Work and play

And my whole office are staring at me trying to compose myself and work out what to tell them...(probably best not for work)

Police in London have launched a massive search for BBC Political Correspondent Nick Robinson, who has been missing since the end of the London G20 Summit.

Robinson, bald, was last seen submitting yet another sycophantic Blog post on the BBC website, in which he described Gordon Brown as 'The Chancellor of the World Exchequer'.

[From BBC Correspondent Nick Robinson Missing]

It's a long time since I've paid more than a cursory interest in the so called "beautiful game" but if there is one team I ever did support (after witnessing the punch up between Kevin Keegan and Billy Bremner when my dad took me to a mid-70s Charity Shield match) it's been Liverpool (up till then I supported Leeds!).

But in those days, we had British teams representing the proud people of British cities with people like Dalglish (who was exotic enough from north of the border), Callaghan, Keegan, Rush, Neal, Hughes, Barnes, Aldridge and so on. Now I know the world of football has changed much over the years, but really - isn't this starting line-up worthy of a "British Jobs for British Workers" fan-strike:

Reina, Carragher, Skrtel, Agger, Dossena, Arbeloa, Mascherano, Aurelio, Babel, Ngog, Benayoun. Subs: Cavalieri, Hyypia, Torres, Riera, Alonso, Kuyt, El Zhar. [From Portsmouth v Liverpool]

Poor Michael Phelps. I hope tabloid photo-journalists won't mind losing their jobs one day after their coke-parties and drinking games have been uncovered. However, whilst it's not very nice being dumped, who would want to work for Kellogg anyway.

This is a firm whose family founders were rather bonkers. Whilst it was his brother, W K Kellogg, that founded the company, the actual cornflake inventor (whose only creditworthiness seems to have been that he wanted his recipe to be "open source" rather than patented - which is where his brother and he parted company), was John Harvey Kellogg who, amongst other things...

Was into yoghurt enemas - believing that they would replace the "good bacteria" in the colon that he had had his patients wash out with water enemas via his patent enema machine.

Didn't do sex - adopted six(?) kids but never, it seems, had so much as a canoodle with his wife and throughout their marriage slept in separate bedrooms.

Campaigned against masturbation, claiming it led to all sorts of physical and mental ailments. He advocated, therefore, unanaesythetised circumcision for boys so that the pain discouraged them from ever touching their mutilated little wee-wees and putting carbolic acid on the clitoris to do similar for females. Also binding up boys hands to stop them fiddling with themselves and making them wear wire cages over their genitals (that he did patent!) - all the way up to electric shock treatment for persistent wankers.

The only possible sensible connection with Michael Phelps I can come across is his habit of chucking patients from his sanatorium off the end of the jetty into the nearby freezing lake.

Apart from the money - he is well rid I'd say. Now, maybe he can persuade Speedo to endorse a new campaign on amphetamines....;)

I tell you what really annoys me; so much so that if anything is likely to get me to give up smoking it is this; the actions of my "fellow" smokers. I'm sick to the back teeth of having to wade through piles of fag butts on my way into work, or almost any building on campus. Even when there's a bin right there they can't be arsed to do anything other than flick their fag on the floor. Some, one person I just watched doing it in fact, can't even be arsed to stamp on it to be sure it is out - it's lying there on the top step smouldering away.

Look, it's very simple you literal tossers, even if there isn't a dedicated ashtray wherever and whenever you need it - you nip off the end - you can do it one handed, stamp on the burning end - which is now merely a small pile of slightly charred leaves that will wash away with the next rain, and put the butt, the bit that will not just wash away, into a bin. Even put it back in the pack if you cannot find a bin.

I like to imagine, charitably, that you're not the sort of people who would wander down the road randomly dropping litter. So what the heck is the difference with your fag butts? It's dirty, disgusting and embarrassing to those of us smokers who do care a little about our surroundings and don't expect someone to wipe our own arses for us.

Just do it properly! You know it's right!

I had a go at the Guardian Friday politics quiz today. It said I got nine out of ten, and that the one I got wrong was a question about how many Prime Ministers had had a State Funeral since the turn of the nineteenth century. I reckoned four (Wellington, Palmerston, Gladstone and Churchill), they claim three. Who is correct? Or have I missed something?

...but bats in your bra? The rest of the office has just realized my tears are of laughter...

Is this what people mean by "NFN" I wonder?

By complete happenstance yesterday, I have a surprise Santander sponsor's ticket for tomorrow's British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Apart from once or twice being dragged through the cold countryside when I was seven years old to watch the RAC rally stages in North Yorkshire I've never been to such an event so I thought I should probably try it once.

I do support motorsport in general as I do believe it is the way the industry creates more efficient vehicles and technologies that eventually feed through into production cars and I do watch all the F1 races on TV. Though all this Max Moseley bad business does sour it a little.

But who do I support? The ticket comes because of a relationship between Abbey/Santander and Oxford Brookes University that was originally established when Alonso won the title a couple of seasons ago - Alonso lives in Oxford and set up some sponsorship deals for Spanish students to come and study at our School of Technology. But obviously he's no longer in an Abbey/Santander sponsored car. I have a small natural bias towards the "English" boy, Hamilton, and he of course is in the same car.

But, just watching the qualifying a new possibility arises. Apparently Heikki Kovalainen lives in Oxford too and is in the right sponsor's car and is the front runner in qualifying. He describes Britain as his adopted country (I wouldn't if I hailed from Finland I suspect!). Whereas the British born one has adopted Switzerland allegedly because despite all his good luck and fantastic income he can't be bothered to contribute his dues to Britain.

It would be nice to see a "British" winner of the British Grand Prix and eventually the championship again. But I think the answer is clear for tomorrow, go Oxford! go Santander! go Kovalainen!

I seem to collect these. Why can't I find a few that pay though! I have just been elected a director of the SE² Partnership Limited (Social Enterprise South East) which takes over from a SEEDA funded project supporting and promoting social enterprise in the South East region.

The bird on the acompanying recording has been singing now for about an hour - ie from 1am onwards. Can anyone tell me what it is?

NB - don't turn it up too loud  - about 1:25 into the clip it gets quite gusty windy!