For those of you who enjoying popping the bubbles in bubble wrap, but haven’t got 75 metres lying around with which to get your fix, I’d recommend the following link.

“…I enjoyed it so much I rushed out and bought 75 metres of the REAL stuff!!!”
Mr Time Killing Kid, London.

Estimating distances has never been a strong point of mine (hence I could have ran either two miles or ten this weekend and been none the wiser), but I’m glad to see I’m not the only one.

As part of my campaign to become financially solvent (it’s my first step towards finding a wife), I’ve been selling numerous possessions on eBay (the amazing thing is being able to find a market for broken electronic goods on there), and had ordered 13 metres of bubble wrap to help with my packaging. However, I had a bit of a shock this morning when the bubble wrap came and instead of 13 meters received 75. In case you’re trying to visualise what 75 metres of bubble wrap looks like, here’s a picture.

Yep, somehow, I have to get home a bail of bubble wrap without it looking like I have some bizarre bubble fetish, or I’m a farmer from outer space, or I’m really going to town with the stealing office supplies from work malarkey. Or, even worse, I have serious incontinence problems.

All I have to say is, if you’re standing next to me on the tube, just because I have 75 metres of bubble wrap doesn’t mean I’m going to let you off if you try popping any of those bubbles. Don’t you know I have a plastic fetish to service once I get home?

Question time.

Tessa Jowell was quoted as saying the following:

“America should have learnt the lessons of prohibition. The Volstead Act [which established prohibition in 1919] was meant to stop alcohol from causing harm, but in practice it forced otherwise law-abiding customers into the hands of bootleggers”.

Now Ms Jowell was attempting to chastise the Yanks for their approach to which activity?

If you guessed drug-taking, then guess again. She was in fact talking about America’s punitive approach to online gambling, but isn’t it somewhat bizarre to reproach a country for pursuing a prohibitionist approach on one activity while supporting them in another and also adopting the same line domestically?

But maybe the times are a changing. Perhaps the government’s decision to ignore the sensible recommendations made by the Parliamentary Science and Technology Committee on drug classification was a red herring and we’re finally going to see a more realistic approach to drug policy.

Well I won’t hold my breath. Unless it’s my turn on the bong.

Not so long ago I pointed out the uncanny similarity between Sloth from the Goonies and Steve Lamacq, and thought I'd got my comeuppance for this on the tube last Friday when 'Steve Lamacq' got on the Northern Line tube train I was on at Camden Town. Feeling quite ashamed or, perhaps more accurately, feeling like I might laugh out loud I tried to avoid looking at him, until I eventually snuck a peek when he got off at Tufnell Park station. Sadly, after all that effort it was just a Lamacq look-a-like, but the lesson I should have taken from those uncomfortable few minutes was to avoid doing another 'separated at birth' blog.

But am I the only one who's noticed how much Richard Madeley looks like Geoffrey from Rainbow? Consider the evidence:

Geoffrey from Rainbow has his photo taken with Judy Finnegan and a half-girl half-rabbit creation.

Richard Madeley with the gang from Rainbow

What's the odds next time I'm on the Northern Line that Madeley, Geoffrey, Lamacq and Sloth all get on at the same time...

Uncanny!

The ageing process; few things in life are crueller. No truer example of this is Judy Finnegan, the better half of Great Britain’s favourite married couple, Punch & Judy.

The hardest part for Judy must be being married to Peter Pan, aka Mr Richard “decked by Shakin’ Stevens” Madeley. Whereas Richard stopped physically aging about 15 years ago (insert your own age at when he stopped mentally aging), Judy’s un-Botoxed features have continued to slide. For those who wonder what the picture in Richard’s attic must look like, I say that Judy is the picture in Richard’s attic. But after going through the pictures in the Richard & Judy biog I picked up for a pound I think I’ve worked out the reasons for Judy’s premature aging: it woz the Madeley wot dun it.

Exhibit A. Judy as a student showing some thigh.

Fwor! Not bad, eh?

Exhibit B. Young Judy looking like a cross between Emma Bunton and a young Wendy Richards (not as bad as it sounds).

Fwor! Still not bad, eh?

Exhibit C. Judy doing what she does best, a bit of cradle snatching.

I told you it was the Madeley wot dun it.

Exhibit D is a bit of TKK exclusive. I reveal Young Judy's secret first marriage to David Walliams in the 1970s.

That guy really does get around.

The last example is just after Judy had given birth to Satan's child, aka her firstborn to Geoffrey from Rainbow lookalike, Madeley.

If you look close enough you can see the 'grab a grand' number on the kid's scalp.

So let the prosecution rest, m'lord. It's official: being married to Richard Madeley is bad for your health.

Something the BCUK community tends to score quite low on is the variety of its blogging content. From time to time I ask myself, "Where are the true individuals on BCUK?" "Why aren’t there more blogs from people who have sex with rubber dolls?"

But I guess you can’t have everything. BCUK has a Top 20 blog list which no one actually claims to check, and Blogger has Davecat’s fantastic blog about his love for Sidore-Chan, his blow up beau.

Davecat was featured in five’s recent Guys and Dolls programme, a fantastic review of which you’ll find here. The show featured four men and their latex loves, including the fantastically named Everard. If you’re ever in Dorset and a man called Everard introduces himself, RUN AWAY! And hope to God you didn’t shake hands with him.

In case you’re curious what Davecat’s bird looks like, here’s a picture of her looking particularly sexy:

Already, several men are typing ‘latex doll’ into Google. Alec Weston probably already owns one.

Davecat’s profile is destined for the Pseuds corner of Private Eye the minute they start covering blogs. He concludes with the claim that "Condensing me into a paragraph is nigh-impossible.”

Too right. Especially when you’re in the mood for taking the piss.

Hopefully, reading Davecat’s blog will get everyone’s creative juices flowing. If your blog can’t compete in terms of uniqueness with a man who has sex with a blow-up doll, you’re just not trying!

There’s nothing a man likes to see more than a silver Porsche.

When it’s broken down.

And the tow truck has arrived.

And the driver, who now no longer looks quite as smug as he did before he called the AA, is contemplating how he’s going to cope crammed up next to the hoi polloi for the rest of his journey across London.

Wonder if you get a congestion charge discount if your car breaks down before the end of the day?

As Nelson would say:

I know we’re supposed to be a nation of animal lovers, but occasionally our tendency to anthropomorphise can go too far.

My mother and sister were in London a couple of weeks and on a flying visit to Harrods had noted the dog weddings (or should that be doggie civil partnerships?) currently being held instore.

But it’s not just the all dollars and no cents Hooray Henriettas pampering their pooches. Last week while in the high class shopping emporium that is the Morrisons on Holloway Road, I heard an announcement over the tannoy for catfood, which suggested choosing the food based on the cat’s personality. If it was a flighty feline (they didn’t say what qualified as being flighty in cat terms, but it probably has something to do with dragging dead birds in and out the kitchen) then the consumer should choose Brand A, but if it was a flabby tabby and just liked to sit in the comfy armchair and sink its claws into whichever human made the mistake of sitting there, then they should choose Brand B.

For fuck’s sake!

Why stop there? Why not jump on the alternative health petfood bandwagon and buy the Kittycat with Omega-3 supplements?

Get a bleedin’ grip, so called nation of animal lovers.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to serve my dog her breakfast toast on a bone china plate. And before you say anything, she’s currently on her honeymoon – it’s the least I could do for poochy woochy.

As we’re doubtless all aware, music industry ceremonies are nothing more than an organised excuse to slap back and snort gak, and no better example of this is the Brit Awards, the Auschwitz of award ceremonies.

Do the mainstream bands featured prominently each year really need the contrived publicity to shift more units on the back of the awards? Aren’t there enough Dido and Keane albums cluttering up the universe?

While discussing all things contrived, this year’s winner of the annual ‘outstanding achievement’ prize or, as it should be known, the ‘they’re completely past it but we need some easy publicity to shift the mountain of CDs building up in the warehouse which was why we created this category’ award goes to Oasis.

That’s right, Oasis. The ‘greatest band since the Beatles’. Or so Noel and Liam used to be so fond of spouting. But then cocaine’s one helluva drug.

Such past winners of the ‘outstanding achievement’ award have been Bob Geldof (2005) the Spice Girls (2000) and Status Quo (1991). Would a serious musician with any pride left turn up at an award ceremony to pick up a gong given to these cultural atrocities?

I’m still trying to figure out what Oasis’s ‘outstanding achievement’ is. If it’s for taking three years what it took the Rolling Stones around ten years to do (i.e. run out of ideas and tour the greatest hits endlessly) or for being a walking example of what happens to music when musicians do too much coke, then that’s an award they’ve truly earned. But releasing two admittedly good albums (although with some blatant thieving from other songs) hardly constitutes ‘outstanding achievement’. Especially when your discography contains Be Here Now.

But if we’re going to really lower the bar when it comes to ‘outstanding achievement’, I’d like to get the nominations in early for 2007’s Brit Awards.

Ladies and Gentleman: I give you the Kaiser Chiefs.

If there’s anything that marks the dilapidated state of an inner city area, it’s not the proliferation of dealers openly doing business on the corners but the amount of 99p shops found on the high street. I work down the road from Camden High Street and in the two years since I last worked here CHS seems to have been taken over by ‘Everything’s a £’ stores. Argos have probably already complained to Camden Council that the pound shops are lowering the tone for the other quality retailers.

The one thing that amazes me in these stores is the range of goods available for a pound, and acting on a lunchtime tip-off I received from a colleague I purchased an absolute bargain from the book shelf:

Richard & Judy’s autobiography.

There was one copy left, and I did have to kick a couple of pensioners out of the way, but I took it to the checkout, handed over my pound coin, collected my change and receipt and exited the shop after having made the book my legal property.

Not that everyone chooses to do this, with some people getting a criminal conviction for missing out the handing over the money part of the exchange. But how do some people manage this? To find out, I consulted the shoplifters’ bible, AKA Richard’s section of their autobiography.

I turned to the index and looked under ‘s’ for shoplifting, but there was nothing listed. Thinking this had been airbrushed out of their history, I flicked through the rest of the back pages and found what I was looking for. Under ‘f’. For ‘False shoplifting charge’, listed on pages 2, 172, 173-212, 213-24, 227, 305, and 359.

So much for the airbrushing.

It says a lot about Madeley that he prefaces his side of the events with an opening paragraph that quotes from a book about Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots.
Sense of proportion, or what?

Richard’s account of the fateful day is that he was “focussed on stacking the shopping as fast as I could on the conveyer belt, so I wouldn’t hold up people standing behind me”. Such a considerate man.

After paying (for some of his goods), he “strolled out through the exit”, but “had a premonition that something was wrong”. I’d call it a guilty conscience rather than a ‘premonition’, but I’m digressing. As tends to happen on these occasions, security stopped the ‘customer’, and pointed out the lack of a full financial settlement for the goods being wheeled to the carpark, but let’s allow Richard to move the story on:

“As far as I was concerned, I had paid for them along with everything else. Standing there, I mentally replayed being at the till, then said, ‘Haven’t I paid for them?’

‘No you have not,’ she replied stonily.

My mental tape finished replaying. Fuck, she was right.

‘Christ!’ I said. ‘I’m really sorry. I’ll go back and pay for them now.’”

Unfortunately for Richard, store policy prevented this reasonable settling of accounts and security insisted he accompanied them to the manger’s office. The remainder of the chapter is an overblown ‘how dare they do this to me – don’t they know who I am’ defensive account of events. All I’ll say is it’s a bloody coincidence that it happened to be the bottles of grog that Madeley pushed through and it’s funny how it wasn’t the Monster Munch for the kids or the bag of onions for the spag bol that he didn’t pay for.

When it came to the trial, which included the showing of the CCTV video which showed Madeley not paying for the offending items, Madeley states:

“It was already turning into an odd trial: a nexus of the impersonal and personal. The CPS was obviously going for a kill – as in any trial – but there was clearly a trophy to be won, too, a scalp to be had.”

Jeez, it was almost like an impeachment of an American president…

Anyhow, sadly, Madeley got off, thanks to the expert witness testimony of a Professor Reason (yep, that really is his name) who declared Madeley to be a “classic-case”. Well no disagreements there.

But someone with a keen sense of irony clearly chose wisely when selecting a suitable candidate to interview OJ Simpson and Bill Clinton for UK TV.

What could Madeley, Simpson and Clinton possibly have in common?

My sister recently popped up to That London to ‘bust some moves’ at Turnmills, whose star attraction for the evening was DJ Bob Sinclar. When I met my sister for lunch she’s was pretty excited about her evening’s plans.

But fast forward fourteen hours later and:

“He was fuckin’ shit, the club was full of weirdos who were climbing up the barriers at the side of the dancefloor, he played his single twice and some dumb bastard in shellsuit bottoms tried to chat me up.”

I guess you just can’t please some people. And definitely not when you’re wearing shellsuit bottoms.

So to anyone who thought being a DJ just meant playing one record after another for an hour or so, you’re dead fuckin’ wrong! Even the pros can have an off night.

However, everyone seems to think there’s a Superstar DJ within them, and it was only a matter of time before my second favourite Geldof got in on the act. However, much like Bob Sinclar, Peaches got mixed reviews for her set at 43 South Molton, with one annoyed reveller stating:

“Peaches started playing pumping electric bass far too early, which sent everyone to the bar. She hasn’t got a clue.”

I will neither confirm or deny that I was source of the annoyed reveller quote, but should the 3am Girls ever want a ready supply of quotes knocking Peaches' latest career nepotism move then I’ll be only to happy to oblige.

Peaches Geldof: is there no beginning to her talents?

As the late Bill Hicks once observed, why only the negative drug stories in the news?

I say this after hearing the terrific news, and rather belatedly blogging about it (I’ve only just stopped celebrating), that Justin Hawkins, 31 (sure you are), has quit The Darkness due to his fantastic gak habit.

A huge tit. And a pair of comedy breasts.

Hawkins confessed to blowing a six-figure sum on the second album marching powder and due to his drink and drug habits can no longer be involved in the band, stating:

“It would be damaging to my recovery to stay on. I’m not blaming the band for my problem — I am an addict. There are people who can be in bands and stay clean, but I’m not one of them."

What with Keane’s career on the skids and their singer proving that drugs don’t necessarily kill your appetite, the time finally seems to have come when shite musicians go off the rails on drugs. The days have gone when only legends choked on their own vomit; now it seems the big girl’s blouse singer of your mediocre pussy indie band is getting in on the act.

Who’s next for the career ending drug problem? I’m praying it’s going to be Madonna, using her red Kabbalah strings for tourniquets as a rampant heroin addiction prevents her from charging over £100 for her concerts. Then the delight after she conks it when Guy Ritchie realises she changed her will at the last minute and left everything to a little Malawian boy who’s not allowed to leave his home country.

As my mate Justin (ex-Darkness – oh happy days!) would say:

“Let’s not pretend — there are upsides to drugs.”

Too fuckin’ right.

There come’s a time during every shit temporary job when you cave to the hatred that burns deep within your soul and admit to yourself that one of your colleagues deserves to burn in a fiery Hell-like place (I hear that Hell is quite warm at this time of year).

So the point has been reached within me, just as I feel my first autumnal cold developing, that I’m starting to wish a colleague meets her maker as the result of a bizarre administrative accident.

My current homicidal fantasies concerning her revolve around milk. One of them is her being knocked down by a milk float and then washed down the street in a stream of semi-skimmed. The other is a bit more prolonged, due to her almost pathological hatred of milk that’s gone off. I’d like to hang her suspended over a giant vat of semi-skimmed that’s gone off, and just before she passes out from the fumes I’d like to cut the ropes holding her in position so she plummets until it’s too dense for her body weight to sink her any further.

Then, as she prepares to congeal within the semi-skimmed, she’ll realise how much better it would have been if didn't type like Woody fuckin’ Woodpecker every goddamn day.

I feel a day’s sick leave coming on...

I once dated a girl who had a clothing allowance from her dad (the depressing thing being it was probably more than I’m earning now), and the question was always what was a girl to do when she exceeded her limit. The answer could be only one thing:

Shoplift.

But, you may ask, why should a rich girl ever need to shoplift?

Well one reason would be they tend to get away with it.

Take the lovely Peaches Geldof, daughter of Bob “gimme your feckin’ money” Geldof.

Little Miss Peaches was involved in a little ‘purchasing malfunction’ last week, when a security guard stopped her from leaving an Urban Outfitters with a £285 coat with a security tag on which set the alarm off. Those security tags being the things they remove from your clobber when you pay for it.

Peaches denied the shoplifting suspicion, saying that “I paid for it, obviously, but they left the tag on”.

You’d have thought she’d have come up with something better than that while the security guards held her for ninety minutes before the chauffer-driven Merc popped round to pick her up.

On those mildly embarrassing occasions when the alarms do go off the trick is to produce the receipt to demonstrate your legal possession of the disputed goods.

Although that tends to only work when you’ve actually paid for the stuff.

I was surprised she didn’t try to use the Pete Townsend defence (er, when is this book of yours coming out then, Pete?) to say her actions were all done for ‘research reasons’ for her latest 'documentary'.

Anyone else think Urban Outfitters are always this lenient on suspected shoplifters caught in their store?

Didn't think so...

This was the question I put to my mother and sister over lunch. I know this may not be standard familial dinner table conversation, but as my sister and mother are in London for the day I thought I’d try something a little different.

Last night, again, I had to endure the passion parade produced by the guy and his love interest in the flat above. Previously I have described his girlfriend as a "yelping dog", although to her credit she has toned it down to somewhere within acceptable limits over the last two months.

Unlike her man.

And his man-grunts.

Almost on a par with man breasts for repulsivity, my flatmate’s man-grunts are on their way to putting me off sex for life. Hearing another man grunt "oooh, oohohoh, ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" as I frantically searched for my earplugs was a trauma I’ll be struggling with for years.

Tonight, being Saturday night, means an evening out on the tiles, but should I get anywhere near a young woman tonight all I’ll be hearing is the memory of my flatmate grunting "oooh, oohohoh, ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" should the conversation shift to something racy.

Something needs to be done.

So I made a plan…

To give ‘em a taste of their own medicine.

I reckon that on approximately 50 occasions over the past few months I’ve had to reach for the earplugs, which means to get my own back I’d need to repay them on a half century of occasions.

Unless...

I got 49 people into the flat with me, and together we could produce a symphony of shag soundz to teach ‘em a lesson.

I will be the conductor for the performance, and after the count of three I’d like everyone to grunt at the same time:

“oooh, oohohoh, ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

A woman has just walked into the office and her perfume set up off a Proust-like moment through my hippocampus. It smelt strikingly like the perfume the first girl I snogged was wearing.

And boy, did that kiss take a while to happen.

Notorious procrastinator that I was/am, I’m firmly of the belief why should you do something today when you can put it off a while and then maybe people will forget what it was they wanted during that time.

But time (or girlfriend) wait for no man. Well, at least not for long.

One of my sister’s friends fancied me and Samantha (my sister’s friend) and I would hang out in the youth club after school. This provided opportunities a-plenty for me to slip her the tongue, except one thing got in the way:

I was fuckin’ scared of doing it.

Not having kissed someone (with tongues) before, I was mortified about making a complete arse of myself. Visions of headbutts or enamel chipping came to mind. But not only did I have a girl interested, but I also had a school disco coming up where I knew things would have to happen (it was a Catholic school; these things were mandatory).

One night I had a chance and nearly made it, but didn’t. I ended up being called “a square” by another girl, and even got the accompanying hand gesture of the air square. Not only did it do nothing for my confidence, but it also provoked a wry smile the first time I watched Pulp Fiction.

The thought of the upcoming tonguefest at the disco put me off my schoolwork. I’d be day-dreaming through my classes, looking out the window and seeing other people who I knew had snogged, thinking how much easier their life must be having this skill in their armoury.

Oh the aching inner turmoil of the thirteen-year old TKK!

So the school disco finally arrived, unlike my nerve. Somehow, I managed to get through the entire night without getting round to it, until the fear of a friend trying to horn in on my territory made get the lead out.

We were both sat on top of a gym box and I switched from her left side to her right, which meant I was clearly getting ready to do the deed, as I prefer to kiss from the right. And I did it! There was no headbutts, nor enamel scraping, although I did acquire a life-long conviction that people should close their eyes while kissing.

Of course, thing went downhill from there when I later succumbed to peer pressure and ignored the girl and got off with her friend. But if you can kiss a girl without bruising her forehead or banging her teeth then:

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!