Over on Five, described as a "series in which five young travellers meet in Bangkok where a tragic incident changes the direction of their lives."

There's that tragedy bit again, as if our daily lives didn't have enough for us to be working on emotionally and psychologically. I saw five minutes, during which a man was told he had a disease which would have rendered him infertile since the day he was born. Given he has a son in his 20s, this clearly presents a dilemma. Unable to watch the numbingly inevitable agony with which this would play out, I left.

It doesn't all have to be like that, you know. Last night, when I could have been watching the first hour of Mysterious Creatures, I retired elsewhere and watched the hour-long Royle Family special. What a treat. If that hour of television doesn't win every award for which it is nominated, I will be violently sick with anger.

It is six years since the Royles were last on our televisions (no, really! I couldn't believe it either), and this episode shows us where they're up to. Then, as Nana becomes increasingly ill, we're given some incredibly moving and real insights into the human beings behind the comedy figures Royle Family fans love.

For example, the show starts with a row - as ever- between Jim and Nana. But as things change and her condition slowly worsens, we see beautiful scenes of Jim helping her up the stairs, all the while making her laugh by being silly, proving himself the true gentleman when the situation demands. And all this set to hauntingly dainty, carefree music reminiscent of radio gems from the 30s and 40s.

As the end draws near, we see each of the many characters from the show finding their way to the hospital from the walks of life they have each carved out - wearing the clothes specific to their profession, each approaching this most worrying of situations in their own little ways. There are so many wonderful fine touches to every scene that I can't possible document them. It's as though I'm watching myself in all these people. How fascinating to watch the writers of the show thrust their characters into a serious, emotionally charged situation, and let the actors thrive in developing that side to roles they've already had five years to develop. Brilliant television.

The one scene which will live in my memory always is portrayed through the eyes of Nana as she lies in her hospital bed. It is not made clear whether she can actually see, or whether she is asleep and we simply view the scene from her sleeping position.

Jim Royle walks into the shot. The camera then holds for 10 to 15 seconds as Jim, utterly overcome by grief and trying with all his convulsive might to fight away floods of uncontrollable tears, stands over the bed. Those are some of the most powerful seconds of television I have ever seen, and at that point I started crying too - I didn't stop until the credits.

I didn't cry because I was depressed. I didn't cry because somebody had thrown tragedy after tragedy, each removed from my own experience and a little far fetched, at my television set. I cried because the writers took an event all of us have to face sooner or later - death. They showed us how some of our favourite characters, people we identify with, people we see laugh and joke all the time, dealt with death. And when Jim Royle started crying, they showed us it was okay to be a human being. Even for Jim.

Nana died quietly at the hospital in the full knowledge it was coming. No addictions, no screaming, no violence, no concocted tragedy, no gratuitous exploitation of emoton. Nana's was the simplest of deaths, portrayed in the simplest of ways, and it made me feel better about myself. That's a reason to watch television.

My apologies for neglecting you a little over the past week. The great God Wogan often jokes that the British public thinks there's only one man on the radio, and this week in Berkshire, they could be forgiven. By the time I've finished anchoring Sunday's coverage of London Irish versus Toulouse, I'll have spent 29 hours on-air in just eight days - which is roughly the same amount of time I've spent in bed during that period.

While all this has been going on, Britain's railway network has unceremoniously bid farewell to the final vestiges of one of its greatest ever branding initiatives - indeed, to my knowledge, the last trace of the nationalised British Rail era.

Granted, Network SouthEast - the 1980s brainchild of BR executive Chris Green (these days, Chief Exec. of Virgin Trains, Ollie...) - has now been defunct for the best part of thirteen years. But, tenacious to the last, its face has lived on through station furniture, faded signage and even, until recently, through liveried rolling stock.

The coming of NSE certainly brought about some much needed excitement on the railways. I vividly remember being bundled into a car with the greatest of haste to go and see "a surprise". It turned out to be a thirty-year old Diesel Multiple Unit, newly outshopped in NSE livery, which had finally brought the brand to our local station. At the time, it was the most radical change I'd witnessed on the railways in my area. With its toothpaste stripes and garish colours, it all seemed so modern.

In essence, it was an ailing railway dressed in new clothing. It had some real benefits for the passenger, but the priority was in regaining the trust and respect of rail commuters whose faith in the railways had died with any prestige of the British Rail brand, by now a universal punchline. Brilliantly, an army of painters was dispatched to paint red every one of the thousands of lamp-posts on the network, a cheap and simple measure with real visual impact. Things looked fresher, brighter, and the effect was good.

Ironically, red turned out to be a mistake. Just as it symbolised the rise of Network SouthEast, it was a colour that faded all too quickly, and ended up looking as shabby as what had been before. Only within a few years of rail privatisation and the disbanding of Network SouthEast, could most customers (as the private sector would have them) claim to be seeing any real improvement in the quality of their journeys - a genuine depth of colour in the railways which came through much needed investment in the things that actually matter.

But not everywhere. In some parts, investment has remained minimal, which is why thirteen years on, commuters between London Victoria, Crystal Palace and Croydon are still enduring daily sights like this:

Or, at least, were.

To its credit, Southern (itself a brand reborn from the ashes of the old pre-1960s company which served its territory) has at long last commissioned the refurbishment of the Class 456, the final Network SouthEast liveried trains, the first of which reappeared this week.

A miraculous transformation, which for the South East, completes the coming of the latest new age of the train. When my friend Matthew sent me the photograph this week, I was struck by how modern the trains look. It was 1986 all over again, though this time against a very different railway backdrop, where new rolling stock far outnumbers the old, and much of what 1986 set out to achieve has now been done.

So it's a tribute to the initiative of 1986 that, although the 456s had become less than proud ambassadors of a bygone age, I'm also slightly saddened that never again shall we see the colour of Network SouthEast on our metals. Far away on the Island of Soda, the Fat Controller once rewarded the good behaviour of his engines with a nice new coat of paint. Let's hope he paints one grey, red and blue, for all the little boys like me.

In and out as I am, I have little to report, other than - having read Ollie's post below - to point people to this article in Slate where the author tries to determine whether Rush Limbaugh is dumb, or just playing...

In the above US political campaign advertisement, actor and Parkinson's disease sufferer Michael J. Fox is seen struggling with his affliction while delivering a message in support of the Democrats' pro-stem cell research stance.

Famously controversial US broadcaster Rush Limbaugh, on seeing that video, had this to contribute on air:

"He is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He's moving all around and shaking, and it's purely an act. This is really shameless of Michael J. Fox."

[source: E! Online via The Whiskey Priest]

I wonder what would happen to his RAJARs if he'd said that over here. Radio stations have been in the news a lot today, certainly from the perspective of someone who works at one, for this very reason. Today's the day our RAJAR figures - the audience measurement statistics all British radio stations use - were released for the last three months.

Our radio station has suffered a little in some areas and gained a little in others, so overall I think it's fair to say there's no crisis but no champagne either

The way RAJAR works is people are selected at random across the country and given little booklets to fill out, detailing all the radio they listen to, all the time. Then they return these and, from that sample, RAJAR decides how many people are listening to your radio station, when they're doing it, and for how long.

It is fair to say an element of doubt exists among the radio community over the accuracy of this system. In general, about 1 in 10 people actively listen to BBC local radio. We reckon there are about 400 RAJAR diaries being distributed in our county. That means the listening figures on which our shows rise and fall could well rest on the whim of the 40 or so people who both have a RAJAR diary and listen to us. It has been speculated that one diary-owning family going on holiday for two weeks could, in the figures, be responsible for the apparent loss of many hundreds of listeners!

What I really want to know is, have you ever seen one of these diaries? I've yet to meet anybody who has been issued with one, or knows someone else who has. Goodness knows how RAJAR select their guinea pigs. If you've been a RAJAR listener then let me know! What was it like? Did you get bored to death filling out the book? Did you even bother with it all the time? If they gave me one I'd probably leave it lying around somewhere and then have to make it all up at the last minute.

More to the point, how would you feel if the system were changed so that your radio had a little implant which told RAJAR what you listened to? Big Brother, or relatively sensible and unintrusive? After all, websites can tell exactly how many hits their live streaming of radio gets, and where they came from. Why not the same with listeners?

You see, when I don't read Dayorama before I post, I don't notice that Williams has beaten me to posting about the Pelican. Bugger.

I was told off at work by a fellow trainee today: you don't post on Dayorama anymore. He then told me off for leaving early (10.15pm) and not being committed enough to the firm. Tch. I have, however, just had to phone him to say, "would you mind checking if my suit jacket is in my Office" - I need to wear a suit tomorrow and I didn't collect the jacket from the dry cleaners this evening, nor is it in my flat. So, if it isn't in my Office, then I'm in trouble. As the said person pointed out, "well, it's probably in some random man's house somewhere in London". Not true. It really must be in the Office! So what else? Observations of Dayorama (from the same, rather vocal, person): OJ never posts and David, "the new guy", has taken over. The former is a bad thing, the latter is a good thing.

What else? I don't know any news. I now subscribe to the FT. I know that a pelican ate a pigeon in St James Park today. Highly entertaining. I have a party on Saturday evening and I'm being useless about organising anything. Oh and I'm very much acquainted with late night TV. Oh, my Barclaycard was declined last night. That was useful. But it's OK, it was due to the fact I can't add up. Finances are just about treading water. Roll on the Xmas bonus (fingers crossed...)

That's what this pelican can look forward to:

Families and tourists in a London park were left shocked when a pelican picked up and swallowed a pigeon.

The unusual wildlife spectacle in St James's Park was caught on camera by photographer Cathal McNaughton.

Mr McNaughton, from the Press Association, said: "There was a bit of a struggle for about 20 minutes, with all these people watching. The pelican only opened its mouth a couple of times.

"Then it managed to get the pigeon to go head first down its throat. It was kicking and flapping the whole way down."

[source: BBC News - 'Pelican swallows pigeon in park']

I've done a little detective work online and I reckon this is the very same incident:

Lovely. Lunch anyone?

About a month ago, Manchester City fans hung their heads collectively in shame. That's something Manchester City fans are used to doing, and they've been doing plenty of it recently, not least having lost 4-0 away at Wigan last weekend. But when lowly Chesterfield knocked City out of the Carling Cup, it was quite a pathetic display.

Tonight, then, is a happy occasion for City fans, who are no longer the only ones. Earlier this evening fellow Premiership also-rans West Ham United suffered the same fate, going down 2-1 to the Spireites (so called for the town's wonky spire, above) in the same competition. Chesterfield are now through to the 4th round of the Cup with two Premiership scalps to their name.

This is always the great story for the football media - the little side who come good in the Cup. It happens every season, and this time it is the turn of Chesterfield to taste the limelight when the 4th round draw is made (a draw in which they could face the likes of Arsenal, Chelsea or Manchester United).

But that's the Carling Cup, or the League Cup as it used to be known. It's always been the lesser of our two domestic Cup competitions, where Premiership teams often field weakened sides (neither City nor West Ham did, they're both just crap).

The FA Cup, with all its tradition, is where it really matters. It is from that competition that we get the time-honoured expression, "the magic of the Cup", whenever FA Cup 3rd round day comes to pass. That's when all the Premiership clubs go in to face the smaller sides who've battled through previous rounds for the privilege.

Two of those smaller sides are Maidenhead United and Merthyr Tydfil, who meet in the FA Cup at Maidenhead on Saturday. It's the 4th qualifying round - after this you go into the 1st round proper, so whoever wins this weekend's game will be two matches away from that magical 3rd round moment.

It promises to be a great game and I'm going to be there covering it for local radio. Both teams are in the Southern Premier Division, the seventh rung of English league football, one below the Nationwide Conference South (which is in turn two rungs below the main Football League), so you have to be quite a hardcore football fan to turn up to all Maidenhead United's matches. But some people indeed do, and I'll be meeting fans for a preview piece before the game on Friday.

Some of those fans have followed Maidenhead for so long that they remember the last time Maidenhead and Merthyr met in the FA Cup 4th qualifying round (this being football, there is always a precedent, always a staggering slice of history to accompany any game). That was 27 years ago, back in 1979, when the game was held at Merthyr. Maidenhead lost 2-1 and their fans vividly recall a less than pleasant welcome from their Welsh counterparts, who, it is alleged, bricked the away supporters' coach as it tried to leave the ground!

I'm hoping the atmosphere on Saturday will be a little more pleasant, but the stakes really are high. Win this, and you're in with the chance of facing a league club. Win the next game and you're a step away from Premiership opposition and a television special. To a club like Maidenhead the financial implications are as tantalising as the prestige associated with Cup success. 90 minutes of football will decide if they can make that happen. It's a beautiful game.

It's the done thing for many movies to paint a bleak future for humanity. After all, you only have to look at the news on any given day to realise it's not difficult to envisage things going horribly wrong.

Minority Report, which I watched for the second time on BBC3 a couple of nights ago, portrays a society so rigidly defined by identity that more problems are caused than solved. Every eye is scanned in every location - there is nowhere to hide. When you're innocent, that's a very bad thing.

Children Of Men, the film of the PD James novel, depicts a world where everyone is infertile, the last generation of humanity is dying, and Great Britain is the only nation still in existence - governed as a police state with democracy in tatters. The message: we're just one event short of eternal global catastrophe.

I've been thinking about this, and it is apparent to me that all this freedom of choice we now have could well be our undoing. Take television as the prime example: with a Sky+ box you can already record any programme you like, then watch it back at your leisure. Gone - or at least, going - are the days of appointment-to-view TV, when you can now make your appointment the moment you feel like it. The BBC's currently testing its iPlayer service, which will let you download hours and hours of TV to your computer in high definition, should you please. Already, the Beeb's 'Listen Again' service is operating almost at capacity, such is its popularity. You call the shots in the world of broadcasting.

Now apply this to the concept of 'Top 100' shows, with a liberal sprinkling of Minority Report theory. There are far too many Top 100 shows on TV but we tolerate them because they're always controversial in their own little way, and we like to enjoy watching them in order to catch snippets of our favourite shows. Above all we like to be reassured that other people like the same stuff we do. If Tom & Jerry isn't in the nation's 'Top 100 Cartoons', we want to know why. It's a nostalgic device, a safety blanket and a conversation topic - that's why these shows continue to endure.

What if a box on the top of your TV - the same box which lets you play a 'Top 100' at any time of your choosing - scanned your retina before the show began? What if it used your ID to call up a record of your most-viewed television since your birth and, from that, determined your 'Top 100 Cartoons'? When you sat down you'd be presented with your very own customised programme showcasing the 100 cartoons you've most enjoyed watching throughout your lifetime to date. That, in the eyes (literally in this example) of many broadcasting executives, must exist as some kind of holy grail. You cannot get more personal than that, and today the demand is always for the tailor-made viewing experience.

But how much fun would that really be? Imagine tuning in to be presented with your top 100 shows. There would be no surprises! No room for argument, because how can you argue with yourself? No anxious wait for the number one show because you know damn well your favourite cartoon is The Simpsons! Slowly but surely your idyllic world of on-demand, personalised television becomes a hell-hole where you're encased in your own bubble, away from anyone else's experiences. That's what we're doing - extending the user-generated environment to the point where there's no other input - and that's not just dangerous, it's boring.

The scary thing is just how close all this is. Watch Doctor Who when you like, follow it with Torchwood, download a customised news bulletin with the stories you choose from specialist criteria. How are you ever going to be exposed to anything you didn't know about, or didn't think you'd care to know about? I worry that technology isn't broadening our horizons any more - it's starting to close them. As Children Of Men we may not yet be infertile, but the fertile mind is very much an endangered species.

As the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy once said:

Television, the drug of the nation: breeding ignorance and feeding radiation.

Even I'm surprised how long it's taken me to mention this:

"Rock veterans Genesis are to reform, 10 years after frontman Phil Collins left.

"Collins, 55, with guitarist Mike Rutherford, 56, and keyboardist Tony Banks, 56, have agreed to take part in a major tour."

[source: BBC News - 'Rockers Genesis plan reunion tour']

I am so excited that words can scarcely do justice, despite the BBC journalist's use of the word 'rockers', in the title of the news article, in a fashion that suggests 'rocking chair' as opposed to 'rocking out'.

I only ever got to see Genesis - the proper Genesis, with Phil Collins or Peter Gabriel singing - on their early 90s 'Way We Walk' tour. I'd have been about 9 years old but I remember so much of it as though it were yesterday. I would have given anything to see them in concert again and now my wish has come true.

My favourite song of all time, and I'm listening to it now, is 'Domino' by Genesis, played live at Earls Court. Genesis were always at the forefront of advances in lighting and stage devices - they pioneered the kind of stage show you'd associate with the likes of Muse today (and indeed, Muse at Earls Court a couple of years ago were just like Genesis visually, full of tricks). For 'Domino' they had massive screens onto which were projected neon green dominoes, collapsing one after the other - not bad for early 90s technology. At 9 years old my jaw hit the floor watching my heroes playing that song with that in the background.

Now I'm listening to it again in the forlorn hope that maybe, just maybe, they'll revisit it on their forthcoming tour. I'm fairly sure they won't - it probably doesn't feature on many people's top ten lists, it's very much my own acquired taste (plus I can drum to it!) - but really I don't care. Whatever they play, I'll be in heaven - and you'll hear about the gig first on Dayorama.

(Note that earlier today I entitled a post 'Seconds Out'. It has only just dawned on me that this is also the title of a Genesis live album. I've clearly been in the mood all day.)

I'm an online journalist, but I'm not an online journalist. Adam Pasick is - he's Reuters' bureau chief in the virtual online world of Second Life.

• Reuters' Second Life bureau
• Second Life homepage

As "Adam Reuters", Pasick uses his experience as a technology journalist for the news agency to report from Second Life - a world hosted on the internet where users create their own character, then go around doing almost everything you can do in your, well, First Life. You can shop, go to university, talk to others, the works.

Reuters has always had a strong reputation for financial reporting, so it's no surprise that their (inspired) coverage of Second Life is driven by similar motives.

The charts you can see on the left are displayed prominently on Reuters' Second Life homepage. They chart the exchange rate between Linden dollars - Second Life's currency - and the US dollar (top), and the level of US dollar expenditure in Second Life in the last 24 hours. At the time of writing $1 will get you L$271.6, and a truly staggering $458,000 has been spent acquiring L$.

This financial coverage extends to the interviews Pasick conducts inside the game. His latest interviewee is the man in charge of Ginko, one of Second Life's banks - that is, a bank set up inside Second Life and designed to run entirely within Second Life, with little or no real world presence.

As is quickly apparent, Second Life has a working, very real economy to maintain. If Reuters are now monitoring and evaluating this economy, not to mention reporting it (that's why they're bothering - it's all about the money), then it's time to sit up and take notice. In 10 years' time are online currency exchange rates going to get the same billing as £/$?

It's a scary thought, even for somebody whose life is already conducted online much of the time. For companies with no real web presence the concept of entire, grasping, virtual economies - generating millions of pounds - being born under their noses might just be terrifying.

On my show this afternoon, I paid the briefest of tributes to one of the formative figures in my life, Paul Walters, who died this morning. It was a bizarre experience for so many reasons, not least because I was broadcasting to a small local radio audience who may never have knowingly encountered Pauly or his work (chances are, they have); but it was something I wanted to do, just to say a small thanks to a great man who's inspired me enormously over the years.

Radio 2's website is today awash with tributes from hundreds of the many millions of listeners whose lives he touched, each of them writing about somebody they consider to be a dear friend. I'm with them on that.

As a young listener of 15 or 16, I would write to Pauly with contributions for Wake Up to Wogan scarcely expecting them to be read, let alone read out; yet, then and for the next eight years, my best work always made it to air. Often a reply would arrive, answering a question I'd asked about the intimate workings of the show, or a pose for the studio webcam would be arranged to acknowledge that they'd got the joke.

Here's the good Dr Wally getting ready for surgery...

Under Pauly, the show became the ultimate circle of friends ribbing one another, with just one line sparking hilarity for all. Pauly, Dr Wallington P. De Wynters Walters, was every bit as ingrained on the character of the show as Wogan himself. He found himself at the centre of the recurring gags: the party at which he accidentally launched a cocktail sausage at Lord Reith's portrait; the teasing about living at home with his mother (which, of course, he didn't!); the many 'nieces'; the infamous "accident", just as Wogan opened the microphone; and the mimes on the radio, like walking into the wind.

Of course, if you're not a listener, all this will mean very little; but if you are, it will mean the world.

On the occasions I met him, I couldn't help but be in awe of his style. At the helm of the country's most popular breakfast show, he ambled back and forth between Wogan's studio and the cubicle next door, performing his many and varied roles with the utmost control and calm, still with time enough to speak to you like you were the most important visitor in the world. That's production at its highest and most elegant level. So many could learn from him.

He once arranged for me to interview Wogan for my student radio show (my gently probing request was met with the kind of welcoming response that made me question why I hadn't asked sooner). Pauly explained that he wouldn't be there on the day, or indeed on Wake up to Wogan that morning, as he was off to the golf. For the purposes of the show, his silence was to be explained by a gumboil which rendered him unable to speak. Nobody would really believe it, of course, but it was the perfect analogy for how the show felt that morning; the listeners might not have heard Pauly's voice, but they could still quite believe he was there, busying himself in the background.

Now, we'll have to learn to believe it all over again. It's been eleven months since he last worked on the show, and yet still you hear his influence breaking through. The ultimate legacy. As one well meaning but slightly confused tribute on the Radio 2 website reads, "never a day went by when I thought of Pauly".

I think I can imagine his response now...

Did you know you can now renew your tax disc online or by telephone? Well, you can. I received my notice from DVLA earlier this week stating that my car tax was due. With reminder came a helpful little leaflet telling me that I didn't need to root around (well, not that I have to root since everything is nicely filed) to find my insurance certificate, MOT certificate and then find a Post Office. Instead I could simply ring a number (or go online), enter my reference and then my credit card details and all would be done. I was slightly puzzled as to how I would then print out my tax disk, bearing in mind I don't think my printer can cope with perforating circles. It seems my fear was misplaced: they will send my tax disc within 5 working days. So there we are. Just one easy phone call, a few details, a few number punches and all done. Fantastic. At the same time, I don't suppose this does much for supporting the local Post Office. I was actually in Kent with my parents this morning and so had planned to go to our local Post Office. Instead, I rang the DVLA from the comfort of my bed!

Last night I went for a drink with a new friend of mine. Neither of us fancied a big night, just a chance to chat and quietly mull things over with a pint of something well brewed.

And so to the Hobgoblin in Reading, a favourite haunt of each of us it turned out, where real ale doth flow and wooden panelled booths and nooks reign supreme. Here's the view from my favourite two-and-a-half seater booth...

(Photo courtesy of Beer in the Evening.)

Cosy, huh?

In the heart of town, this little place is a gem - what, if you weren't struck by the fact that it completely defies the need for pretentious categorisations, you might venture to say is the ultimate 'character pub'. Certainly, it's got more than a full measure of character. And characters aplenty, too...

We managed to bag the favoured booth, and when the time came to refuel, I was sure to guard our spot. After a few, quiet moments, the head of a lady appeared at the opening.

"Are you alone?", she asked, eyeing the recently vacated seat. I apologised, and told her I wasn't.

She ventured further. "Oh... Are you with... a woman?", she whispered, now eyeing the empty half-seat next to me. "Only, I'd really wanted to sit quietly in a booth and drink my beer - but I wouldn't want to intrude on anything... intimate."

One of life's wonderful situations that ought to be easier to explain than it actually turns out to be, I confirmed that no, I was not with a woman but that...

"Would you mind if I shared you?" she pleaded. "I'd be no trouble - I'll just read my book, and maybe eavesdrop on your laddish chat."

Utterly charmed, I couldn't resist.

And so when my friend returned from the bar, our evening had gained a middle-aged woman from Durham, half a pint of mild, and her book. I fumbled an introduction, and we continued to make "laddish chat".

Soon, the woman joined in, and proved to be terrific company. It turned out to be her Birthday (that old line, but it actually was!), and she'd called in at the pub on her way back from seeing her son. She'd wanted some company and, let's face it, if the Hobgoblin can't provide that, then where can?

Highlights included the moment she pulled a brand new DVD copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being from her bag, complete with erotic cover, and explained how she couldn't wait to watch it. We were assured that, like the young vendor who'd surreptitiously passed it to her under the counter, we had probably got completely the wrong idea about what sort of film it was. (Looking at a summary, it turns out we probably had.)

An hour or so later, after much mirth, she was on her way, and we were both genuinely pleased that she'd touched our evening. This is exactly why we should love our real community pubs, and go to them as often as we possibly can. It's certainly one of the reasons why I do.

Next week, Simon's coming over to mine for a drink. I'll be setting a third place at the table, just in case.

Watch the following video closely. You will see people at the bottom of the giant slides at the Tate Modern gallery in London. Then you'll see what happens to small children flung from the slide apparatus...

Not really, of course. Fun slides though! Here's a selection of pics starting with my favourite, combining a word from the slide instructions on the glass viewing platform with a slider in motion. Who says we can't try to create art out of art?

Don't get me wrong: the slides are good fun, they attract youngsters to art, and they're so popular that clearly the British public have been craving this kind of interactivity with their galleries. But it feels like not over-much actual artistic effort went in. The slides are bare, grey structures with no life to them. I had expected them to be decorated or surrounded by other works of art suspended from above, so people sliding would have plenty of exciting things flying through their field of vision as they descended the exhibit. But there was nothing like that.

One word of advice if you're planning on going. Get there very early (it opens at 10am most days), get in line to book your free tickets for the higher slides, and come back at the appointed time. We got there at 2pm and they had already almost sold out of tickets for the whole of the rest of the day. It's very easy to end up disappointed - given the gallery doesn't shut til 10pm on a Friday, you simply don't expect all eight hours of remaining sliding to be booked up!

If I'm honest the rest of the Tate Modern left me cold. There was some photography on display which did little to inspire me, and plenty of modern art about which I could bleat on forever, but suffice to say it's just not clever enough. If I reckon I could reproduce it given enough time and resources, it's not art. I can lump a load of clay into silly shapes and leave it in a corner of a room as per one exhibit - I couldn't paint the Mona Lisa. Therein lies the difference, for me.

It gives us much pleasure to reproduce this gem, carelessly left on the printer at work by one of our programme producers.

Just to clear a couple of things up:

• Tim Tams are a rectangular, Australian chocolate biscuit. You can find out more about them here.
• The recipient is the Aussie singer Natalie Imbruglia, famed for her 1997 hit "Torn".

My "Biscuit Of The Week" entry is the bourbon (relatively similar, in fact, to the Tim Tam). What would yours be?

It's nice of Virgin to provide a sign welcoming us to Coventry. It's just a shame they sent us to Coventry in the first place.

Here we all are, at 11pm on a Wednesday night, stood helpless on the platform with our broken-down train licking its wounds opposite.

Earlier in the evening I was mildly uptight when I accused Virgin of being "idiots" and intimated I would be demanding my money back.

Now I'm finding it all amusing, in its own numbingly inevitable way. My current estimated time of arrival into Reading is 12:30am, three hours late and eight hours after the train's scheduled departure time from Newcastle.

In that time the sheer number of trains - hypothetical and physical - involved in the operation has been staggering.

One train left Edinburgh bound for Southampton earlier this afternoon, and that's the one I got on at Newcastle.

A separate train left Manchester bound for Southampton slightly later on and, at Birmingham New Street, these two trains merged. Confusingly, the Edinburgh train on which I was sat became the Manchester to Southampton service.

Between Birmingham International and Coventry that train broke down. This was hardly unexpected - it was an hour late leaving Edinburgh because it wouldn't work properly, but Virgin seem to have taken a chance on a faulty train making it all the way to Southampton.

After twenty minutes dormant in a field it managed to limp to Coventry. Forty minutes or so later a replacement train arrived, and that's where I find myself. Add a taxi back to my car and the drive home, and I'll be lucky to get back before 1:30am. I mean it, this is it. No more Virgin for me. The Dodge can take me everywhere... its record is so much better...

Post title in honour of Andrew, the train manager for this service since New Street, who - while we were stopped in the middle of a field - used the word to describe the journey thus far.

I've been trying to refrain from writing this for over an hour but Virgin have now lobbed sufficient straw on this camel's back for me to get the hump.

Ultimately, the foul mood I'm in as we sit at Birmingham New Street is in some respects my fault. I booked the ticket for this train a couple of weeks in advance and, when I went to Newcastle, forgot my Young Persons' Railcard, which is lying on a bookshelf at home.

That's cost me £32 tonight, thanks to the conductress aboard this train, who saw no room for leniency and charged me the excess when I couldn't produce the railcard.

This means that, in total, the round trip has cost me over £100. The original fare was £66.40, plus a small booking fee, which I personally thought more than enough given I could probably get a cheaper flight. (And I will be doing, next time, even if the flight's more expensive, or I'll go with GNER. I've had it with these idiots.)

I would be holding my hands up and admitting fault over the railcard - indeed I already have done - but circumstances are starting to make me feel cheated of every single penny.

For a start we're now well over an hour late, and have been since just after my journey started. I won't get to my car in Reading until well after 11pm, a good 90 minutes later than scheduled. Frankly I hope it's more than two hours late so I can reclaim the entire bloody fare.

Secondly, we've just been held up at Birmingham New Street waiting for a connecting service from Manchester. This train has now officially become the Manchester Piccadilly to Southampton service, with all the folk from the Manchester train boarding this one.

This train is thus packed full once again, and furthermore - hilariously - the old reservations on this train have been replaced by ones from the Manchester service.

This has had the unbelievable effect of changing the display above my seat: where once it was reserved for me from Newcastle to Reading, it is now "available until Stockport"! We're going the other bloody way! These incompetent cretins have charged me a three-figure sum to take away my seat on a severely delayed train!

The final insult is the buffet, or lack thereof - not that I have the slightest intention of spending a penny in their toilet, let alone an extortionate sum in their shop. There was no hot food until Birmingham, a situation Virgin have rectified by refusing to offer any food or drink past New Street. That means nothing at all for the remaining two hours (at least) this service has to run. Is that even legal?

When the lady charged me the excess I handed over the money on the grounds it was a fair cop and she was just doing her job. But no. No, they haven't done their jobs on this train, they've provided a crummy service tantamount to no service at all. I want my money back and, in the immortal words of every wronged British consumer, they'll be hearing from me.

Yesterday evening I took the Newcastle Metro out to Callerton Parkway to see my friend Helen, who lives in Ponteland, up a bit and left from Newcastle itself.

At Monument station, waiting for the Metro, a man smelling of alcohol asked me if the next train was for the airport. It was, and it was the one I needed. On we got.

I've spent the last three days filiming, editing and doing various story-telling type things, so - if I'm honest - I haven't the energy to properly do justice to the next twenty-five minutes. Instead I reproduce, in bullet point format, the conversation in chronological order:

• Time elapsed: Event

• 2 mins: He's off to the airport. He missed his last plane having turned up with 20 minutes to go. The girl at the check-in desk wouldn't let him on the plane (he referred to her in rather unpleasant terms). He went back into town, ventured into a pub, and is now turning up a couple of hours ahead of the 9pm flight to make sure he doesn't miss that.

• 4 mins: He lives in Scotland, but grew up near Newcastle. He's flying to Exeter to see a gentleman who owns a trout farm there. My man owns a number of trout fisheries in his own right, it transpires, and is trying to cure a trout disease threatening to put him out of business.

• 7 mins: Not only is my man flying to Exeter on trout business, he is also - and I hope your reaction to this is the same as mine - flying there to visit his birth mother for the very first time.

• 8 mins: No, he really is.

• 10 mins: His real mum lives near Barnstaple, apparently. He's in his forties at a guess, and always knew he was adopted (at the age of 4 weeks). His real mum first got in touch a few years ago but circumstances have prevented a meeting til now. He's having one day at the trout farm and one day with his mum. (Bloody hell.)

• 14 mins: He's on the phone to the man picking him up in Devon. The conversation is conducted in hushed whispers. When the call finishes, my man tells me his trout fishing colleague was out stalking deer for the duration of their conversation.

• 18 mins: We're back to his tale of woe at the airport earlier that day. Having been told he couldn't board his original flight, my man was asked to pay £25 to switch his ticket for the later departure. He grudgingly agreed and reached for his wallet - it wasn't there. He'd missed his plane and lost his wallet.

• 21 mins: On walking, distressed, back to his car, he discovered his wallet in the back seat. By now needing the toilet quite badly (having run to catch his original flight), he went to the loo in the car park, up against a bush. As he was doing this, a couple of air stewardesses drove past in a car. He finished the job then ran to catch up with them, to apologise for having been caught in the act, so to speak. They told him he had parked his car in the airline staff car park, and risked it being clamped if he left it there. His moral of the story: every cloud has a silver lining. If he'd caught his plane, he'd have been without his wallet and found his car clamped on his return.

• 25 mins: I left the train. My moral of the story: always, always carry your camera with you if up in Newcastle on a video journalism course. What an opportunity...

Whatever else I may have been expecting from my first stand-up comedy gig, I certainly didn't expect to wake up to an email entitled "debut highly amusing".

Okay, so it turned out to be a fantastically well timed piece of spam mail, ostensibly from a Polish woman with some fake Rolex watches to sell, but it's the thought that counts. I'm sure she was there in spirit.

I was even more touched by the reaction of the thirty or so people who turned out for last night's gig at Bar HaHa! in Reading (as much as it hurt, each of us avoided the obvious gag in our acts) - not the most suitable of venues for comedy, nor sadly, the most extensively publicised of events - but a fun night all the same.

The lack of publicity added an extra dimension to the night, not because the crowd turned out to be small, but because less than 50% of those present were sold on the idea that comedy would be playing any part in their evening. Each of the acts made a Herculean attempt to win the full attention of the crowd (which included a rowdy office party of suited 20 somethings), the compere even throwing out the odd abusive line to the "noisy people at the back". I'm no expert, but I'm sure it usually happens the other way round.

Whatever happened, and however good the act, the revellers' attention was not there for the taking. And, in fairness, they were just as surprised to be sharing the bar with us as we were with them. From my point of view, all this reduced the likelihood of being heckled, but likewise meant there were unlikely to be any big belly laughs from within the audience; but then, on my first gig, that was never really on the cards.

I did the act - well, those bits I didn't forget - and with the intimate little audience around the stage, it proved to be a reasonable hit. There were laughs in all the right places, and a couple more chortles besides. I even won the affection of a young lady in the front row, who confided in a fellow comic that she "quite fancied the little one in the tight jacket". I think it was pity.

The greatest of compliments came from one of the bar staff who, having been told that one of the acts was making its debut that evening, asked me afterwards which one it was. I owned up, and she seemed genuinely surprised; at least I'd managed to get away with it. Likewise, I was really humbled by feedback from the other acts - some quite new themselves, and delighted to be able to dispense advice to somebody with less experience - most of whom seemed to think I wasn't a complete lost cause in the world of stand-up.

I've been invited to do a repeat performance on Thursday, but much to the disappointment of the lady in the front row, I'm busy on a date. But, I've got a taste for this tight jacket clowning, and fingers crossed, there'll be more of it soon...

I'm posting under the category of 'Thinking Space' in the desperate hope that, somehow, I might buy myself some.

In a little under five hours time, the Reading Comedy Festival will launch tonight's instalment of frolics in a popular central Reading bar, and I'll be making up precisely one quarter of the acts.

'Making up' is very much the phrase of the day, I fear. I've never attempted stand-up comedy before (at least, not to an audience that doesn't consist entirely of mates and generally good people who are already on my side); but three weeks ago, I was set a challenge on-air to perform a slot at the Reading Comedy Festival.

In the great spirit of "never say no to anything new", I agreed, knowing that we'd record a few five minute features for Radio Berkshire following my training and preparation, but blissfully overlooking the fact that, some fateful night, I would actually be required to perform.

Three weeks later, I've just heard the penultimate piece being played on The Henry and Ollie Show, and finally it's struck home. Tonight is that night. And despite the many hours I've invested in putting those radio features together, and the many prompts I've had from listeners who are eagerly awaiting the final instalment on next weeks show (entitled "How Did He Get On?"), I've hardly put pen to paper on my act.

As every dying compere says, moments before the first rotten tomato comes his way, "anybody know any good jokes?"...

On Saturday, I revealed to you a childhood obsession with the Waterloo & City line which, through thick and thin, refurbishment and replacement, has accompanied me to adulthood.

Tonight, we revisit the world of Sheppard childhood culinary indulgence to extol the virtues of that simplest of pleasures, cottage cheese.

Since their time began, supermarket delicatessen counters have been plying provender which, however disappointing to the taste bud, appeals hugely to the eye. Take taramasalata, for example - the fishy, pink paste which always cries out to be bought by the tonne, but which actually tastes like raw salt mixed with all that's bad about life in the ocean - a favourite of those who will never actually get around to sampling what looks so great in the fridge.

At the other end of the spectrum (and, indeed, the counter), we have cottage cheese, the least visually appealing of dishes which, bizarrely, caught not only the eye but ultimately the heart of a young Mr Sheppard, who at seven years of age, refused to eat a meal unless it was accompanied by lashings of the stuff. Frustrated parents would try to devise menus that precluded the addition of the white, creamy, emulsion-like substance. But, somehow, it always ended up there, night after night, and the plate would be clean.

A recently rediscovered passion for cottage cheese has seen a return of clean plates, and indeed, dirty spoons at midnight, as the fridge is raided for the odd top-up from the hallowed tub. Ironic that my current physique should be a direct result of the only thing in my home which bears the legend "healthy eating". It's also great that, in a world of acidic, fatty offerings, a dose of alkaline cottage cheese becomes almost medicinal in its effect.

Could it be that I'm becoming a little too healthy?

(By the way, if you have a little time to pass, a Google Image search for cottage cheese currently brings up the most unlikely of results...)

Don't ask. I can't think of another title, and I happen to be sitting on my pink cushion. I am alive. News? Well, my Toshiba laptop has died. It took all of 8hrs of being in my good hands. Why did I get a Toshiba? However, I do have OJ to thank for the fact I still had the box, and all the packaging. He may have his anal moments, but he did drum it into me enough times never to get rid of packaging, and I didn't. Amazing.

Today at the BBC's Newcastle training centre has been all about sending us out to film. We weren't given stories, just locations - after a couple of hours with the cameras and a safety session, off we went.

My destination was another training centre, except this one's for budding builders, not junior journos. In a quiet corner of an industrial unit near the Tyne, a man who used to work for Barclays trains all comers in the basics of plastering, plumbing and tiling. And today is the beginning of his latest four-day tiling course, costing upwards of £350.

Some people on the course are craftsmen learning a new trade, like plumbers learning how to work with tiles so they can offer that service too. Others are unemployed and trying to get into the trade (on the wall is a pinboard with the business cards of successful graduates).

But some, like John, are just doing it because they want to do their house up, but don't have the skills and don't want to get someone else in. John's coming to the end of his 25-year stint in the military, including tours of duty in Bosnia and Northern Ireland, so it feels a bit odd to find him - in green army overalls - being taught how to tile a bathroom in a Newcastle industrial warehouse. Yet according to him this is a really popular option with people leaving the military. A fair few of his friends have already done the course, many of them with a view to a new career.

John's an interesting guy but even he'd be the first to admit he has nothing on the star of my colleague Laura's video.

She went to a miniature farm populated by goats, and met a young man whose job it is to feed the motley goat collection. His story is a harrowing tale of what could so easily happen to you... if you're trying to dose up a goat on antibiotics.

One day, as he was preparing the needle for his latest victim, a goat stood behind him appears to have taken umbrage to the treatment. Our man, steadily lowering the needle, was rear-ended with some force by this angry goat - thereby driving the needle, full to the brim of goat antibiotics, into his own arm.

Half an hour later he's stood in the hospital reception, trying to explain the precise circumstances in which he injected himself with goat drugs. Well, you know what these port towns are like for dodgy substances...

If your wife is eBay-savvy, don't cheat on her. If you do, the contents of that photo go up for auction online, with this accompanying description:

Some of these items might be slightly damp due to them being chucked out of the bedroom window and sitting on the garden for a bit, since the cheating scumbag hasn't dare show his face since I phoned him, despite his bull**** assurances that he would visit our two young sons.

[source: eBay]

Click here to view the item - entitled "LYING, CHEATING, HUSBANDS, DIRTY LINEN, BOOTS,TOPS ETC" - in full.

More on the first day in Newcastle later. To give you a clue, I got plastered with a group of ten Geordies and a Scot.

Last night:

I'm delighted to find wireless internet has made its way onto GNER's trains, but why does it have to cost so much? Granted, it's a convenient service, but you have to pay £10 for a three hour journey. Given the tickets just to get on the train are pushing three figures for a return to Newcastle, an extra £20 to use the net in either direction seems steep to say the least.

[source: Dayorama]

This morning:

The US parent of British rail firm GNER has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US. Bermuda-based passenger and freight transport firm Sea Containers made the move on Monday, after deciding it could not repay its $630m (£339m) debts.

[source: BBC News]

Welcome to Newcastle, or more precisely the seventh floor of the Jurys Inn (why have they so callously butchered their apostrophe?), overlooking a rather grand courtyard. There I am in the hotel room except, when I look at my own picture, my dodgy net access makes it look like I'm on videophone from Kabul.

It's certainly noisy enough in the background - a Chelsea fan is playing club theme tune "The Liquidator" from his nearby apartment, screaming "Cheeeelsea!" at appropriate moments. I expect devout Newcastle fans to terminate him within minutes.

Now I've not been on a GNER train for ages and certainly don't remember being packed in like sardines quite like we were this evening. When I got onto the train I saw just one person sat in the carriage in which my seat had been reserved. Then, to my horror, I discovered that my seat was on the window side of this same person. So, in a 50-odd seat carriage, I had to disturb the one other person sat in it to reach my allocated seat. That was a little silly but there were reservation tickets everywhere, and soon the train was crammed full.

As it happens that one other person was a lovely gentleman who had been to visit his wife in London. She has been admitted to hospital for plastic surgery. Last year she was diagnosed with a form of facial cancer - the resulting radiotherapy and operation has left her with what is tantamount to a hole in the side of her nose, which has been covered up with a triangle of bone cut from the forehead. This week, the surgeons will attempt to restore her appearance to something bordering on normal.

My companion even, unprompted, turned to discussion of local radio. I then asked him if he listened to BBC local radio and his response, quick as a flash: "Yeah, of course I do! BBC Radio York, all the time." He had many kind words for his local station - it's fantastic to meet people like that.

Meanwhile I'm delighted to find wireless internet has made its way onto GNER's trains, but why does it have to cost so much? Granted, it's a convenient service, but you have to pay £10 for a three hour journey. Given the tickets just to get on the train are pushing three figures for a return to Newcastle, an extra £20 to use the net in either direction seems steep to say the least. (Then again this simply extends the traditional British Rail concept of the fiver for a crap sandwich, packet of crisps and drink, which is precisely what I paid.)

My three-day training course starts tomorrow, including filming a story. As far I can tell there are a number of set venues us journalists are taken to for our stories: I'm told possible locations include a cake shop, a dry cleaners and a factory, none of which exactly inspire me, but then it's my job to make these things inspiring! Bring it on.

Let us, for a moment, discuss the word 'convention'.

David and I are sat in his blue VW Beetle, parked in TGI Fridays' car park in Reading, at what purported to be a VW Beetle convention.

In reality it's not a convention. It's a gathering. And a gathering is entirely different to a convention. Gatherings are intimate affairs, just like this one: a couple of rows of gorgeous Beetles, parked up opposite each other, smiling widely as their owners discuss intimate details.

Conventions are gaping, enormous row-upon-row events where you can get truly lost in the crowd. That's what we thought we were letting ourselves in for - having both had relatively taxing weeks (long hours, car on fire, etc), a chance to disappear into a gently throbbing mass of Beetle fans in the middle of nowhere.

TGI Fridays' car park is not the middle of nowhere. I think I had in mind a WOMAD of Beetles - flags, hippies, Beetles (obviously), stall after stall peddling tat you could probably find elsewhere but it's special because you found it here, that sort of thing. David, for example, wants a new VW badge for his car. We're sure the advert promised traders.

And indeed, maybe there are traders here! But if they are, the swines are masquerading as scary VW owners and we're worried that if we get too close, we'll get sucked into something from which we'll never recover. After all, I can barely get my own car home from the garage, let alone discuss the finer points of VW engineering.

A case in point: there's a Ford Focus being systematically gutted in front of a baying VW Beetle crowd for its precious innards, which we can only assume will be duly dispensed to a waiting Bug. It's horrifying! What did the Focus do wrong?

Not to knock this event: it's a beautiful celebration of Beetle culture, and there are some Beetles here I'd be very proud to own (not as proud as the Dodge, but proud). But we're feeling very self-conscious - David's worried his car simply doesn't live up to the standard on show (in a WOMAD-esque convention we'd have got away with that), and I just don't have any Beetle conversation in my armoury, other than, "My mum used to own a few of these!".

Maybe I could show them a photo of my last appearance at a Beetle gathering:

If you're not already an admirer of London's underground network and its finery, I may have difficulty in persuading you of the wonders of the Waterloo & City line. Known to its thousands of daily users as 'the drain', it's hardly the most obvious charmer on paper:

But for me, what links the eastern end of Waterloo station with the heart of our City is actually the eighth wonder of the world - and always will be, it seems.

Its appeal is partly one of anomaly. A freak of rail nationalisation in the 1940s saw the Waterloo & City become the only underground line to be operated by British Rail (rather than London Transport, as was then), so the feel has always been so different to any other tube line. It's also completely isolated from the rest, and the trains have to be hoisted above ground for non-routine maintenance by a crane. More on that coming up.

As a boy, the W&C was always top of my wish list for a visit whenever I was taken to London (wasn't it yours?), and I came to know the whole thing inside out: the quaint little purpose-built '40s trains, with their wooden panels and the warm glow of tungsten bulbs; every twist and turn of the two tunnels, which seemed to take you endlessly left then right as you made your way under the Thames; and even the most minute details of the two stations - the odd tiling on the wall of Bank station, and the little embossing of the Network SouthEast logo on the platform edges at Waterloo.

For an 8-year old, it was a journey made entirely for pleasure. I have photographs at home of a little David beaming from ear to ear, having been allowed to ride inside the driver's cab of one of the trains (number 58, if you really care). I remember it well.

The W&C charm even remained through the rail privatisation era (few lines can boast that, though many have since had a charm renaissance), when London Underground inevitably took over. Admittedly, a little of the magic had been lost with the scrapping of the older trains a year earlier, replacing them with new Central Line lookalikes that didn't quite win my favour initially. But they were still very different up close, and with little investment forthcoming for the line as a whole, things remained pretty much as they always had done.

So imagine my horror when, earlier this year, it was announced that the line was to close. Okay, so only for a few months while major rebuilding and modernisation work was carried out, but this would probably be the end of the line as I knew it. In case it should come back unrecognisable, I went along on the final day of the 'old' line, just to say my goodbyes.

Yesterday, I had my first opportunity to sample the newly reopened line, and how surprised I was. Tiles at Bank, platform edging at Waterloo, that wonderful, unique charm, all... still there!

There certainly is much evidence of modernisation; the trains have been newly painted (albeit in standard LU livery), the ride around those bends is now much less bumpy than I remembered, and finally the London Underground branding has made it to both trains and stations. But otherwise, Dr Progress has left well alone. The fabric of the line has been mercifully upgraded to ensure its future, but the character remains distinct. And long may it so do.

If you haven't yet ridden the Waterloo & City line, then do it - you might see what I mean.

But if all else fails, be sure to look at Metronet's fantastic videos of the trains being hoisted out of the line's own depot for refurbishment, and then dropped back in again with the job done.

London SE1 also has some good photos.

I think even the most cynical of London Underground users will be impressed.

Well, Matthew, tonight I'm going to be...

... a Dodge Caliber!

Yep, my new car has arrived early! I skipped off from work at 1pm this afternoon to pick it up. But by 2pm, this had happened:

As I was driving my brand new Dodge home, I had to stop in traffic in the small village of Sonning, just east of Reading. That was when I noticed some smoke in front of me. Ten seconds later I noticed it was coming from my car.

But, you know what? I've told this story already - on air. I rang David, who has a Saturday afternoon show whenever there's no 3pm Reading FC match, and the topic on his programme just happened to be things that are new (his producer's new bed failed to turn up - not a good day all round). So, live on BBC radio, my smoking Dodge got its 15 minutes of fame:

To cut a two-hour long story short, a mechanic arrived who concluded he could find no reason for the smoking, which - to him - meant it was either excess oil (or paint) being burned away by the radiator. His solution was simple: carry on driving it, see what happens.

All the while, having been on the radio, I had the pleasant but disconcerting experience of passing drivers waving at me. One dad driving his family past the scene wound his window down, called out, "Are you Ollie?", then on receiving the answer gave me a thumbs up and drove off. It's certainly one way to find out who our listeners are.

So I eventually got back in my car and drove it back to the BBC, at exactly the moment our radio station began playing the Star Wars theme tune, which I will now forever associate with my car. As Star Wars reached its dramatic crescendo, my Dodge soared up Lowfield Road towards its new daytime home.

Now I've driven it home and it has still to erupt with any more smoke, so I think we might just have got away with it. And can I add that, for all the rigmarole it's put me through today, it's a great car and I think I made a really good decision getting it.

Typical bloody American though: 14 miles on the clock and it's already adopted a smoking habit! I'll get out to the driveway tomorrow morning and it'll offer me a Jim Beam and a Havana...

Few things compel me to stand, staring at another gentleman in the toilets at Paddington station. Other people pass by - staring in turn at me, wondering why I'm eyeing up another bloke using a urinal, and contemplating a quick phone call to the poilce when they're suitably relieved.

Wondering what was going on? Use the audio console below to hear me explain myself from the Paddington concourse a little later:

Apologies for the radio silence for the past couple of days. Thursday was an odd day (more of that shortly) and today I've been at a BBC New Media Forum in London (more of that in the near future).

On Thursday morning, OJ and I discovered an old school friend of ours had died aged 22. OJ knew him better than I, but we'd all been to the same school, same university and even same street - OJ to Lincoln College, Oxford, me to Exeter, and our friend Will to Jesus, all on Turl Street.

For some reason, despite our proximity, I never saw Will at university, though I know OJ saw him earlier this summer. It's fair to say Will had had his fair share of medical problems at school and, though I don't know how far these continued at university, I do know he died on Monday - following a coma brought on by a disease he contracted while in France.

It's horrible to learn a friend from school has died, but even more so given our manner of finding out. We discovered Will had died when a reporter from Cherwell, one of the two Oxford student newspapers, emailed me asking for a quote about Will for her article on him.

Of the few people I've spoken to about this, most are appalled that I should receive an email like that from a student journalist. And, of course, it's not a nice way to find out. But equally, I can't say I blame the reporter. Every journalist hates the "death knock", and this is the email equivalent - writing an email to someone whose friend has died, not knowing whether they even know, is equally as unpleasant as receiving that email, I can assure you.

Perhaps the most strange sensation is seeing Will's profile on social networking website Facebook. All of us at Dayorama have these profiles, as do many other students, alumni and employees around the world. And there, Will is immortalised - his favourite books, his favourite movies, a photo, messages from friends ("I got your text, when are we meeting up?"), messages from his girlfriend, and an "About Me" section which concludes: "I don't mean any harm". It's a snapshot which, for better or worse, will never fade.

Here's a question:

Would you like cleaner air in your City?

Of course you would.

With this kind of rhetorical question, the Mayor of London has persuaded us that the majority of Londoners are in favour of his forthcoming Low Emission Zone; and to be fair, the majority probably are. Why should anybody object to any scheme which, on the face of it, promises to improve their quality of life, with very little personal cost?

This is surely why the scheme has received comparatively little attention from the media, in spite of the massive implications it will have for the commercial vehicle operators who serve our Capital. The delivery lorries and vans which stock our shops and restaurants; the buses and coaches which ferry the tourists and Londoners who, through choice or financial necessity, have opted to leave their cars outside the congestion charging zone; for these, big change is gonna come.

Agreed, any attempt to improve the City's environmental credentials is effort well invested, and if this turns out to be a genuine stab at standing up for the environment then I'll put a well deserved sock in my particulate trap. But there's something about the implementation of this that appeals to the cynic in me.

Of course, Joe Public has become an expert cynic when it comes to the likes of speed cameras and congestion charging zones, both of which he's been quick to brand as thinly veiled revenue generators (by the way, no fine has been forthcoming for me as yet, so we'll assume I was innocent after all). I'd be quick to do the same in this case, and say who cares if commercial operators are being coerced into coughing up money that will ultimately be ploughed back into our City. A double triumph for Londoners it would be. But this seems a little more complicated than that.

The Mayor's plans will ultimately see a near prohibitive charge for any commercial vehicles inside the M25 which "fail to meet a minimum pollution standard". In that vein, he'll extend camera detection equipment (funded by the Londoners whose support we have already established) outside of Central London, where it's already busily snapping transgressors of the congestion charging scheme.

All well and good, you might think, if it's (a) going to deter smoky vehicles from entering London, and (b) going to catch a substantial number of vehicles which aren't listed as compliant on grounds of age or specification. But thinking about it, will it really do either?

My father, who admittedly runs one of the country's greenest fleets of trucks and vans (both in colour and environmental terms), is totally confident that his fleet will be 100% LEZ compliant by the time the scheme is introduced, just as a matter of course. The natural pattern of vehicle replacement will ensure that for them, as for most others, there are never any legitimate LEZ fines arriving at truck and bus HQ.

So a few years down the line, the Mayor will be left with a network of detection cameras outside Central London which are doing very little to earn their keep. What should he do with them?

Time for another question...

Fancy paying a Congestion Charge as soon as you leave the M25?

Hmm... thought not.

Web 2.0. The concept of all-singing, all-dancing websites that do clever things seamlessly. No more blockiness, no more static pages - just stuff you can control, changing all the time, keeping you interested, harnessing information in a way you can understand and navigate easily.

You will not see a better example of Web 2.0 than the website I'm about to show you. Here are four screenshots, taken one after the other:

This is We Feel Fine, a website given to an incredibly creative social experiment.

We Feel Fine loads a special programme in a new browser window, which presents hundreds and hundreds of tiny dots.

Each dot you choose represents an emotion as expressed by someone, somewhere, writing their weblog. You can narrow the pool from which these dots are drawn according to age, gender, location and even the type of emotion you are looking for.

When you hover your mouse over a dot, you're shown any basic details about the person represented by that dot, and the emotion that dot represents (which is also colour coded).

Clicking on the dot expands it to show the full quote from that blogger. These usually begin "I feel...", followed by the emotion in question. You can click the quote to visit their website and read their blog in full.

There are a few reasons this is special.

• The first is the design. This is an incredibly smooth, simple website. It's intuitive - I had no idea what it was when I arrived at it, but in a few clicks I knew what I was doing.
• Bloggers don't have to contribute their emotions. We Feel Fine automatically indexes them from the many millions of weblogs around the world (you can find angry bloggers from Afghanistan if you want, automatically tracked down by We Feel Fine). I stumbled across this website because someone had visited Dayorama from it, which suggests one of us had an emotion listed! I've no idea who, though - it'd be like finding a needle in a haystack.
• It's difficult to make trawling through a load of weblogs a fun experience, and it's difficult to make trawling through a load of weblogs a visual experience. We Feel Fine does both. If you don't like the cloud of dots you can arrange them in five or six different ways, including something a bit like the Football First score videprinter, right through to a montage of photos bloggers have posted while expressing an emotion.

Give We Feel Fine a go here.

Seeing as I signed myself up to a training day on blogging, podcasts, and indeed vodcasts earlier today, I thought I might as well listen to my motley collection of podcasts this evening.

Chief among these is Mediatalk from The Guardian - neatly produced, witty, informative, and always willing to try new tricks. This sometimes has the effect of making it painfully obvious that print journalists are playing at broadcasters, but with the advent of specialised podcast producers being hired, that's becoming less of an issue.

If you don't already listen to podcasts, something like Mediatalk is a good place to start. It's established and it sounds good - you just have to be interested in the topic matter, which does admittedly become quite specific (their discussion of all things Ofcom this week meant almost nothing to me). This week Mediatalk excelled itself with a thorough and entertaining round-up of an online awards ceremony, complete with on-the-night interviews with some of the winners. It was, as any podcast should be, good radio.

As an example of a good podcast at work, have a listen to an excerpt I've picked out. If you use the audio panel below, you'll first hear the voice of correspondent John Plunkett, talking to presenter Matt Wells about a change in the ringtone market. Listen out for an interruption from somewhere close to my heart...

As an aside, this raises an interesting copyright issue. Technically the above excerpt is the property of The Guardian, but if I excerpted one of their movie reviews and quoted it here, then wrote around it expanding on a theme, nobody would raise an eyebrow. Does excerpting a podcast - whether for use in an article as here, or in another podcast - count as fair use in similar fashion?

If you're wondering where to get podcasts from, by the way, then look no further than iTunes to get you started (there are other ways of doing it, but there's no point complicated the issue, and iTunes keeps it simple).

PS Anyone watching for the last half an hour or so will have seen a catalogue of errors. First I accidentally posted the audio clip twice in a row, on its own, with no accompanying text (of any note); having eventually realised this I put it up with the proper text, but then I discovered the clip repeated itself, so when you pressed 'play' you heard it all twice over. So I had to go back and sort that out. It's taken roughly an hour from producing the clip to getting this post right, which goes to show that even when you think you're internet-savvy, it's bloody easy to get things horrendously wrong.

One of the great things about working in radio is the visual anonymity it affords. Whenever you meet somebody who listens to you with any frequency, rarely will you ever be able to satisfy them completely that you are, in fact, the one they hear on the radio.

At a recent bus event in Berkshire, a loyal weekend listener approached Alan Dedicoat - broadcaster of international renown, listened to and loved by millions - and asked "are you David Sheppard?". Hugely humbled yet acutely embarrassed on his behalf, I ushered the gentleman away from Alan, and proceeded to disappoint him with the brutal truth that, much as I didn't look as he should, I was in fact David.

The man's response was text book. An initial look of disbelief was followed by a fixation with the mouth which, somehow, was managing to produce a sound he knew well. A few sentences later, and confident that at least I knew David Sheppard well enough to borrow his voicebox for the day, he assured me that he never missed a programme, and had listened to David for ten years.

I've actually only been on for three, but it was a charming moment I shall treasure forever. Not that it's any tribute to me as a broadcaster, but rather to the magic and intimacy of radio in general, and a reminder that in this reality obsessed age, there's still a market for imagination and illusion. At least where balding, roly-poly broadcasters are concerned.

Funny, then, that I should find myself in exactly the opposite situation with regard to Amy and OJ, who I've still yet to meet in person. (We're forecasting a Dayorama social in early-December, under the Christmas lights.)

Of course, I know what they look like, from photos I've seen right here. I also know much about them both, and from what they write, I've a fair idea of their respective tones. But sound-wise, I can only imagine. I have a very clear idea of how OJ should sound, and much as I'm certain I'll be as aghast as the typical Radio Berkshire listener when we meet, here's how the illusion has become in my rather tangled mind:

Unlikely, I grant you. I can't imagine Homer's even visited Taunton.

As for Amy, I predict something akin to the silky tones of Kate Kestrel from Terrahawks (who, as a child, I used to fancy like mad, even though she was a puppet):

Again, unlikely. Kate too was American.

Since I know what Ollie sounds like, it's impossible for me to detach his visuals from vocals, but as these two are gradually merging into the same being, here's a forecast of how he'll sound one day:

And as for me, I sound a bit like 'bloke off t'radio. Don't look much like him, though.

God, it's tedious when normal people play at politics. That, at least, is how it feels when it's put on television and turned into an implausible prime time television series.

Believe me, I'm no great lover of politicians. But then not many people are great lovers of journalists. You have citizen journalism, where the public get to be journalists, with the help of journalists. Here we have The Amazing Mrs Pritchard, where one of the public gets to be Prime Minister, with the help of a few other politicians.

Except that's the equivalent of installing someone who writes to Points Of View, expressing a low opinion of Natasha Kaplinsky, as Director-General of the BBC. Who knows? Maybe that might work. But it's not going to bloody happen, is it?

And that's the fundamental problem with this series. No matter what you do or say, you will not convince me that 54 per cent of the voting British public have it within themselves to elect a middle-aged woman with a bee in her bonnet about politicians.

Those people who can still be bothered to vote - in themselves practically a minority - are usually so pig-headedly biased in favour of one party, they wouldn't switch their party of choice if it suddenly advocated mandatory sex with ducks on Sundays. These people are not going to vote for Mrs Pritchard, amazing as she is.

The crushing minority of people actually undecided with their vote might well vote for Mrs Pritchard. But the Green Party, UKIP, Respect, and the various other at-least-we-can-say-we-tried parties are all vying for the same vote, so our new lady Prime Minister would have lost some votes to them too.

Then we must confront gender politics. The Purple Alliance, Mrs Pritchard's hastily convened party, is made up primarily of women defecting from other parties. There's very little male presence. Imagine a front bench of Margaret Beckett, Ann Widdecombe, Clare Short, Diane Abbott, Patricia Hewitt, Tessa Jowell et al. It just wouldn't work. You would be screaming for Gordon Brown to come back, and when you reach that point, you know something is seriously wrong.

Alright, alright. So the scriptwriters know all this. They want us to suspend our disbelief, but I just can't do it. I don't know why. Why can I happily entertain the notion that I'm watching Robin Hood returning from the Crusades to a 12th-century village near Nottingham, when I know damn well it's 21st-century Hungary, yet I can't accept this premise?

Maybe it's the tone of this programme - so whiter-than-white it's like watching The Daily Politics, sponsored by Daz, so pious it might as well declare itself Pope. Full of limb-gnawingly empowering speeches from our parliamental protagonist, set to a look-she-really-means-it score of soaring strings and rabid applause from people who, in real life, would pat her reassuringly on the shoulder, ring the mental home, then go and vote Lib Dem.

I think what's stopping me enjoying this programme is the sheer stench of earnest determination: on the part of the characters, on the part of the cast playing the characters, and on the part of the producers. This is not what politics is about - go and watch The Thick Of It. There the stench of sleaze and debauchery rings so true it has indeed, apparently, worn off on its cast!

Call me a cynic, but I can't watch an earnest political drama. If she's not screwing her Cabinet in more ways than one by next week, I'm voting her out.

Here's Test Card D, easily the finest of the pre-clown cards, brought to you as a test transmission from my new wireless hub.

Against all odds, having overcome glitches at every possible stage of its installation, I think you and I agree that it now seems to be working well enough.

As far as the instruction manual is concerned, I haven't actually finished installing it. In fact, I'm further back than when I first started. According to its account of what's been happening on my screen, I've just reached an insurmountable complication, and must remove all the newly installed software before I can proceed. Funny that, since I happened to open a browser by chance a few moments ago, and guess what? Bingo.

I bet in 1964, when Test Card D was first unveiled, nobody thought that 42 years later someone would be broadcasting it to the world from their bed.

Mind you, it was looking unlikely 15 minutes ago...

Death Of A President, the highly controversial film depicting the assassination of George W Bush in 2007, got its UK debut on digital channel More4 this evening.

And the very fact this film is so controversial in the USA - where cinemas refuse to touch it - is testament to the political climate in that country at the moment.

Have you read any What If? books? They're a series of thoughtful historical works exploring possible alternative histories had just one event, or perhaps a succession of small events, changed.

The most basic of these is: what would the world be like if the Nazis had won World War Two? It's a strand of thought entitled "counterfactual history". It's not the most scientific of disciplines since, by necessity, it requires imagination and subjective thought, but it's interesting - it illuminates the tiny, almost insignifcant ways in which world history could have been vastly altered.

Death Of A President is a fine example of counterfactual history at work, with the minor caveat that since it discusses the year 2007, it may or may not actually prove counterfactual. There is still plenty of room for the President to find himself shot, but the film is made in the spirit of exploring a What If? scenario.

Yes, it depicts the President dying, which is by no means the most dignified of on-screen appearances for George. But if you are the President of the USA, you have better things to worry about than someone making a film where you die. The hilarious argument that this film will incite people to murder him has already been dealt with eloquently by many other people.

Other than the minor matter of his death, it's actually quite kind to the President. Okay, there are plenty of protesters on screen, but that's hardly counterfactual is it? Moreover many of the talking heads in the film - fictitious security chief, made up lawyer, imagined wife of assassin etc - are outspoken in their respect, if not in some cases love, for the President. This is matched by the passionate dislike others feel for him, but it's hardly a one-sided affair.

What we have is an exercise in imagination, just like the What If? books. Where is the hail of condemnation for the writers who dared to dream a world where the Nazis won? Think how many American soldiers, British troops and innocent Jewish civilians that must automatically wipe out - far more than the life of one admittedly rather important man.

As far as the film itself goes, it's a cracking watch up until just after the point Bush is shot.

From the start it licks along at a good pace, using cleverly edited archive footage to show the Presidential convoy coming under an abortive attack, then Bush's speech at the Sheraton hotel in Chicago, then his assassination on leaving.

Alas, after the shooting it slowly degenerates into the sort of second-rate American made-for-TV movie you'll find gracing the BBC in the early hours. As wooden talking heads try to sound spontaneous the film becomes bogged down in mealy-mouthed soul-searching dialogue. Prior to that this had been a film you could imagine being made in the aftermath of an assassination. But when was the last time you saw the assassin's lawyer give a lengthy interview to one of these things?

The moment the hand-wringing starts, this production becomes tedious, but that doesn't devalue the thundering opening. After watching this I can see how the President might come to be assassinated, and can picture the events as they might happen. I am entirely unconvinced, however, that - were I an assassin myself - this would be the final piece in the jigsaw for me to now go and bump off the Leader of the Free World.

Would this film have received the same appalled reaction from many in the US (and, indeed, some in the UK and elsewhere) had it been made in 2009? With George W Bush safely retired from the presidency and the audience fully aware nothing like this will happen to him? It strikes me the pious outrage is very much an expression, no, an admission that this is a thoroughly believable What If?. Not liking our nightmares is no reason not to confront them.

A fortnight ago, I promised you some pictures of Basil, our new cat, just as soon as he'd gained a little confidence around us.

Well, here he is.

A fine study, I'm sure you'll agree. Perhaps a little lacking in fine feline detail - ears, body, tail, that sort of thing - but it's about as much as I've seen of him these past few weeks.

Things aren't going as well as I'd hoped with Basil. Despite regular attempts at tummy tickling, paw shaking and (when nobody's listening) the odd round of human meowing, nearly all interaction has remained at arm's length underneath the bed. Rumours abound that he springs into life at night, and nuzzles into my flatmate when his affection is least welcome, but the only evidence I've seen of overground activity is in his litter tray (which, bless him, he uses faithfully) downstairs.

And yet, he seems perfectly content with the arrangement. He's far from unfriendly when your hand arrives in his den, tolerating the odd stroke or two, and pushing himself to an affectionate sniff on occasion. That's why, unlike the knees on my jeans, my patience is wearing so well.

Here, we have either an introverted cat, or one very switched on kitty, who's realised that after months on the street, home comforts will be forthcoming without the need for personal appearances.

And to give him his due, I think I'd be scared of a man on all fours pretending to be a cat.

Ah, you remember. Think back to the last season of Doctor Who. The Torchwood Institute was involved with a lot of unsavoury stuff like aliens, multiple universes, the entire space/time continuum (to borrow a phrase Star Trek launched into popular vocabulary), and even The Doctor himself.

As is beginning to be heralded by trailers on the BBC, Torchwood is now a series in its own right - to be aired on BBC3 after the watershed, so expect everything to be that much darker.

Torchwood has its own BBC site, as you might expect. But it isn't indexed in Google and there's no link to it from the BBC3 website, which you might not expect. You can get to it from the BBC search function, but it simply presents this page:

There's the opportunity to type a password into the page (but no box saying "password" or anything). As yet I've been unable to crack the password, but then I'm avoiding researching it on the net on purpose, since that would probably dampen the fun.

It's nice to have created the site with that air of mystique - there's no cast details, no plot details, no episode, no nothing. Just "access denied".

Of course this effect is somewhat undermined when the next result down on the BBC search pages is BBC South East Wales, who happily provide cast, plot and episode details!

As far as I'm aware the series is set to premiere on BBC3 at 9pm on Sunday 22 October 2006.

A couple of other small, unrelated points of note from today:

• I cannot believe the story about Al-Qaeda trying to gas the Aussie cricket team. How galling would that have been when we were actually winning!
• We publish junior football match reports on the BBC site each week, written by parents and coaches at the game. Sometimes the authors get a tiny bit carried away. This week, one wrote a poem mid-report.
• Many thanks to Jeff at Matmi New Media. He noticed we'd once mentioned Cow Curling here, a creation of his online gaming company - now they've made a brand new online game, Attack of the Funky Disco Zombies, and he's been kind enough to send me an email linking to it. I've had a go and it's not really up my street, but by all means try it yourself. Here's Cow Curling, by way of comparison.

Tomorrow, it'll be 10 long months since Londoners enjoyed their last ride on a Routemaster bus.

This time last year, enthusiasts and Londoners alike were trying hard to imagine life without the friendly red face which had greeted them for over 50 years, to say nothing of the countless bus conductors whose imaginations were struggling with even more fundamental terrors.

By this stage, the many protestors had resigned themselves victim-like to the fact that the buses would soon be gone, and the whole of London stepped outside its office to enjoy the final few months with a stiff upper lip.

Fittingly, the whole affair was terribly British. Here's the driver's log, found in the cab of our Routemaster when it was collected, documenting its last day in service after 38 years.

After months of loving care, the dents have now gone, the horn works, and RML 2394 is more than fit for the road. We all still very much give a @??# about the Routemaster.

And just as well, since in a few months time, ours will be back in service and carrying fare-paying passengers again. Not quite the busy cross-London 73 route which it stormed for most of its life, but an emerging private hire venture will soon see the bus earning its keep once again - and crucially, returning that notorious Routemaster delight to all who hop aboard.

It's a complicated business though, setting up a bus company; and as five broadcasters who have so far avoided proper jobs like this, we're learning much along the way. Before one can enter into the hire/reward arena (as we in the trade know it), there are licences to be applied for, stringent tests to be carried out on the bus, and checks to be made on our finances and facilities.

Plus, one of our number must pass an exam to attain a Certificate of Professional Competence (CPC), which proves our suitability to run a bus company. As the partner who's most recently taken exams, that's going to be me. One forty-hour course and (hopefully one) full-day exam later, I'll be a competent man, ready to arrange transport for your wedding party, day at the races, or Cliff and Una style Summer Holiday...

By the way, last year was also notable in bus circles as the 25th anniversary of the Stagecoach Group. Now one of the world's largest transport operators, Stagecoach started out as two Glaswegians and a bus. I'm happy to report that our little venture can boast the same and more.

Ah, the joys of the technical side to my job.

London Irish are away at Wasps in rugby union's EDF Energy Cup this afternoon, and our reporter Graham's providing live commentary - but, since we've got other programming on our FM radio frequencies, the commentary is going out solely via the internet, on the station's website.

This is a bit of a hit-and-miss procedure. We have to book an ISDN line through central BBC shenanigans which connects Graham to our studio, then send the commentary through that studio out onto the web. We're never totally sure it'll work, since it only needs a bit of lousy communication between us and the BBC's Internet Operations centre, and we're stuffed.

So I've been sat here for the last hour or so in a state of standby, with the London Irish live commentary stream ticking away silently in front of me. That's okay - the match doesn't start til 3:30pm, so silence isn't necessarily the sign of something going horribly wrong. But if it stayed that way I'd have to jump in the car, drive to the studio and try to sort things out.

About 10 minutes ago the stream jumped into life, pumping out background noise from the arena ahead of the commentary starting in half an hour or so's time. I rang Graham to let him know all was well. The conversation ended with:

"Marvellous, thanks Ollie, well done - I was just testing the line, I'll turn the mic off now."

I popped the phone back down but left the live stream running, thinking I'd probably listen to the commentary while I'm watching the game on TV, since Graham's a good commentator. About a minute later, I heard:

"Marvellous, thanks Ollie, well done - I was just testing the line, I'll turn the mic off now."

No time delay there, then! Maybe I won't watch the rugby with the online commentary after all...

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water, two London women come close to a shocking death - in a jacuzzi.

Leona Brandon, 48, was left unconscious in the whirlpool at the Esporta Health and Fitness Club in Worple Road, Wimbledon, on Sunday afternoon, when a light fitting fell from the ceiling and sent an electrical current through the water.

Her friend Mary Holland, 50, was rooted to the spot by electric shocks as she grabbed the metal steps and tried in vain to scramble out.

Miss Holland, of Leopold Road, said: "There was a big bashing noise as something fell into the water. Then other bits started falling down and I thought we'd better get out.

"I tried to pull myself up the steps, and suddenly an enormous surge of power went through me. It went on and on for what felt like minutes. I couldn't move, it was like being in concrete. We were both screaming, but Leona suddenly went silent and I thought, 'She's dead and I'm next'."

[source: This Is Local London]

The pair were eventually pulled to safety and both have recovered. I should also point out that the health and fitness club aren't necessarily to blame - they reckon flooding in the flats above caused a loose tile, which sent the light fitting tumbling.

Mrs Brandon said: "I chose to belong to Esporta because it was a swish place, it looked very well fitted and had a nice blue pool. But it nearly killed me."

Slowly but surely, the nation learns its lesson. The gym will kill you. Don't do it.

I always worry with much-hyped TV drama series - especially period ones - that they're going to be fundamentally unwatchable.

So many things can go wrong. Your characters can be unbelievable, your scenery can look stupid, your dialogue can fall flat, and your plot can be wafer-thin.

Well the first episode of the much-vaunted Robin Hood was pretty darned good, in my humble opinion. It almost lived up to the excruciating billing it's had - BBC News 24 were running a report on the new series on Thursday, a good two days before the programme even made it to our screens.

Considering it's filmed in Hungary, Robin Hood really looks the part. In a beautifully filmed opening sequence Robin, walking home through lush forest, rescues the man we later come to know as Alan-a-Dale. There's no rush to the scene and it doesn't feel beholden to any previous incarnation of the hooded one - and, this time, all the tricks of films like Lord Of The Rings have been worked onto the small screen, not least a fine score.

There's a subtle fun element built in, too. Little in the way of raw comedy or slapstick, but simple humour derived from exchanges between Robin and companion Much. That said, sometimes actions speak louder than words - during my three-year history degree I don't remember studying medieval cleavage, but I really should have done, given its apparent prominence in Robin's world. Ten minutes in and he's already pulled the first woman to appear in the entire series - enraging her father in the process - then the following day he's trying it on with Marian!

All the while the dialogue's almost Shakespearean, but with suitably northern accents attached - as in the title of this post, where Alan-a-Dale frantically protests that he's not from Locksley, on finding an earlier lie may have inadvertently earned him a hanging.

It feels like one of those outdoor plays, only on a grander scale, which is a good sensation to have. Yes, there's acting going on, and we all know it, but the suspension of disbelief is there to the extent that this might as well be Sherwood Forest - and that 'might as well' is important.

There's a suitable cliff-hanger at the end of the episode too, enough to make me think I'll be finding a way to watch next week. That's the key: even the likes of Lost have, well, lost their ability to make the masses tune back in again and again (in that instance thanks to plot complications beyond any realistic tolerance level). The test for Robin Hood is whether, like BBC stablemate Life On Mars, it can hold its audience long enough to buoy the entire series.

Score: 9/10

• Believable medieval dialogue, doesn't try too hard to be funny
• Well directed, good use of colour
• Not evocative of any previous Robin Hood - nor in their shadow
• What more can you ask than to be left wanting more?

If you listen to BBC local radio, or even the likes of Radio 2 or Five Live, you'll hear plenty of people come on with no ostensible connection to the day's news or the local area, but what they do have is a book to promote.

What you might well have also noticed - but you may not - is that they tend to do about eight minutes with every single radio station in existence, on the same day, to get it all over and done with.

You may of course work in local radio like me and know full well that this happens on a regular basis. BBC local radio stations frequently get offers of some celebrity or other to talk for a few minutes about whatever, and we're given a list of about thirty time slots for which we can then bid. (No money changes hands, we just try to nab the slot we want first.)

It was in this fashion that I nearly ended up chatting to Ashley Giles about a month back, then didn't. But that's another story.

I've always wondered what it must be like for the poor sod of a celebrity who has to conduct 30 of these interviews, back to back, with 30 local radio DJs. And now I know because Andrew Collins - yes, for it is he, and for it is I, paid-up member of the "I Really Like Andrew Collins" club, as you're all tired of hearing - ended up doing one of these marathon sessions, then helpfully writing about it.

He was promoting the Radio Times Guide To Films 2007 and gives a full account of his day crammed in a tiny "basement store cupboard" of a studio here, including a station-by-station breakdown of who he spoke to and, if noteworthy, what they were like.

To my absolute delight he apparently spoke to our very own Henry Kelly, who was indeed (inevitably) deemed worthy of a note as follows:

0915 Radio Berkshire (with Henry Kelly! I suggested that Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid portrayed a "tender" relationship between two men years before Brokeback Mountain and he said, "Yes, but they weren't gay, were they?")

Notice that even for media veteran Andrew, same as for me, same as for everyone else who's ever been on the show, appearing on air with Henry Kelly is deserving of an exclamation mark.

Picture the scene:

• You're a feminist
• You're a housewife
• You're a Mormon
• You're a tad more liberal than the average Mormon

Your conservative friends are getting a little bored with all that silly liberal Mormon talk, so what do you do? Damn right, you set up a blog. Feminist Mormon Housewives. FMH founder and co-author Lisa explains:

I can’t exactly remember the spark that led me to google “liberal Mormon” ... I got more and more frustrated until one day, exactly one year ago, on a whim, I opened up blogger and tried to think of a catchy name. A catchy name that said something bold and sold the idea of what *I* wanted to talk about. Gyrl Stuff. Feminist Stuff.

Feminist was a given, and add that to Mormon and you’ve got obvious. But Feminist Mormon is a boring name. So what else describes me? Hum . . . Housewife. I LOVE IT. It’s perfect, it’s so very oxymoronic. Obvious but not. It’ll make people blink. Thrice.

Go and have a look - there are some good reads, including a nice series of 'Day In The Life' contributions from readers. These include lines like:

"On good days read the Book of Mormon for half an hour, in Italian because I’m doing Italian translation projects this semester and I need all the help I can get remembering the language."

[source]

FMH is almost exactly like Dayorama - a little band of authors contributing as and when - except a bit more pink and, well, there are more Mormons involved. Nor do we have guest contributors opening their pieces with:

"First let me say that I am neither Mormon nor a housewife..."

[source]

But I really wish we did.

I'm quite a fan of the blog of Simon Jones, editor of the Reading Chronicle.

For an "official" blog - i.e. hosted on the Chronicle's site - it seems pretty open, honest and candid, and Simon keeps it regularly updated, something that's all too rare with promising weblogs.

From my point of view it's interesting to read about the issues facing print journalists covering the patch. Particularly eye-opening is the problem of the ads on the 'wrap' - the extra sheet of ads wrapped around the main paper - clashing with the front page splash.

In the last few weeks this has happened at least twice according to Simon's blog:

21 September

Paul Thomas [editor of the company's Slough paper] had a very powerful and emotive story about a dog that was thrown from a 12th-storey balcony of a block of flats.

Paul wanted to run the picture of what was left of the dog on the front page, along with a suitable headline. Looking for advice, I agreed with him that on these occasions it is important to get the message across, however graphic and disturbing.

That was until we discovered that the paper had a wrap booked (four page advert going round the front page) from 'Pets R Us' (or whatever) containing a picture of a very fluffy, happy dog.

Paul decided in the end to pull the front page picture - any other week and we would have gone with it.

29 September

The initial plan was to lead on the very disturbing story about how a young cerebral palsy sufferer was turned away from a hairdresser because the stylist had a 'phobia' of people like her and "no one else would do her".

That was until we discovered that we a huge great big advert on the front page... from a hairdresser.

There was a real debate about whether we should still run with it on the front, but juxtaposition is everything when it comes to headlines/pictures/adverts - and I don't think it would have been fair on the advertiser. The casual reader may initially assume the two were linked.

Not an issue you'd think we would face, given the lack of adverts. But a similar thing happened to me a couple of months ago when I reported on an all-night ghost hunt (mentioned on Dayorama here).

I got back into the newsroom at around 5am having been up all night at this event, and had some great clips - including one of a young lady describing how a spirit medium had, as far as she was concerned, really been in touch with her deceased grandparents.

I thought this was a great story. I saw no ghosts and had no evidence of any, but quality audio of an otherwise entirely sane-looking young woman convinced she'd been in dialogue with the other side is not to be sniffed at.

Unless, apparently, the early morning religious programme is on air. The story was dropped entirely from Sunday's bulletins on the grounds it might offend people listening to our spiritual programming!

Just as David Cameron's trying to rebrand the Conservative Party, local Tory councillor David Clutterbuck turns up on BBC News 24 to defend this email:

FW: Noah and the ark

Anne, I imagine now it would be illegal to only have animals of the opposite sex! Regards, David.

Cllr Clutterbuck was suggesting, light-heartedly, that in this day and age Noah would come under criticism for allowing only heterosexual couples onto the ark.

And if we're honest, he's probably right. More to the point, this is a nothing story - old Tory councillor sends throwaway email to colleague, pokes fun at the occasionally misguided nature of 21st-century inclusivity, gets hauled in front of the nation to account for his sins. Had I been news editor at News 24 this lunchtime, I wouldn't have chosen to mention it.

But I wasn't news editor, and there was Cllr Clutterbuck in all his stubborn glory in the BBC's Southampton studio. Would he be apologising, asked the BBC - no, he wouldn't, was the abrupt answer.

At this point Tory PR officers across the country would be hoping against hope that the councillor might say no, he wasn't apologising, but nor did he want to offend anybody, and this is what he meant by the email, etc etc. A clarification rather than a withdrawal.

What they got was Cllr Clutterbuck digging a suitably deep hole for himself on live television.

He complained that the flag had not been raised for the Queen's birthday, but the rainbow flag had been raised for a gay pride parade two weeks later, for example. That's a valid complaint! If you can do one, you should do the other - if the gay pride flag hadn't been raised, they'd have had cause to ask why not.

But Cllr Clutterbuck decided now was the time to refer to gay pride in Bournemouth as a "nonsense parade" attended by "only a couple of hundred people". Small though those numbers might be (and two hundred people are by no means insubstantial), dismissing the parade in those terms is asking for trouble.

What's really asking for trouble is going on to suggest that the gay population of Bournemouth are rather more promiscuous than their heterosexual equivalent. I think Cllr Clutterbuck used the word "flighty" among other, worse, comments - he certainly wasn't complimentary - and by that stage his remarks were beginning to feel rather unnecessary.

The best way of dealing with a nothing accusation, which has become a nothing story, is to play it down - not come out guns blazing over a one-line email about gay animals, especially in the same week as a party conference extolling the virtues of newly inclusive Conservatives.

Instead tomorrow's newspapers might see the attraction of running headlines like:

TORY COUNCILLOR IN GAY ANIMAL SCANDAL

Maybe he should join the Lib Dems?

In the spirit of the old mantra "If you want something done, ask a busy person", we should never be astounded that busy people manage to cram quite so much into their lives. But we usually are.

Would it surprise you, for example, to learn that Henry Kelly - doyen of radio and television, former host of TVAM, Game For A Laugh and Going for Gold, regular Sky News and Daily Telegraph pundit, BBC radio and Classic FM presenter, and these days making occasional appearances on the Ollie Williams show - is about to make his film debut?

It certainly surprised me when, this morning, a summons was received for "the cuddly one" to visit Henry's capacious Radio Berkshire suite to view the trailer for his new film, Saxon. Billed as Unforgiven meets Trainspotting, it's not traditional Henry territory, and indeed the trailer came with its very own Kelly classification of "gruesome".

I confess, I initially thought I was the subject of Henry's latest jape, but a quick IMDb search confirmed that, indeed, Henry makes a cameo appearance as Nicko. In line with his plethora of other broadcasting commitments, I'm sure he's done a grand job.

But further searches held surprises for more than just me. It was with a blush I watched as Google committed an indiscretion of the worst kind, and tried my best to shield Henry from the screen. But it was too late. He too had seen the third entry in the list, and insisted that I click the page entitled: "Rochdale Observer - Henry Kelly does not know what he is talking about".

Suitably amused by the content, Henry sat back and wryly smiled.

"I didn't realise I'd been in the Rochdale Observer", he said.

There's an old man in Oxford who lives in a pub. At least, I see him there as often as the pub dog, enjoying his three meals of the day, and always at what is undoubtedly his seat at the bar. He knows I don't 'live' there in quite the same way, but we are starting to build up a rapport of nods which say "welcome home, son - good to see you back". He probably thinks I'm a local who occasionally enjoys a pint.

He's wrong in one sense, of course - my house is thirty miles away in Reading - but although I frequent The Kite only once every few weeks when I visit friends in Oxford, it's rapidly becoming my local.

A few months ago, when visiting my friend Guy, my casual "call you when I get there" attitude was blown out of the water by my mobile 'phone battery, which died with approximately 10 seconds notice. I was left without a 'phone, and crucially, without Guy's number. (Hands up anybody who bothers to remember mobile numbers, these days.)

While options were mulled, I defaulted to The Kite for a little solace. Within minutes of my arrival, the pub telephone rang, and following a quick sweep of the assembled company at the bar, the barman approached me.

"David Sheppard?" he asked. Amazed, I nodded, and was handed the 'phone. "It's for you".

In little doubt as to my likely location, Guy had 'phoned the pub, and asked to speak to "the short, blonde man in his mid-twenties, probably wearing a stripy shirt, and probably sitting at the bar". I'd been found, and the evening was rescued.

Last night I went to see Guy again. We hadn't agreed a meeting point, and this time I deliberately switched off my 'phone as I left the railway station. I got to the pub and assumed my usual seat at the bar, ordered my pint from Alan the barman, and waited for the bar 'phone to ring.

It didn't. Instead, right on cue, in walked Guy to claim his seat between the old man and the stripy-shirted twenty something at the bar.

Another night at my local, thirty miles from where I live.

...just a work day that began at 8am and finished with me getting in at 1.37am. Welcome to my world!

Today, two things have disappeared abruptly from places they were supposed to be.

The first is WOMAD. In an announcement at 4pm this afternoon the organisers declared WOMAD would no longer be held on the Reading site it has occupied since 1990, and will now take place elsewhere. You can read a full report here.

Obviously that's a disappointment - it's hardly likely to stay in Berkshire so that's the last I'll be seeing of it for a while - but on a personal note it's nice to think I reported on the very last WOMAD at Reading's Rivermead site. It was great fun and is already up there with my more treasured memories.

Dayorama posts about the last Reading WOMAD:

WOMAD: It Doesn't Sound That Bad
"I had my most enjoyable broadcasting moment to date earlier this afternoon..."

WOMAD Photos
"I saw plenty of great bands without ever seeing an evening act..."

Back To WOMAD
"What a bloomin' great day that was..."

The second thing to disappear abruptly is a large amount of money from my mother's bank account. She's been the victim of debit card fraud.

I got a semi-frantic phone call earlier this evening from her (and who can blame her? I'd have returned the favour and been a sight more than semi-frantic in the circumstances). She's unwittingly paid for about eight different flights on Asian carrier Tiger Airways.

Given Tiger Airways don't actually fly to Europe, let alone the UK, it's difficult to see what use my mum could make of these tickets, so it's fairly safe to say she didn't actually buy them. The bank have stopped the card and say they'll investigate tomorrow.

It does strike me as odd, though, how little information and help there is online about this. You'd expect plenty on the Lloyds TSB website about what to do in the event of card-not-present fraud, but I couldn't find a specific mention of your rights, responsibilities etc anywhere (you might be able to do better than me, of course).

Strangely enough the best resource proved to be a BBC website offering advice for those affected by financial crime.

There's a lesson there: always trust a BBC website to have something worthwhile. So on that note, a link for you. A couple of days ago I mentioned my afternoon at a junior football match, and now you can listen to the audio feature, read the report, and take a look at photos from the game, by clicking here.

Or, if you're being lazy, you can cut straight to the audio by clicking here (it'll load in Realplayer).

Well, it's not as if the Evening Standard would print it, but ensconced in my cheap hotel a good 25 minutes walk from the convention, and indeed civilization, it's time to share a few thoughts.

On queues

After my train to Bournemouth was slightly delayed, I finally arrived at around half eleven, along with (it would seem) half of the other delegates. This led to a half hour queue for a taxi, since Bournemouth station is the other side of the town to anywhere useful. And it was raining hard. Still, as I remarked to the taxi driver, it must be pretty good business. Many of you will have seen the reports of chaos at the late accreditation office for those of us who weren't sent their passes in time. It was Monday afternoon before I got there - so the event is almost half over - but by any count, the place was busy. First we were shifted into a large theatre, and we had to queue to get our name ticked off the list. There, the man who did the ticking would either say that your pass was ready, and you had to collect it, or you would just have to wait while the police finished their checks. It was when I was queuing here that I met people who had been waiting two days, and still couldn't get into the secure area. Not surprisingly, there were a fair few roving cameras and journalists looking for the frustrated activist. There were many to be found, but I was not one, for fortunately my pass was ready, and the whole process took me about 25 minutes to get one. Clearly, this is not an apogee of good planning, and while there was water and chocolate available for free, there was little sign of a contingency plan. And yet, as I've mentioned to a few people - if ever you were to get a bunch of people who were happy to queue in a nice orderly fashion, and suffer in silence, it would be at a Conservative Party conference in Bournemouth.

On freebies

Having made it into the secure zone, I then promptly went round the exhibition hall. Lots of free goodies to pick up, it reminded me rather of careers fairs in days past. I was particularly impressed with the Telegraph and House Magazine, who provide nice shiny bags. Sky, the BBC, and other media organisations had some cool stands. I'm not quite sure what exactly some of the local authorities were doing there - Tameside Council, anyone? - and it was good to see the pro-fur and pro-hunting lobbies there in force. Really no place for liberals here. Tomorrow, I'm going back to pick up more free papers, and also to the £6.99 silk tie stand, which looked good value.

On debates

At this point, in the BIC but not in the main hall itself, I was a little lost. I'd clearly missed the chance to get into the main hall, so I settled for a coffee and comfy seat watching it all in HD on the big screen provided by the BBC. Since it was near the end of the day, all I really saw was a meet the candidates session, and the Dragons' Den policy competition, which while just about bearable to watch, was nonetheless often at the edge of excruciating. Tomorrow I'm going to try and hit the main hall for most of the day, as soon as I finish my mammoth trek back to the BIC.

On the fringe

Now for many, the fringe is where the real action happens. Already we've had George Osborne's autism jibe at Gordon Brown (spun way beyond what it was, but frankly not a wise remark to begin with) at one meeting. I got to two interesting meetings. The first was on New Media, and featured Iain Dale and Ann Widecombe on the use of blogs and the internet in politics. Some sound stuff was said - in a couple of weeks, look forward to Widecombe's take on YouTube, the WideoVideo - although they never really got round to discussing how blogs tend to favour those in opposition, since scandal seems to be driving the big two (Guido and Iain Dale) more than serious contributions to policy. There's probably a way to harnass the internet positively in policy creation and government dialogue, but as Miliband's blog shows, it just hasn't been found. I fear for the good quality Tory blogs when we're in power, although by then blogs might just be obsolete.

I left the New Media event early to trek to another hotel (having gone to two similarly named ones already) to attend a meeting held by the Conservative Rural Action Group (CRAG). There were four very interesting speakers, including Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones (the Black Farmer - alas, I didn't have time to discuss his foodstuffs with him in person), who is now the PPC for Chippenham, and also a lady from IPPR North, whose name I have forgotten, but bravely spoke to a hostile crowd about her research into the drain of the youth from rural to urban centres. She's sending me a copy of the reports, and it'll probably be worth a post in the future, but for now, she did remarkably well considering she started off with "I'm a feminist and a socialist" to a room that was, on average, at least 50 years old. Nonetheless, there were many interesting takes on whether the rural vote matters or not, and proof that not all the young have given up on the countryside. Expect to hear more from CRAG in the future - they've just relaunched, and have an impressive new drive. Couldn't sneak one of their t-shirts though.

On Bournemouth

Well, erm. Yes. It's Bournemouth, and I spent this evening back at the hotel trying to get some food while watching old people dance to an old guy rocking an old guitar. Labour stole a trick by going to Manchester, I think, and I shouldn't imagine that we'll be back in Bournemouth anytime soon. Or, if we are, I'm going to book my place much earlier, so I don't have to see any man in velour singing along to Buddy Holly.

On tomorrow

Tomorrow I'll hopefully be in the main hall for some of the big beasts - Hague etc. - on international terrorism. Then in the evening I'll be at the NFU fringe meeting which will be very interesting indeed I suspect. And then I have to catch the train back to London, and if I'm not on the 10.15, then I'm homeless for the night. Not good.

It's not every day you get to visit an oxygen chamber, and certainly not every day it has a Premiership footballer sat in it.

This one's the only one in Berkshire, and today it had Sam Sodje sat within its confines. He's one of Reading's defenders but he's injured his knee, so he's one of two players who've spent the past couple of weeks getting daily doses of oxygen treatment.

In the spirit of hair product adverts, now the science part:

As the body normally heals itself using oxygen from the air, additional oxygen can extend the body’s ability to heal and can limit some of the damage which the disease causes.

Breathing oxygen under pressure causes dilated and leaky blood vessels to constrict back to normal size and reduces swelling. At the same time, more oxygen is delivered to the bloodstream so increasing the amount available to help undertake repair.

[source: Berkshire MS Therapy Centre]

Sam was there for his dodgy knee. Endearingly, he said he'd been scared at first because the people at the centre compared the experience to going swimming - and Sam can't really swim.

Stepping into the chamber's like going into an aircraft. The whole thing is pressurized then you pop a separate mask on, which pumps 100% oxygen into the lungs. The session lasts for well over an hour, during which you can sit reading the paper and, er, not do much else.

The list of items prohibited in the chamber makes good reading. Most banned items are those which wouldn't withstand the pressurized atmosphere, but some are unlikely candidates to even find their way into the chamber's vicinity. For example, would you bring "unauthorised furnishings" into the room? Don't forget to obey the very last bullet point and leave any explosives at the door...

Sexy eyes, huh?

Look left, and you'll see the familiar headlamp of a traditional VW Beetle, its lens as thick as NHS spectacles, bolted down with a chunky chrome rim to suit. Look right, and find the sleek, apparently simplified lines of the VW New Beetle headlamp.

The one on the right is identical to the headlamp of the VW Beetle I drive, and in common with mine, it's not actually shining. For some days now, my driver's side headlamp has been out of action, and it doesn't take an expert to realise the bulb is at fault. However, it apparently does take an expert to change the said bulb. Question is, how many?

The four-page guide to "Replacing bulbs" found in the owner's giant handbook, prefaces its instructions with a warning that "There is a potentially fatal risk when working with vehicles ... if the high voltage part of the lamp is handled incorrectly!". A worthy exclamation mark, indeed.

It also points out that "Special skills are required to carry out this work". One glance under the bonnet, and you begin to feel it may be right.

Quite aside from the intricacies of bulb replacement, you have a finger-sized space through which to access the headlamp itself, between the engine, washer bottle and brake-fluid reservoir. This is not a job to be undertaken even by the anthropometrically sound, let alone anybody whose fingers are as chubby as mine. (At least my hands are small enough to appreciate the irony of the so called 'handbook').

Enquiries at my local garage put greasy nail prints on the head of the world's most helpful mechanic. My father - a mechanical engineer - is puzzled. There is even a web forum (started by a thirteen year old girl, no less) dedicated to discussing the task.

One thing is certain. Since I've been investigating the world of broken headlamps, I've become aware that we're in the midst of a bulb-blowing epidemic. So many cars these days are driving with one eye closed, and as I now know, not necessarily through the apathy of their owners. I don't believe this is an issue unique to the VW Beetle (which, by the way, I've found to be top-notch in almost every other respect), but part of a widespread attempt at driving us to the garage for even the most routine of maintenance procedures. Another assault on the wallet.

Returning to the headlamp on the left (first designed under Adolf Hitler and Ferdinand Porsche in 1938)... three turns of a flat-headed screwdriver would separate rim, lens and back, and enable the bulb to be changed in seconds.

Advancement through technology, anyone?

Are you allergic to cats? I've got friends who are, and have witnessed their health deteriorate markedly the moment they come near a puddy tat. One of my friends came to visit me in Streatham, where there were two cats, and we had to sit outside since the cat fumes were overpowering her. Needless to say, the cats came outside and sat next to her.

Well, now nature's got its own back. Meet Cyril.

Cyril is one of my friend Ceri's two new cats, and Cyril is asthmatic. Not only that, but Cyril has his own little inhaler. Ceri explains:

"He has an inhaler - two actually - and a little spacer for it, like they give to young children. But the inhalers are the same as the ones my mum uses. He has to have two puffs, twice a day. He's all wheezy!"

And here is Cyril's inhaler in action:

Ceri points out Cyril doesn't suffer too much at the hands of the inhaler:

"He's not in distress, he is not being roughly handled, and if he gets upset, we let him go. The whole business lasts 10 seconds at a time and he gets lots of treats afterwards too."

And what more appropriate name can you think of for an asthmatic cat than Cyril? At seven years old Cyril is joined in Ceri's family by his brother, Amber, who is a fine looking specimen of a cat. Cyril must wish cat-curses upon him twenty-four hours a day. Then again Cyril may take some comfort from the fact his brother has a name like a thousand female American porn stars. That probably keeps Cyril going.

Ceri, who it is safe to say adores cats, suggests you look at these videos of cute kittens if you like this kind of thing.

Forget the Premiership. Forget the FA Cup. Forget the Carling Cup, the Johnston Paints Trophy (I kid you not), the FA Vase, the Conference and the rest. Today was all about the Berkshire & Buckinghamshire Under-13s Minor Cup. Preliminary Round.

While our sports team travelled to London to watch Reading edge out West Ham 1-0 in torrential conditions, I parked my doomed Nissan Micra at the Elizabeth Ground, Wokingham, to watch Reeves Rangers take on AFC Crowthorne.

And what brilliant fun. No wonder everybody I spoke to on a touchline packed with parents told me they'd rather be here than at the Reading game - even if, in one or two instances, fathers' voices quivered as they said so. One admitted he'd managed to get the fixture times re-arranged so he could dash home and watch Reading v Man Utd on telly.

This was match number 48 of a 64-game draw encompassing the two counties (although a few teams were lucky enough to draw byes through to the next round). Reeves have never played Crowthorne before - they're in a different league, in a different division, and might as well have been from the land of the giants when they took to the field. The Crowthorne players towered over their poor Reeves counterparts. I questioned whether they were even from the same age group.

When Reeves conceded a cast-iron penalty inside the first five minutes, things looked bleak. But then began a rollercoaster 35-minute first half, the ball zipping up and down the pitch as both teams realised the other's defence was, well, all but non-existent. It's difficult to expect 12-year-olds to operate mean, impenetrable sweeper systems, after all.

By half time Reeves had conceded a second penalty and let two in from open play, but in return they'd scored three of their own, the last a beautiful solo effort from a lad who reminded me of Paul Gascoigne - not the fittest player on the pitch but blessed with a great first touch, silky dribbling skills and something of a swagger.

I sat in on the half time team talk, which was your traditional junior football fare. Let's not forget that I, not so long ago, was having my ego crushed on a weekly basis as goalkeeper for a junior team, then having it merely trampled at a better - but still fairly hopeless - university side. I have much experience of the we-can-do-this half time pep talk.

I have less experience of it working quite as well as it did on Reeves, who waltzed through the Crowthorne defence on three separate occasions within the first ten minutes of the second half. They then missed a series of sitters but allowed Crowthorne barely a sniff, recording a 6-4 victory as memorable for those watching it as it would have been for those playing. Hardly the most fluent football you'll see but full of passion, energy and earnest determination.

I'll be doing a separate write-up for the Berkshire website - including a few cracking photos, if I do say so myself. I managed to get a snap of a Reeves striker tucking their fourth goal past the keeper, the holy grail of any amateur photographer after a good action shot at a sports event.

The best bit is I get to go and do it all again. When I got my job some people said our commitment to junior football was unnecessary, unproductive and a drain on resources we could better spend elsewhere. That's rubbish - it's our job to reflect the community we serve and the best way to do that is to go out, get involved and meet the people in the community.

The plan is to follow the U13s Cup all the way from this preliminary round to the final, starting with this game. Reeves won so I'll be there at the next Reeves game in the Cup, then I'll follow whoever wins that into the next round, etc etc until the final. The idea - as suggested to me by the very welcoming Kevin, one of the club's co-managers - is that I'll end up on a tour of Berkshire at the same time. If I get to see 10 goals a game while I'm at it, I might just have to buy a season ticket.

Yesterday afternoon between 1pm and 6pm brought David presenting a show around our coverage of a London Irish rugby match, with me doing sport bulletins for it every hour or so.

David is not the greatest oracle of sporting knowledge known to man, so I took the opportunity at the end of each bulletin of lobbing a few basic sporting questions at him. He got by relatively well, thanks mainly to cheating by getting his producer to frantically write out the answers on the talk-back monitor we use to communicate between studios.

Then David got an email from a listener which went, roughly, as follows:

"David,

To help you get back at your Mr Sport Know-It-All I've included three sports questions. Let's see if he really knows his sport!"

David read this email out on air with me sat there in the studio, then said he'd ask me the questions after a song. Naturally this wasn't good news - I'm no fan of being humiliated on air, even though you'd think I'd be familiar with the concept by now.

But the moment we went to the song (Suburbia by the Pet Shop Boys, an excellent choice) I had a flash of inspiration.

The questions had come via email, and I happened to know that David had left himself logged in on a computer in the newsroom.

So I dashed down the corridor to the newsroom, found his email inbox lying unguarded, and found the email with the questions in it, which went something like:

1. Who are the Oakland Raiders playing tomorrow?

2. With the regular Raiders quarterback injured, who will deputise for him?

3. Who is the Raiders' third choice quarterback should they both be injured?

Okay, I'm something of an exceptionally fair-weather American Football fan. I will occasionally watch it and I used to play the John Madden computer games, created by EA Sports, quite a lot. But ask me any of the above questions and you'd get a blank response. (OJ would be much better than me, in fact, given he consumes internet columns like Tuesday Morning Quarterback regularly). But at least now I knew what the questions were, which gave me a head start.

So I set about finding the Oakland Raiders website in the vain hope of finding some quick answers (bear in mind Suburbia had a minute or so left to run at this point - good job it's a song I know, so I could time when I had to be back in the studio).

Then, just when I thought all hope was lost, I realised that - of course - the bloody answers were at the bottom of the email for David's benefit! One hurried bit of printing later and I sauntered casually back into the studio as Suburbia finished.

David began by saying the questions were about the Raiders. "Oakland Raiders?", said I, innocently. "Oh right, I'm quite a big Raiders fan," I lied, hoping David would think the piece of paper in front of me, replete with answers, was just my sports bulletin script from earlier on. "Go on, ask me the questions."

And he did. And each I answered perfectly:

1. Cleveland Browns
2. Andrew Walter
3. Marques Tuiasosopo

That last one took some pronunciation, but we got there. With each answer David's face grew a little more memorable, to the point where he cut to the next song in disbelief that I actually did know my Oakland Raiders. Only with the microphones faded down did I waft the piece of paper with the answers on it and own up. And we couldn't have broadcast much he said after that...