The curious Hoff phenomenon

I just don't get it. As if paying Chris Moyles to use his ghastly vocal chords wasn't bad enough, Radio 1 has launched a campaign to get David 'The Hoff' Hasselhoff to number one in the musical hit parade. Or rather one of it's DJ's has - as far as I'm aware it's not actually part of the station's charter or anything.

OK, so it's vaguely amusing that in this day and age a record company has paid David Hasselhoff to sing the dirge-fest that is his new single 'Jump In My Car' AND has seen fit to unleash it on the unsuspecting British public, but getting it to number one?? It's neither a) big, or b) clever. Why is it cool to like shit things all of a sudden? 10 years ago no-one in their right mind would have bought a record by the has-been permed hunk that is The Hoff (except Germans of course) and it was as rubbish then as it is now (I expect). What next - William Shatner doing Pulp covers? Oh...

For the love of god...

As if the Daily Mail's Diana non-story wasn't annoying enough, it would appear that on the anniversary of one of the worst terrorist attacks in history, as conflict rages in the middle east and people are killed in suicide bomb attacks in Iraq, the Express saw fit to cover the entire front page of today's paper with...you've guessed it, a story about Princess fecking Diana. 'Diana was so much in love', it screams at us, with one of the umpteen archive photos they have of her looking gormless beneath it.

Apparently, she and Dodi were going to get engaged that fateful night in Paris, and Paul Burrell is horrible evil man who drowns kittens for fun. THIS IS NOT NEWS, PEOPLE!! Why do people waste 70p a day on this shit? This paper pays 'journalists' to peddle this bollocks - how can any one of them sleep at night? Do they all dream one day of working on a publication that tells real news stories - like Heat or Bella for example, or maybe even TV Quick magazine. There's more journalistic integrity on the 'Celebrity Style Secrets' page of Heat than there is in one column inch of these bog-roll worthy heaps of rubbish, yet the morons who buy it swallow every ill-informed sound bite that's thrown at them. AAAGGHH!!

Nine years on and she's still dead

It baffles me, truly it does. To be fair, even when she was alive I struggled to understand the media's obsession with Diana, Princess of Wales - nine years after she started pushing up daisies in the middle of a lake in the Midlands, I understand it even less.

OK so, it's around the anniversary of her untimely death, but barely a week passes when one of the so-called 'quality' tabloids, The Daily Express & The Daily Nazi - sorry, Daily Mail, feature some kind of article perpetrating the ridiculous conspiracy theories that surround the death of one of the thickest worldwide megastars of the 20th century. Today the Mail featured this piece raging on about Paul Burrell, Diana's ex-butler/the devil incarnate. Whilst I find it slightly distasteful that his entire 'celebrity' status came about purely as a result of her death, he has to make a living somehow, what with him having no-one to butle for any more. By featuring him in their paper at all, the Mail make sure he remains in the public eye - there's no such thing as bad publicity, after all.

If they really gave a flying toss about the sacred memory of someone they themselves re-characterised from treasonous slut to angelic deity overnight following her death, they would do what her sons seemingly do - rise above it all and refuse to be drawn into the endless media circus. Diana died because she wasn't wearing a seatbelt in the back of a speeding car that crashed because the driver was drunk - and that's that. Even if the Queen had strangled her with her bare hands, nothing can change that fact that she is dead, and will remain so for eternity. So can everybody please stop bloody well going on about her!

Scary sights in Doncaster

Whilst on an emergency pizza run to Donny the other week (that's how much of an emergency it was) my boyfriend and I happened upon one of the most genuinely blood-curdlingly scary things I've ever seen - an extremely fragile looking old man driving a Citroen AX round a roundabout - wearing an oxygen mask! Don't ask me why I found this such a distressing sight, but believe me, it's not an experience I'd wish to repeat. I mean, surely if you need a bit of assistance in the simple matter of breathing in and out, driving is one of the last things one should be considering. And he had a passenger as well!

I was reminded of this occurrence today after reading this brilliant story.

Nice to see our police force are as vigilant and infallible as ever - 'Pc Edge said: "I asked him if he could see me. He removed the dark-coloured sunglasses he was wearing and I could clearly see he was blind as he had no eyes."' Good work PC Edge, there's bound to a promotion in this for you after that cracking bit of detective work...

Glamping Queen

For those of you unfamiliar with the term 'glamping', it's a word I first came across in one of the Sunday supplements, used to describe the recent phenomenon that can best be summed up by the fact that you can now buy tents and sleeping bags with pink flowers on them - the idea that camping is very hip, very fashionable, and SO now. Well, I've just returned from a week in various fields in and around the Scottish Highlands, and believe me, there is nothing glamourous about sleeping with only two layers of vinyl between you and torrential rain, having to wrestle yourself into two layers of fleece, walking boots and a wooly hat to tramp half a mile to the lav if you need to pee in the middle of the night, or having no access to a hairdryer for six days.

Which is exactly why camping is so brilliant - the kind of people who look at a Cath Kidston tent and think "Ooh, how delicious! Wouldn't it be fun to go camping in one of those!" are just the kind of people who find the thought of a week without hair straighteners and eyeliner something akin to a living hell, so therefore never do it. I'll admit, I'm hardly the hardy outdoor, fell running type myself, but that's not the point. Camping is wondrous - especially in the breathtaking beauty of Scotland - enjoying the fresh air, eating cold beans out of tin, contemplating a night sky seemingly fit to burst with stars - but unless you're Kate Moss at Glastonbury and actually staying in a big fuck off trailer with a wardrobe the size of small house and an annexe housing your stylist and hairdresser, camping is not, and never will be, glamourous.