This weekend I paid a flying visit to Wales to provide a reference for some friends’ adoption proceedings (for a couple of packets of Haribo sour mix I’ll turn my hand to anything), arriving back after a hellish 28 Days Later-esque drive through north London to catch the end of big gay fantasy show, Any Dream Will Do.

Two things came to mind as I unleashed my inner Jim Royle in front of my mum’s telly. The first was how much more mileage can TV producers possibly get from the reality audition format? It’s so formulaic that if I see another sequence in which a fat family cheers on their soon to be meal ticket relative, or an audience boos at any example of pantomime villain criticism from a judge, then I’ll push Simon Cowell into a fresh vat of concrete and stick him on the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square once he sets.

And how much more of a big gay eye-candy shop can Any Dream Will Do possibly get? It’s surely only a matter of time before there’ll be a sequence in which the contestants are soaping each other down in a bath-house and Graham Norton is slapping their pert, hairless buttocks with a rolled up towel. If this was on ITV it could only be sponsored by Gaydar.

I can just imagine the outrage if ten nubile and buxom chicks were auditioning on primetime TV for the musical “TKK’s harem of many colours”. Imagine a finale for each show in which when a contestant was eliminated they’d bow out with the girls linking arms, singing and doing a high-kicking finale, before the loser reached the top of the stairs and got her brassiere tassels spinning clockwise, then anticlockwise, and as a closer flashed her plucked snatch a la Basic Instinct. (I’ve seen more hair on the chicken breasts at Tesco than I have on the Any Dream Will Do contestants.) I’ve no problems with shows aimed exclusively at a Take That demographic, but heterosexual men pay the license fee as well.

Where exactly can this tired format go next? Are we going to have Royal Opera House executives pitching the Beeb for a similar televised audition process / free promotional campaign? (Michelle McManus: maybe you’re career isn’t quite dead after all). I can just see how the format would run: "It ain’t over until the fat lady sings. Or unless you at home get on the premium phonelines and vote the lard ass out."

A month ago, God truly blessed TKK. On the same weekend, not only did the Couple From Hell (CFH) move out from the flat underneath mine, but I met a girl who when she kissed me it felt like a hit.

Couple From Hell were also the Shaggers From Hell. I sincerely doubt whether those two could wipe their arses quietly (they used to go the adjoining toilets on the landing together at the same time – is it just me or is that slightly weird and romance killing?), so you can only imagine their shag habits.

Now it’s not that I lack faith in your imagination, dear reader, but I’m going to get descriptive on your ass: listening to these two rutting and grunting was disturbing. Especially him. The guy looked like a Hare Krishna and smelt like a decomposing armpit. I’m pretty sure the guy in the flat next to theirs moved out because of their humping at the peak of their shaglife. He truly looked a broken man the day he left.

I learnt a few days before the blessed weekend that CFH were soon to be on their way, thanks to the telltale packing boxes left on the landing. However, it’s fair to say they went out with a bang. Ahem.

The schedule of their final few days appeared to take the form of collecting some of their possessions, before commencing their humping at 00.02 hours. But by the weekend they’d gone. His odour hadn’t, but leaving the windows open for five days can only go so far.

But who was going to be the new tenant?

A few days ago I bumped into the girl who’d moved into their flat, and the omens didn’t look good: young, pretty and Spanish. Bollocks.

I prayed she’d be like the other girl on the landing: quiet and with no sex life. (I’d propose marriage to this tenant if it wasn’t I’m afraid it would disturb the tranquil equilibrium). However, I soon found that the newbie doesn’t blast Jamiroquai or the same ten songs on repeat, so maybe I’d misjudged her.

Wrong.

Last night at approximately 00.02 hours it started again. And I’ll say one thing for her beau: the guy’s got some stamina. Every five minutes I kept thinking, “He’ll stop soon, I won’t try and find the earplugs”.

Wrong.

Maybe it was a one-night stand (if it was they certainly got their money’s worth). I’m praying right now it is, otherwise I’ll be picking up a zopiclone script on a regular basis.

The guy at least kept his la petite mort quiet, but if I catch them going to the toilets together I’m bloody moving out this time.

Highbury & Islington tube station, 6.23 p.m. I’m wandering around looking for my date for the evening, who’s texted me to say she’s outside the station. Just one problem:

I can’t find her.

Now I’ve spent two minutes walking around and a mild panic is setting in. Has she seen me and done a runner? Is she a practical joker par excellence, and currently hiding in a nearby phonebooth and sniggering while she watches me examine closely all the girls with blonde hair? I know it was three weeks since I last saw her and I’d had a couple that night, but surely I can’t have forgotten what she looks like?

I decide to send a text and see if any of the girls nearby check their phones. Which they don’t. Because it turns out my date was slightly round the corner of the station. The bus station. Not the tube station.

Anyhow, the date went pretty well, at least until the clock struck midnight. At this time carriages turn into pumpkins and Cinderella’s dress into rags. However, my date turned into Bernard Black.

I probably didn’t help things by forgetting she’d had one or two drinks before meeting me and buying “one more” at the end of the evening when C seemed to be flagging. And the danger signs were there when she started sounding less and less Danish and more and more Irish (the universal accent of drunks).

Hence I had the fun of escorting a drunk date via public transport, who seemed content to doze on my shoulder but not perform those more critical elements such as standing up and getting off the bus. I’m also never comfortable escorting a drunk girl around late at night as I get paranoid that I’m being perceived by others as some opportunist sexual predator, rather than the chivalrous and upstanding member of the community I so obviously am.

Eventually we get to a kebab shop somewhere in-between my place and hers (we live a stop apart on the tube), and one chicken kebab and chips later she reverts to being a rational human being again. Oh, and the Danish accent made a comeback. We’re going out again next week, although methinks it’ll be a trip to the cinema rather than the pub.

Last week I bemoaned the early exit from the Apprentice of hen party harridan Gerri, and the choice of task for week four proved me right. The teams had to design confectionary products to sell at London zoo, a task surely made in Heaven (or Cadburys) for Our Gerri. The thought of her being the project managuurrrrr while let loose in a chocolate factory conjured in my mind a wicked fantasy pitched somewhere between Roald Dahl and Mr Creosote.

Unlike the American Apprentice, the Brit version has thankfully (so far) chosen not to highlight any burgeoning humpfests between the contestants, which considering the lovebirds of the last series were Syed and Michelle and this series are the Dagmar Duo is a small mercy. Fearing a repeat of the last series when his apprentice was knocked up, Sir Alan split the Dagmar Duo between the two teams. She may well be a homewrecker and look like something out of Spitting Image (© Emsbabee), but Katie soon proved to be the puppet master, pulling project manager and working class hero Adam’s strings for much of the episode.

If there is a flaw to the Apprentice format then it falls within the potential monotony that arises from a succession of sales tasks, as whether it’s coffee, face-painting services or sweets, sales is sales. More fun would arise with an emphasis on design and presentation skills to tax the contestants all-round skills.

Watching unproductive brainstorming sessions can be hilarious, as they turn into a cross somewhere between Freudian free analysis and Catchphrase. Katie continued her rampant obnoxious toff act during the brainstorming sessions for potential animal confectionary products, with mention of the word "safari" triggering from her the personal revelation that: "When you go on safari you also go for the big five first!" DJ sets in Richmond Wine Bars? Going on safari? Knobbing the other posh oik? I bet Katie always says "lavatory" instead of "toilet" as well.

Sadly, none of the teams utilised my concept of monkey balls bonbons (tagline: "if the monkeys lick them, so can you!"), probably illustrating why it’s best I not work with children and animals. Adam’s brilliant idea for the task was to dress up in a lion costume, perhaps not realising that a six foot lion might scare the shit out of the tots. His team went on to lose by less than £20, probably the amount they could have made if Adam wasn’t inducing six months of bedwetting out of potential punters.

Consequently the working class hero ended up in the boardroom, leading to a three-way smackdown between him, Natalie (surely Patsy Palmer in disguise) and Dr Sophie Kain (Peter Beardsley’s sister).

Once again, the verbal face-off was cut short by a contestant going into self-destruct mode. Sophie self-combusted as the task appeared to have induced in her an epiphany based on the evil machinations of business practices, mark-ups and the profit motive. Rather than turning into a hardcore Marxist-Leninist, Sophie went into passive-aggressive saleswoman mode, (selling happily at giveaway prices at the end of the day, yet feeling it an ethical challenge to flog a lollipop to kids for £2), leading Sir Alan to point the finger of doom at her.

Not surprisingly, Sugar wants an apprentice with more entrepreneurial spirit about them, someone willing to stick their neck out. Obviously this ruled Sophie out straightaway as, unless her posture's really bad, she doesn’t have one. The good doctor may well have been Kain, but the task proved that she certainly wasn’t able.

As my employers clearly have a problem with Web 2.0 and have restricted access to my blog to two hours a working day (and I have to take a lunch break during those two hours. The fiends!), then from now on due to time constraints the content of this blog is going to be nothing but cartoons and pictures of Knut the polar bear. Well at least it would be if I hadn't cancelled my BCUK pro account and now have about 100kb left to post pictures with.

Our cute and cuddly work internet filter has restricted blogging sites, MySpace etc but, bizarrely, opened itself up to all day online shopping and Hotmail access. In addition to this, the filter doesn't prevent you from accessing the restrcted content. It merely advises you that should you choose to go through to certain sites you shouldn't, you are doing so in the full knowledge that the Trust's internet access policy is being broken. That's so fiendishly devious, not to mention deviously fiendish, I wish I'd devised it myself.

Although it’s hard to believe, last week in Wales I had a taste of the future. It was a vision so clean, pure and clear it was almost sacrament-like in its blessing.

It was my first experience of drinking in a bar since the smoking ban came into effect.

Confession time: I am a smoker and have, or so I’m told, been trying to give up for the past four years. I haven’t tried particularly hard; in fact, I haven’t tried at all. It’s not because I’m addicted, but more a feeling that giving up the fags is like quitting on youth: acknowledging your lungs are no longer in the position to keep its side of the pact with the liver surely means it’s time to get the coffin measured and the tombstone carved.

The hardest part about wanting not to smoke, yet having no inclination to quit, is going to a pub, looking around and seeing loads of people puffing away, all completely oblivious to a future in which conversation is only be possible by holding an artificial larynx to the throat.

Truth be told, life in nicotine prohibition-era Wales is actually not that bad. Discounting the couple of cigarettes I smoked in the pub toilets, without the visual cues of other nicotine heads puffing away it’s a definite case of out of sight, out of mind. As to whether the bars smelt any better I simply can’t comment, as years of smoking having left me with the olfactory prowess of dead sniffer dog.

All I’ll say is that it was pretty sweet the morning after being barely able to detect a trace of cigarette smoke on my clothes. Admittedly, it was rather overshadowed by my memory of falling asleep on the train home and missing my stop, but there’s nothing like the fresh smell of mandatory willpower in the morning. It smells like... victory.

But after this experience, will my anti-smoking resolve be any more determined on my return to London?

Fuck, no.

My date this weekend is a smoker.

So that’ll be twenty Marlboro Lights and a box of matches, if you please.

Once again.

However, should I wake up the next morning being able to detect discarded clothing reeking of eau de Marlboro, maybe on this occasion it might not be such a regrettable thing.

If ever there was a reason for declaring the United Kingdom a republic from 9 a.m. on Monday morning then consider the OTT coverage over the weekend of the relationship breakdown between ‘future king’ William and the camera-shy Kate Middleton.

The fact this story was leading the BBC’s news coverage on a day of yet more terrorist attacks in Iraq and Man United making it through to the FA Cup final suggests the continuing lack of proportion in the coverage of this inbred bunch.

As an example, take the headline from the Sunday Mirror from the numerous pages given to this non-story: ‘Wills & Kate 2002-2007: The fairytale’s over’.

Fairytale?

To me, a fairytale involves a wicked witch, a handsome prince (instantly ruling out all of the Windsors) and the letting down of a fair maiden's hair, not the breakdown of a relationship between two privileged twentysomethings because one of them wants to hump a few more hooray henriettas before assuming his royal ‘duties’.

But second only in the guttedness stakes to the royals if a republic was declared would be the P45 clutching royal ‘correspondents’.

No one exemplifies this bum-licking bunch more than former Mirror royal correspondent James Whittaker, once dubbed by Lady Di as the “big fat red tomato”.

According to Whittaker, the relationship was doomed from the start because the Middletons’ blood simply wasn’t blue enough. Examples of this included mater Middleton chewing gum at William’s Sandhurst graduation and using the word “toilet" rather than the preferred “lavatory” in the presence of Her Maj.

Well thank Christ Mrs Middleton didn’t say “shithouse” instead of “lavatory” as this would doubtless have led to the resurrection of the Queen Mother just so she could die from shock due to her witnessing this uncouth behaviour.

Exactly why the Queen would be bothered by this considering her long-standing marriage to her gaffe-prone husband is beyond me. And considering the activities of her family over the last twenty years I would have thought Brenda is beyond embarrassment by now (which would probably explain her sitting for that dire portrait by Rolf Harris).

The deferential obituaries of the Queen Mother were bad enough (a woman who, apparently, faced down Hitler and the Luftwaffe single handedly, yet couldn’t get through a fish dinner without choking on a bone and being rushed to hospital), but the hysterical coverage this weekend makes me dread the day Elizabeth II pops her clogs. We'll probably all have to have a tattoo of Harris' portrait somewhere on our personage or be executed for treason.

Ok, not the most topical of posts, but once again my mother proved incapable of taping the Apprentice. In other news, the dog really seems to be getting the hang of the VideoPlus training…

So the “big fish” has gone!

Gerri was ambushed in the boardroom when all seemed to be going well for her as Jadine and Naomi engaged in their unremitting bitchfest smackdown. Gerri’s big mistake appeared to be opening her mouth (evidently a major character flaw based on her appearance) and describing herself as a “slow-starter” (which if she was running the 100m she undoubtedly would be), reminding Uncle Joe Stalin/Nookie Bear of her last slow-starting performance, attempting to sell £1.30 cappuccinos in Islington’s Chapel Market. For those fortunate enough not to be familiar with this N1 backstreet, it’s a corner of London so grim and underclassy that halfway up the street you need to be prescribed Prozac just to make it to the other end.

The truth is, I do believe I’m going to miss her. Granted, she does look like the harbinger of the hen party from hell, and probably the first woman who runs on stage to rub oil into the male stripper’s buttocks, but her pathological bitching and catchprase of “If I was the project managuurrrrrrrrrr” merited her sticking around for another three weeks. She’ll probably be on Loose Women before the end of the month, calling for national conscription to tackle childhood obesity, and house-party harridan Rachael Bell to be put in the stocks and urinated on “just so she knows what it feels like”.

So who to hate now? Thankfully, not just one but two contenders emerged during episode 3, namely yuppie couple from hell, Katie and Paul.

Resembling two extras who last got work in Eastenders, flashing their filofaxes in James Wilmott-Brown’s Walford wine-bar, the Dagmar, what is there not to hate about these two? They've already outed themselves as obnoxious poshos by trying to raise money in the last task organising DJ sets in Richmond wine bars, rather than by sweeping leaves or anything else that reeked of manual labour.

You can just imagine the Dagmar duo fucking on a bed of discarded Barber jackets in some frightful upper-class inbreeding session on a country estate. Class war has already broken out between them and Adam and Tre, so don't be too surprised if Madame Guillotine rather than Sir Alan trims the contenders down next week.

Well, hellllo.

How you doin'!

You’ve probably noticed the low lights and sultry music, not to mention the splendorous codpiece adorning the TKK crotch.

The occasion?

Lovegod TKK only has a date in a week’s time…

Has it been a while?

Well I’m sure you can’t help but notice there’s a fair amount of dust on the ol’ codpiece.

But it's nothing a quick blow won’t fix.

And just because the lady in question hails from Copenhagen, it doesn't mean you can get away with smutty references about there being nothing better to start the day than having a Danish.

Because that’s my job. Amongst other things.

And yes: I'm very much in favour of closer European integration.

Lovingly yours

TKK. x.

Noel Edmonds was back on primetime BBC1.

It was horrible.

It was like Noel's House Party mixed with the Nuremberg Rally.

It may well have lasted for three hours. But time does go kind of funny in dreams.

All the audience had beards and blow-dried back-combed hair. Natch, they all had tucked their shirts into their jeans.

It really is my ultimate nightmare that this permanently tucked-in bearded shortass manages to crawl back to BBC1 primetime scheduling.

Ok, perhaps it's not my ultimate nightmare. But it's close.

Admittedly a Beeb return could do for his career what OFI Sunday did to Chris Evans.

Hmm.

Time to get on the phone to Noel's agent...

What an edition of the Apprentice last night, eh? First, gravitational Gerri was revealed in her nightgown at 6 a.m. in the morning, then the jackets and ties off incident, then Robson Green came strolling in – who would have thunk it?

Ok, so the last bit probably only happened in my universe, thanks to a video-recording malfunction courtesy of someone in the parental home. After some brief detective work I identified three suspects:

1 - My mother

Track record of 20 years of being unable to set the video. Also once dragged a suitcase upside down a Maltese hotel corridor, though was admittedly quite wasted.

2 - My Dog

Track record of sneaking onto the sofa - when she thinks the coast is clear - in the same room in which the video was left to record last night. Loves Dog Borstal, but can’t confirm whether Robson Green fan. Has been known to accidentally change channels by sitting on the remote.

3 - My dad

Notorious for starting jobs which he never completes (i.e. back of house half painted in white). Might have thought he was doing my mother a favour by taping City Lights (completely oblivious to the fact she was taping it in the bedroom upstairs).

Hence I’ve had to perform the fool’s errand today of having to avoid who got fired last night. I’ve already discovered it was a double downsizing (thank you, Daily Mirror), and the guy with the odd facial hair was pictured in the Guardian TV review for reasons unknown. Maybe he’s the next Syed. Maybe he got fired. Maybe he was responsible for changing channels on the video ten minutes in.

Can last night's episode make it onto BitTorrent form, sharpish. There's only so long I can avoid contact with the human race.

Halfway through dinner with a BBC executive in the first episode of I’m Alan Partridge (‘A Room With an Alan’), to save his TV broadcasting career, an increasingly desperate Partridge throws out such absurd programme pitches as Inner-city Sumo, Youth Hostelling with Chris Eubank, Cooking in Prison and, of course, Monkey Tennis.

However, it’s becoming hard to tell whether this scene is losing its absurdity over time as at least two of the aforementioned ideas could conceivably fit into this week’s TV schedules without being entirely risible (Jamie’s Prison Dinners, anyone?).

Really, can someone explain why in the context of the aforementioned scene Youth Hostelling with Chris Eubank is a laughable TV concept but ‘piano tuition with Diane Abbott’ or ‘banjo practice with Frank Skinner’ is currently making it onto primetime TV courtesy of BBC1’s Play it Again.

Anyone who plays (or has tried to play) an instrument knows the frustration and laborious nature that practice often involves, and therefore is not exactly the most televisual of processes. But clearly the doctrine in TV commissioning meetings these days is to dust down all the shitty ideas that wouldn’t have worked ten years ago because now you can chuck a couple of minor celebs in any old crap and get it broadcast.

And maybe I missed this particular meeting, but since when did political sellout and self-labelled hypocrite Diane Abbot merit being moved from the graveyard shift given after midnight to pisspoor political programming on BBC2? Who really gives a shit whether Frank Skinner can play the banjo or not? It’s not as if he’s ever going to be Doug Dillard, who would more merit BBC scheduling time far more than Skinner by virtue of (a) being a musical virtuoso and (b) actually producing something in his lifetime of cultural worth.

Play it Again is just further evidence of the karaoke TV that seems to clutter up schedules (X-Factor, Dancing on Ice, Soapstar Superstar) where viewers / commissioners seem more interested in watching / green-lighting shows containing slightly above average entertainers (or in the case of Antony Cotton in Soapstar Superstar, total dogshit), and mediocre chumps being saved by (and totally taking advantage of) public sympathy votes.

TV isn’t so much eating itself these days but reversing the evolutionary process. If this style of genetic development applied to the animal kingdom then gazelles would have a permanent limp and develop a stitch two seconds after attempting to leg it from carnivorous predators. However, they’d be perfectly safe because lions would have evolved teeth which shattered at the first nip they give to an antelope on the backside.

And the monkeys? They’d be shit at swinging through the jungle but could probably could get around 75% of their first serves in the court…

So the new series of the Apprentice (UK) has started, albeit a tad disappointingly. Sure, Sir Alan (part Joe Stalin, part Nookie Bear) still acts like a bulldog that’s been licking a piss-sodden nettle, the obligatory sacrificial no-hoper has gone out grovelling, and the hate figure has already emerged (Gerri: part Fay Weldon, part Fern Britton, all arse), but where’s the bleedin’ eye candy?

Whoever was responsible for fixing the totty quota for this series should be put in the boardroom with me so I can fire their ass. And having a female on the team called Lay is not going to save you, either, especially after having Ruth Badger (part Les Dawson, part Pauline Quirke) on for the entire run of the last series.

Now I can’t possibly comment on the men’s physicality, as if I knew exactly what women lurrve in that respect then I’d be fighting them off with a shitty stick 24/7 (albeit not putting up that much of a struggle). But just take a butcher’s at a couple of the lazeez from the current US season of the Apprentice:

Above is the delightful Marisa, who captured TKK’s stony little heart from the instant she started haranguing people with her irrepressible bolshiness. Part Winona Ryder, part Karen McDonald, the woman had so much gob on her she could get an argument going with a corpse. Natch, there were howls of despair in chez TKK when Trump fired her early on in the season at episode four, but with Tracey Barlow about to find herself douching in HMP Holloway for the next 15 years, there’s clearly a vacancy in the cast for a psychotic femme fatale to keep the Street’s men on their toes.

With Marisa gone it was left to the delightful Stefanie to fill the void:

Stefanie has a tendency to wear glasses half way down her nose, and totally brings sexy back to bookishness. Believe me: this woman could cure all adult male illiteracy where you live in a matter of weeks if she was stamping books at your local library.

Seeing the likes of Marisa and Stefanie makes me think we're being completely short-changed by ending up with Gerri on our screens for the next 1-4 weeks (fingers crossed):

How the fuck did Gerri make it through the totty net (other than by breaking it)?

I dunno. Maybe she’s just there to kill the notion about fat people being jolly. With her total lack of sororal concern she’d be perfect for Loose Women, but not the Apprentice. On her own profile she describes herself as a "big fish". Here's to her being harpooned fired asap.