My Genius

I bought a notably thick smoothie in Somerfield. Smoothies are adult baby food really, but in spite or because of this I can't get enough of them. Dave asked what it tasted like and I told him that the flavour was dominated by banana. 'Dominated by bananas', he mused. That's now in the running for the title of my autobiography.

I have been astonishingly creative this week. I came up with another title - 'Vacuuming Elaine' - after mishearing something Dave said. I have no idea what it's about. But it's a start. I also had an idea for a film about a man trapped in a woman's body. Literally. You see he's been sewed in there, really tight, by a serial killer. I reckon Danny Dyer would be up for it. It could be another one of his worst nightmares.

This week, at exactly the same time as he was meeting up with yet another deadly man on Virgin, he was on BBC3 doing a documentary about UFO's. Naturally, this was in the finest tradition of investigative journalism, with Danny, having met a number of transparently insane individuals, concluding that he really didn't know whether UFO's existed or not and that, frankly, the subject did his head in. Next week will hopefully bring even more Danny Dyer programmes like Danny Dyer: Pope For A Day or Danny Dyer In The Night Garden.

I have also been working on a sequel to Titanic, which Rhys made me watch as part of our shared blog. So horrified was I by it that I had to develop another personality to review it with. But that's another story. In the sequel Harvey Keitel plays a survivor of the original disaster who is determined to hunt down the iceberg that caused the accident. The iceberg contains an alien spaceship and has now become a living entity, played by the Rock or Meryl Streep, whoever offers me the most money. Then -

Then I had to lie down for a while.

Danny Diarrhoea

There is a new temp at work. It took her five hours to finish a task on her first day and she was worried that she wouldn't keep pace with the rest of us.

She needn't worry. She'll soon slow down.

Talking of working to make ends meet, there is a new series of Danny Dyer's Deadliest Men. 'I'm really shitting myself', he confides to camera while on his way to meet this episode's deadliest man, a bare-knuckle boxer. It's a refreshingly frank approach. Jeremy Paxman might try it at the beginning of Newsnight. 'I'm interviewing David Cameron tonight and I'm really shitting myself.' Although in that case it would be Cameron doing the shitting I suppose.

Really the series should be called Danny Dyer's Worst Nightmare judging by the number of times he says something is his worst nightmare - often something quite innocuous, like standing close to a place where some trouble might possibly be about to break out. I mean, how many worst nightmares can one man have? One of his worst nightmares is being a West Ham supporter in a crowded pub full of leery Man U fans on the night of a crucial game against Barcelona. Even off the top of my head I can think of quite simple ways to make that nightmare worse. The game could be against West Ham, for example. A man-eating tiger could enter the pub. And so on.

What does enter the pub, amazingly, is Shayne Ward, a distant cousin of the bare knuckle boxer. This makes Danny even more uncomfortable, for some reason. Is there nobody he isn't frightened of? Imagine if Jedward turned up! He might shit himself to death.

One reason to stay tuned.

now I'll have to kill you

At work the absence of some document folders was pronounced 'very strange'. In the next office, they were talking about ejaculating penguins.

At lunchtime I go down to the coffee lounge to leaf through old magazines and read about 'celebrities' with names like 'Jackiey' and 'Angellica'. These are people who are so desperate to keep hold of the public's attention that they disguise themselves as typos.

On Resonance, they were advertising a night presided over by 'DJ Spinmaster Plantpot'. How long before he (or she) appears on All Star Mr. and Mrs.? Ice T was on there the other night. What does this mean? Probably a sign that the Apocalypse is close at hand. Have you seen Take Me Out?

There was a meeting in London to break up the working week. Well, that wasn't the only reason for it, I suppose. It commenced with a section called 'Getting To Know You'. You had to come up with three 'facts' about yourself, 'one of which should be fictitious'. My first fact was that 'according to my intranet profile, one of my hobbies is dressing up as a prawn'. This is true. Every month I change the penultimate sentence of my profile to introduce a new hobby I've made up. These have included 'juggling with hedgehogs' and 'stalking Gary Wilmot'. So it seemed clever to use that. Only now I feel like I've said too much. People can only take in so much information and I can see myself being remembered, if at all, as 'that guy who dresses like a prawn'. Even though I never have.

Then again it is perhaps better that they remember that. Rather than, for example, the fact that I confessed to those murders... That was a bit of a mistake on my part. Saying it, I mean. Not the murders.

the big sleaze

At work there was a delivery of 'facial tissues'. In the context of organ donation, this seemed rather alarming. But it was only six boxes of Kleenex.

Everyone was very excited at work about the prospect of the Home Counties being 'buried' under 40 cm of snow (source: the Times online) and it did snow. But not enough. I now feel like I must be addicted to snow, because it's never enough. In truth, it would take a lot to stop me getting to work, considering I walk there, but at least it makes the journey more interesting.

For instance, in the playing fields opposite Crescent Drive, someone had made a snowman with an absolutely gigantic penis. They had made a very good job of it; it had a real sculptural quality. Sadly, the next day it had been destroyed. Some people have no respect.

Peering into the field, I imagined someone asking me what I was looking for. 'A snowman with a massive cock', I would have had to say. I supposed that they would have moved on then - though not, I hope, without wishing me luck.

Obviously if I lived somewhere like Canada, I would be bored with snow. Mat's brother Grant went back there recently, after coming over for the wedding. He gave us some insights into the strange practices of Canadians. 'Curling nights', apparently. This is a bit like bowls, on ice, but featuring a stripper. We were in the Green Man, which did not offer anything quite so perverse, though it does now have an 'Adult Dining Area', I noticed. Wonder what goes on in there?

Grant was sadly deprived of his favourite pastime, getting Mat horribly drunk, because Mat was driving. He contented himself with plying him with Tabasco sauce (in the Green Man's equivalent of a Virgin Mary), so that his lips went numb.

On the way home Mat managed to say through tingling lips that although Sam was ill with a cold, 'he is still awesome'. 'You and Dave should have one', he suggested. Now that would be a tabloid shocker. Not that we would abuse a child, of course - we wouldn't be that interested. Rather, it would have its own room and we wouldn't worry when we didn't see it for days, just assume it had got lucky.