The air is thick with news. A human head has been caught by a fishing boat off Cornwall. Britain's most wanted man, Mark Hobson, has been described as “charming” by a friend, a charm which appears to extend to wildly attacking naked girls with hammers. Sacha Distel has died, thus depriving me of an answer to the often-asked question “Go on then, name a living French pop singer. Just one.” England batsman Robert Key is revelling in his big score at Lord's yesterday, despite the bowling attack he was facing being as penetrating and testing as a few 6 year old boys having a relaxed game of petanque. Against this background of discussion-worthy events, it's left to me to talk about drinking and television, I suppose.

I'm trying not to use the nametags that link to other people's journals these days (e.g. ) purely because for the large number of people who read this nonsense and do not have a LiveJournal (that number being approximately 7) it can smack of a faintly unpleasant cliquey-ness. So. Last night Alfred, Woody, Ant, Neil, Owen, Nick, Kellie, Matthew, Deirdre, myself and Helen went to two pubs in Marylebone. Only one of these people chooses not to recount their lives on the internet. (Clue: it's not me.) At one point in the evening someone said that the events in the pub would throw up more column inches the next day than the Iraq conflict. Everyone winced a little, so I'm prepared for no-one else to even give a cursory mention to the evening. Anyway, we ended up in the singalong pub on Marylebone Lane, serenaded by Tony “Fingers” Pearson. It was Nick's birthday, so I was delighted when “Fingers” struck up a version of “Happy Birthday”, especially as I had bottled out of playing it on a piano in the previous pub we'd been in.

When I got home, I stuck the TV on. I think the wind might have changed in the flat and caused my set-top box to stick permanently on the UK Food channel. At midnight, weekdays, there is a programme on called “Beauty And The Feast”, a worn out pun flagging up a hilariously rotten series, in which two nutrition-mad “beauties” or “lovelies” persistently flaunt their photogenic forms in front of the camera, under the pretence of giving us information on healthy living. In each programme they dig up a group of 3 men who supposedly need their diets changed. But they never choose 3 quantity surveyors, publicans or backgammon enthusiasts, no, it's firemen, lifeguards or rugby players, and they spend half an hour indulging in feeble flirting interspersed with facts about vitamins. The three men always look thorougly embarrassed to be involved in such drivel, and particularly about 2/3 of the way through where one of the Lovelies decides to subject one of them to a “beauty treatment” using the same ingredients that they're using in the meal that they're cooking. “Come on then, get your shirt off,” she says, a badly acted twinkle in her eye. The toothsome hunk then gets his back scrubbed with lentils, or his feet immersed in minty yoghurt. “So, how does that feel?” asks Ms Beauty. “Alright”, is the inevitable deadpan response. After maximum misery has been extracted from the poor chap, she'll turn away and coo over to her fellow Lovely. “Oh! How's that chicken coming on?” It's excruciating. At the end of it all they all sit around a table, eating the food they have made and counting down the seconds until the stressed director shouts “cut!”

I urge you all to tune in.