The Edmondson Blog

We had a family get-together on Sunday in the centre of town. After a look round the National Gallery, including a tour of Marriage a la Mode by El Papa, we headed to Quaglino's for lunch. Some 13 Edmondson's came together for a Sunday afternoon of fun and games.

It's superb that The Queen takes her duties so seriously. If only others would show some respect.

Hat tip: Wookburn

Barry Chuckle (right)

Kiddies’ TV star Barry Chuckle was branded a sleazy rat yesterday for trying to bed the mum of two young fans.

The married grandad, 60, one half of the famous Chuckle Brothers, bombarded attractive Sally Williams with lurid emails.

Housewife Sally, 37, also told how he KISSED her as she sat in his car, put his hand up her SKIRT, and BEGGED her to spend nights with him in a hotel.

The starstruck mum, who admits she fell for his charms, said: “I must have been insane.

“We never had full sex. But I was stupid, naive and idiotic. He’s a slimebag and a sleazeball who could have wrecked my life.”

One email from the wrinkly comic, real name Barry Elliott, told how he wanted to “lick, suck and caress” her.

Another drooled: “Even though you won’t have your underwear on for long I’m looking forward to seeing it and removing it slowly and sexily, you gorgeous little thing.

The “fling” was nipped in the bud when Sally's husband Ron, 40, found one of the emails.

He stormed: “I want people to know what Barry Chuckle is really like.”

Barry, wed to Ann for 35 years, yesterday admitted sending “fruity” emails and meeting Sally at the services. But he insisted: “Nothing happened.”

Per dialogue in Rambo: First Blood Part II, during his Vietnam era service, Rambo was awarded two Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars (for Valor), four Purple Hearts, the Distinguished Service Cross, and the Medal of Honor. This is, apparently, only a partial listing of Rambo's honors as in a deleted scene from Rambo III, Rambo's "Class A" uniform can clearly be seen with the following 12 ribbons:

Medal of Honor
Distinguished Service Cross
Distinguished Flying Cross
Soldier's Medal
Bronze Star
Purple Heart
Air Medal
Vietnam Service Medal
Prisoner of War Medal
Army Service Ribbon
Vietnam Wound Medal
Vietnam Campaign Medal
Curiously, Rambo's Silver Stars were missing from his ribbon rack as well as the National Defense Medal and the Good Conduct Medal, for both of which he certainly would have been eligible.

Various special duty badges can also be seen on Rambo's "Class A" uniform, including:

Combat Infantryman Badge
Aircraft Crewman Badge
Senior Combat Parachutist Badge
Expert Weapons Qualification Badge

Saturday was Hovis' stag night. It was a 14 hour bender from 11am to 1am (for me, at least) which included Urban Golf and the Bavarian Beerhouse. I was close to a coma on Sunday.

I went to see Rambo in the West End this evening. I'm not sure what to say, except that at £12.15 it cost me 14.4p per minute of film. It's an absolute bloodfest. Even if it doesn't win any Oscars, it should win something for the ingenious ways Rambo manages to kill the bad guys. The dude who added the digitised blood in post-production should be up for a statuette as well.

It's hard to know which my favourite bit was: probably when Rambo shoots an arrow through a soldier's leg, then another through his face, causing him to fall into a river onto a mine and get blown into pieces no bigger than Smarties. Hilarious. Another good bit was a sniper shooting the head clean off a baddie who's been shooting innocent civilians with a high calibre machine gun. The headless body manages to keep shooting at least another five thumping rounds...

There are the usual stereotypes... Americans wanting to do good; ex-British soldiers from the East End of London who have attitude problems; a homosexual Burmese general.

At 84 minutes, there are an average of 2.59 killings per minute. Anything under 90 minutes screams of straight-to-video material. This is no exception.

An alcoholic who died after giving himself a sherry enema has won the 2007 Darwin Award.

The 58-year-old Texan couldn't ingest alcohol by mouth because of painful medical problems with his throat.

He took to taking alcohol by enema instead but died after taking two 1.5 litre bottles of sherry.

First runners-up, and Double Darwin winners, were a young South Carolina couple, both 21, found naked and dead in the road in the early hours.

Police were initially baffled, until they found two sets of neatly folded clothes on top of a nearby building with a pyramid-shaped roof.

Other runners-up included:

An East German man who electrocuted himself when he tried to get rid of moles by pounding metal rods into the ground and connecting them to a high-voltage power line.

A West Virginia man who was crushed while dismantling a rundown barn. He fired up his chainsaw and ripped through a crucial support post, bringing down the whole structure on himself.

An Illinois man who won a game of chicken to see who could stay on a railway line the longest in the path of an oncoming train.

And a 29-year-old computer tutor who was killed in California while driving and working on his laptop at the same time. He was killed by oncoming traffic.

This clip asks two questions: Where does Jeremy buy his jackets? And how does the prankee manage to sound so like Beaker?

The original Candid Camera

A restaurant owner has apologised after diners had their very own F word experience - without Gordon Ramsay.

Ten friends found the abusive and sexually-explicit message on their bill at Joe Delucci's Italian restaurant in Bird Street, Lichfield, Staffordshire.

Diner Clare Watkin said she thought it was written after they complained about poor service.

The party from Walsall had gone to the restaurant on Friday. Owner Nigel Langsdon has begun an investigation.

Ms Watkin said: "I couldn't believe it. The bill read 'fish cakes', which one of us had for a starter, and it was written right above it - absolutely disgusting language."

British Airways and Virgin Atlantic will together pay about $203 million to settle a lawsuit brought by passengers who said the airlines illegally fixed the price of fuel surcharges on long-haul trips.

The agreement announced on Friday settles a two-year-old case pending in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California contending that customers overpaid for fuel surcharges, which were meant to help airlines cope with the rising cost of jet fuel.

Under the pact, U.S. ticket purchasers will receive $59 million, while British purchasers will get £73.5 million ($144.4 million) in refunds, according to lawyers representing the plaintiffs.

The agreement, which still requires court approval, covers 8 million passengers in the US and Britain who bought tickets from either BA or Virgin between Aug. 11, 2004, and March 23, 2006. The airlines will pay one-third of the fuel surcharge the passengers paid per ticket.

Claim here.

The active ingredient in a curry or chilli is capsaicin. The more capsaicin present, the hotter the curry. Ordinary Tabasco sauce is about 260 parts per million capsaicin. A habanero chilli contains about 17,000ppm. Theoretically, the hottest curry you can make would be a bowl of pure capsaicin crystals. This dish would be 10,000 times hotter than a vindaloo. Although capsaicin does not actually cause a chemical burn or direct tissue damage itself, the impact on the nervous
system of such powerful stimulation is similar to an allergic reaction. As well as incredible pain, you could expect uncontrollably streaming eyes and nose, upper body spasms, and severe difficulty breathing for 30 to 45 minutes. In fact, our ultimate curry would be five times stronger than the pepper spray used by police for riot
control Provided you are healthy with no history of heart conditions or asthma it might be possible to survive a teaspoon of pure capsaicin, but impossible to east anything else for a few hours.

Theoretical limit: 5g capsaicin
Current record: 0.1g

In 2005, Blair Lazar refined 500g of capsaicin from chilli peppers to
create a sauce. He tried a single crystal, 'It was like having your
tongue hit with a hammer', he said.


I see a challenge.

Hat tip: Ma

The Japanese do their game shows so well.

I don't usually agree with Simon Heffer, but I do agree with his piece in today's Telegraph.

Those of us who live in the country know too well the effect of a superstore opening outside our local market town. It was summed up by a notice our fishmonger put up in his shop about 15 years ago, shortly after a new hypermarket opened just over a mile away: "Please do not mention Tesco, as a smack in the mouth often offends". He closed a few weeks later, and his premises are now a charity shop.

By contrast, the butcher in the same town appears to be going from strength to strength. His meat is of a far higher class than the rather bland but wholesome stuff the supermarket offers. He can supply cuts that they don't stock. He will also pluck and dress your pheasants and partridges during the autumn and winter, something I have yet to find a Sainsbury's offering to do. There are lessons here, if only we choose to draw them.

The big supermarkets flourish not because they are an implicit force of nature, but because people choose to let them flourish. If we didn't choose to shop there, they wouldn't be so successful. I was at a dinner party a few years ago where one of the other guests blathered on about the evil of Tesco, and how wonderful local shops were being threatened by its very existence. Not long afterwards, on a Sunday, I met her in that very supermarket, buying emergency supplies for her lunch table that she couldn't get anywhere else. I still don't think she got the point.

Many smaller shops survive, and will continue to do so, because they have customers who like what they get there. If the Government really wants to help such people, it should urgently set about the reform of business rates, so that more small shopkeepers can afford to set up and compete with the big boys, and deregulate the employment market for small retailers, so that some of those statutory burdens are lifted, too. It should also tell local councils to be more innovative about matters such as parking and general access to traditional high streets. Oddly enough, that will be helped by directing more traffic to the hated out-of-town stores.

Above all, the Government should never forget that the success of any business is down to the exercise of the free will of its customers who choose to shop there. Sentimentality is all well and good, but it doesn't pay the bills.

And before any of you write to complain that I am being unfeeling towards small shopkeepers - which I expressly am not - ask your conscience this: will you promise never to set foot in a Tesco again?

Just been looking at my Google Analytics data for the last two weeks, since I've been back online. The trend is definitely in the up direction. The graphs tell me a few things:

1. Thank you to my overseas readers (Messrs. Brazier, Hills and McColl!)
2. Page hits drop off at the weekend, which means people aren't working hard enough
3. Hills is particularly bored in Abu Dhabi

A human rights group appealed to Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah yesterday to stop the execution of a woman accused of witchcraft.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch said that Fawza Falih was never given the chance to prove her innocence in the face of "absurd charges that have no basis in law".

It said that to convict her in April 2006, the judges in the northern town of Quraiyat had relied upon Falih's coerced confession and on statements from witnesses who said she had "bewitched" them.

Falih, who is illiterate, later retracted her confession, claiming it was extracted under duress by the kingdom's religious police, and that she did not understand the document she was forced to fingerprint.

Saudi Arabia's religious police are zealously enforcing a ban on Valentine's Day symbols in the austere Muslim kingdom.

But in other Gulf Arab countries, celebrations of the traditional lovers' day are now common and appear to be gaining acceptance.

"We have not been selling red roses for a week and we will not bring in any until Valentine's Day is over," said Alan, a Filipino working at a flower shop in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

He said a member of the religious police, known as Muttawa, visited the shop a week ago and ordered the florists not to display any red roses in the runup to February 14.

At a gift shop in the city, a salesman said the Muttawa had told him to remove from the shelves any red-colour gifts symbolising the feast of love.

An American woman who was arrested and strip-searched by religious police in Saudi Arabia for drinking coffee at a Starbucks with a male colleague says she is determined to stay in the strict Islamic kingdom to challenge its rules.

Yara, 37, went to the Starbucks on Monday with her business associate to get some work done and use the internet after a power failure shut down her office. While the two were sitting in the curtained-off family section of the Starbucks, the country's bearded religious police entered and arrested her for being with a man other than her husband.

Reports in the Saudi press say religious police detained her for immoral behavior, took her cell phone, strip-searched her, kept her from calling her husband and prevented her from seeing a lawyer.

Mr Mitchell, 52, was falsely accused of being involved in a car bombing in Saudi Arabia in 2000 when he was working there as an anaesthetic technician.

He was held in prison for three years and tortured until he eventually signed a confession, which he later had to read out on Saudi television.

A sharia court sentenced him to having his head partially severed, followed by public crucifixion.

The sentence was later reduced to beheading, before the Saudi authorities finally conceded that al-Qa'eda terrorists had planted the bomb and let Mr Mitchell return home to Halifax, West Yorks.

A Saudi woman has been sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in prison after she was the victim of a gang rape.

The sentence against the 19-year-old Shia woman from Qatif, in the Eastern Province of the country, was passed because she was in the car of a man who was not a relative at the time of the attack, which contravened strict Saudi laws on segregation.

A court had originally sentenced the woman to 90 lashes and the rapists to jail terms of between 10 months and five years but increased the punishment after an appeal, saying the woman had tried to use the media to influence them.

According to the Arab News newspaper, the woman was gang-raped 14 times.

Her offence was in meeting a former boyfriend, whom she had asked to return pictures he had of her because she was about to marry another man.

The couple was sitting in a car when a group of seven Sunni men kidnapped them and raped them both, lawyers in the case told Arab News.

Some of these stories are beyond belief. In fact, the majority of the stories on Google News don't exactly bathe the country in a great light. I think Saudi Arabia needs to sort out its public relations.

Always brings a smile to my face.

I was thinking about going to see the new Rambo film (a surefire winner at the upcoming Oscars). Then I read this review:

It's hard to describe the best bit in Sylvester Stallone's new Burma-set Rambo movie, cleverly titled Rambo. It could be the bit where the local tribesmen are forced to walk through a live minefield and are blown to bloody shreds. Or it could be the bit where the soldier's head is imploded by a point-blank revolver round. Or the bit when the children are shot and tossed alive into a fire, or when the nasty boy-raping commander is disembowelled, or when the entire Burmese battalion gets pulverised into a meaningless bloody mass by an enormous machinegun that's neatly wielded by our titular hero.

Who's free on Monday 25th February?

Enjoy the day. I hope you have trouble opening your front door when you get home this evening. I'm off for a half priced curry at the Tandoori Gardens.

Today I managed to sell my first piece of work for Hedra! As a Senior Consultant, there is no target for selling work, but having only been there 5 weeks, I'm hoping this'll earn me some brownie points.

1. Pat Glenn, weightlifting commentator - 'And this is Gregoriava from Bulgaria. I saw her snatch this morning and it was amazing!'

2. New Zealand Rugby Commentator - 'Andrew Mehrtens loves it when Daryl Gibson comes inside of him.'

3. Ted Walsh - Horse Racing Commentator - 'This is really a lovely horse. I once rode her mother.'

4. Harry Carpenter at the Oxford-Cambridge boat race 1977 - 'Ah, isn't that nice. The wife of the Cambridge President is kissing the Cox of the Oxford crew.'

5. US PGA Commentator - 'One of the reasons Arnie (Arnold Palmer) is playing so well is that, before each tee shot, his wife takes out his balls and kisses them ..... Oh my god !! What have I just said??'

6. Carenza Lewis about finding food in the Middle Ages on 'Time Team Live' said: 'You'd eat beaver if you could get it.'

7. A female news anchor who, the day after it was supposed to have snowed and didn't, turned to the weatherman and asked, 'So Bob, where's that eight inches you promised me last night?' Not only did HE have to leave the set, but half the crew did too!

8. Steve Ryder covering the US Masters: 'Ballesteros felt much better today after a 69 yesterday.'

9. Clair Frisby talking about a jumbo hot dog on Look North said: 'There's nothing like a big hot sausage inside you on a cold night like this. '

10 Mike Hallett discussing missed snooker shots on Sky Sports: 'Stephen Hendry jumps on Steve Davis's misses every chance he gets.'

11. Michael Buerk on watching Phillipa Forrester cuddle up to a male astronomer for warmth during BBC1's UK eclipse coverage remarked: 'They seem cold out there, they're rubbing each other and he's only come in his shorts.'

12. Ken Brown commentating on golfer Nick Faldo and his caddie Fanny Sunneson lining-up shots at the Scottish Open: 'Some weeks Nick likes to use Fanny, other weeks he prefers to do it by himself.'

At 2'9" and a mere one and a half stone, Aditya "Romeo" Dev is the world's smallest bodybuilder.

Using custom-built 1.5kg dumbbells, Romeo, 19, pumps iron daily to prove that small is beautiful.

One reason to leave your laptop at home:

A COMPREHENSIVE school teacher has resigned after allegations he accidentally showed pornography to pupils during a lesson.

The unnamed male teacher at Port Talbot’s Sandfields Comprehensive, where millionaire bio- entrepreneur Sir Chris Evans went to school, handed in his resignation yesterday.

School officials were given reports the teacher used his personal laptop computer to show an educational film after school equipment broke down.

But images which were said to have distressed the watching pupils flashed up momentarily instead, before the teacher realised his mistake and switched the computer off.

A number of the class of 11 and 12-year-olds later told their families about what they had seen.

Neath Port Talbot Council education department officials confirmed the teacher was sent home last Friday after complaints from a parent.

An investigation was then launched to find out exactly what happened during the lesson.

But yesterday Neath Port Talbot Council announced the teacher had resigned after talks with education officials.

Families of the pupils, both girls and boys, said their children were “shocked and upset”.

One mother of a pupil at the school said her son told her that the images contained “dirtiness”.

And a grandparent of a pupil, who also asked not to be named added, “My grandson is very distressed by what he saw.

“The police have now got to speak to the pupils. It’s a traumatic experience for a youngster to go through.”

I doubt 12 year old boys were THAT distressed.

A reader in Abu Dhabi has sent in this awesome photo of a Maserati, no less, painted in the Burberry check. Who says the Arabs don't have taste?

Hat tip: E. Hills

I thought I'd watch SS Experiment Love Camp after I read about MPs getting their knickers in a twist. Let me tell you, it's the worst, lowest budget, least offensive film I have ever seen. Apparently, this film kicked off the "video nasty" phenomenon in the 1980s, but more for the promotional posters than the film itself!

The BBFC say "The content of the film is in fact very mild and poorly executed. If anything, it was the title of the film and its original packaging that led to difficulties, rather than the content. The idea of the film may, of course, be offensive to some but that is not a good enough reason to cut or reject it. We would only cut or reject a film for adults if the content was illegal or harmful. "SS Experiment Camp" is neither illegal or harmful, just tasteless."

I wouldn't call it tasteless. It's simply crap.

One of the greats...

I need a double cheeseburger and hold the lettuce
Don't be frontin' son no seeds on a bun
We be up in this drive thru
Order for two
I gots a craving for a number nine like my shoe
We need some chicken up in here
In this dizzle
For rizzle my mizzle
Extra salt on the frizzle
Dr. Pepper my brother
Another for your mother
Double double super size
And don't forget the FRIES...

I'm on the home straight. For those of you who don't know, I spent December working on the Westfield. I'm glad to say I'm tightening the last few screws and am planning on getting it road-worthy by Easter. My latest order of parts turned up yesterday so I've got next weekend reserved to get my hands dirty, for the final time. Just the carburettor to go...

Whoever doubted me?

Please tell me why Lily Allen has a talkshow on BBC Three. I am dumbfounded my TV licence is going into the pocket of someone who is not funny, not informed, whose supposedly outspoken views are shot down in flames under any scrutiny.

I'm with John Humphrys: BBC Three should be shut down and the money put towards new comedy programming for BBC Two and new factual programming for BBC Four (Family Guy should replace the 10 o'clock news).

I only watch three things on TV these days:
- Harry Hill's TV Burp
- Mock the Week
- This Week

Am I missing anything?

I went to see Juno at the cinema last night. It's the first time in years I had to queue just to get into the auditorium. It was a sell out. The film is superb, the writing particularly slick. It manages to hit the sweet spot between all-out comedy and coming of age yarn, without falling for the clichés. Definitely worth a trip to the multiplex.

These Carling adverts are really starting to annoy me. It's the attempt by advertising companies to define the male British drinker: unshaven, drinks in a group of five, untied shoe laces, generally ugly. All probably Manchester United supporters. All very painful.

Some interesting laws:

It is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament

It could be regarded an act of treason to place a postage stamp bearing the British king or queen's image upside-down

Eating mince pies on Christmas Day is banned

In the UK, a pregnant woman can legally relieve herself anywhere she wants

The head of any dead whale found on the British coast automatically becomes the property of the King, and the tail of the Queen

It is illegal not to tell the tax man anything you do not want him to know, but legal not to tell him information you do not mind him knowing

It is illegal to enter the Houses of Parliament wearing a suit of armour

Some bad news: my flight to New York was cancelled this evening. With the chaos of missing the flight last year, I'm starting to think someone's working behind the scenes against me. I'm planning on contacting Virgin Atlantic and claiming maximum compensation. If anyone has any experience of this, please let me know. I'm already mentally drafting a letter: I've missed the Christening of my God daughter, the marriage of my best friend and the proposal I had planned for my girlfriend. All happening in 24 hours in NYC.

Bugger.

The days of hirsuteness are over. In the gradual removal of the facial hair, it worried me that I have the look of Mandelson with a moustache about me.

I'm off to the Big Apple for three days. I only booked flights last week - they were the ridiculous price of £235 (£55 fare, the rest tax!). With the continued weakness of the dollar, I'm planning to pick up some cheap fabrics.

This is a story about a couple who had been happily married for years. The only friction in their marriage was the husband's habit of farting loudly every morning when he awoke. The noise would wake his wife and the smell would make her eyes water and make her gasp for air.

Every morning she would plead with him to stop ripping them off because it was making her sick. He told her he couldn't stop it and that it was perfectly natural. She told him to see a doctor; she was concerned that one day he would blow his guts out.

The years went by and he continued to rip them out! Then one Thanksgiving morning as she was preparing the turkey for dinner and he w as upstairs sound asleep, she looked at the bowl where she had put the turkey innards and neck, gizzard, liver and all the spare parts and a malicious thought came to her.

She took the bowl and went upstairs where her husband was sound asleep and, gently pulling back the bed covers, she pulled back the elastic waistband of his underpants and emptied the bowl of turkey guts into his shorts.

Some time later she heard her husband waken with his usual trumpeting which was followed by a blood curdling scream and the sound of frantic footsteps as he ran into the bathroom. The wife could hardly control herself as she rolled on the floor laughing, tears in her eyes! After years of torture she reckoned she had got him back pretty good.

About twenty minutes later, her husband came downstairs in his bloodstained underpants with a look of horror on his face. She bit her lip as she asked him what was the matter.

He said, "Honey, you were right. All these years you have warned me and I didn't listen to you."

"What do you mean?" asked his wife.

"Well, you always told me that one day I would end up farting my guts out, and today it finally happened. But by the grace of God, some Vaseline and two fingers, I think I got most of them back in."

A radio station in Ireland ran a phone-in competition to find the most embarrassing moment in listener's lives. The final four were:

4th Place

While in line at the bank one afternoon, my toddler decided to release some pent-up energy and started to run amock I was finally able to grab hold of her after receiving looks of disgust and annoyance from other patrons.

I told her that if she didn't start behaving herself right now, she would be punished. To my horror, she looked me in the eye and said in a voice just as threatening, 'if you don't let me go right now, I'll tell Grandma I saw you kissing Daddy's willy last night'.

After this enlightening exchange, the silence was deafening. Even the tellers stopped what they were doing. I mustered the last of my dignity and walked out of the bank, with my daughter in tow. The last thing I heard as the door shut behind me were screams of laughter.

3rd Place

It was the day before my 18th birthday. I was living at home, but my parents had gone out for the evening, so I invited my girlfriend over for a romantic night alone. As we lay in bed after making love, we heard the telephone ringing downstairs. I suggested to my girlfriend that I give her a piggy-back ride down to the phone. Since we didn't want to miss the call we didn't have time to get dressed. When we got to the bottom of the stairs, the lights suddenly came on as a whole crowd of people yelled 'SURPRISE'. My entire family - parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins as well as my friends, were standing there. My girlfriend and I were frozen on the spot in a state of shock and embarrassment for what seemed like an eternity. Since then, no one in my family has planned any surprise parties.

2nd Place

A lady picked up several items at a discount store. When she finally got to the checkout, she learned that one of the items had no price tag. The checkout girl got on the public address system, which boomed out across the store for everyone to hear, 'PRICE CHECK FOR TAMPAX SUPERSIZE'. But it got worse. Someone at the rear of the store apparently misunderstood the word 'Tampax' for 'Thumbtacks', and replied in a business like tone, his voice booming over the same public address system: 'Do you want the kind you push in with your thumb or the kind you belt in with a hammer?'

And the winner is...

This happened at a major Irish University, during a biology lecture. A professor was discussing the high glucose levels found in semen. A young woman raised her hand and asked, 'If I understand you correctly, you are saying there is as much glucose in male semen as in sugar?' The professor responded, 'yes, that's correct', adding some statistical data to his lecture. Raising her hand again, the girl asked, 'Then why doesn't it taste sweet?' After a stunned silence, the whole class burst out laughing.

The poor girl turned bright red, and as she realised exactly what she had inadvertently said, she picked up her books and without another word, walked out of the class. However, as she was heading for the door, the professor's reply was a classic. Totally straight faced, he answered her question: "It doesn't taste sweet because the taste-buds for sweetness are on the tip of your tongue and not in the back of your throat".

I was watching the Superbowl on Sunday night and remembered that even the Yanks aren't immune...

Here's to blogging in 2008!

Another reason why I don't fly Ryanair any longer:

Ryanair has slammed up the charges for booking, making its 'free flights' even less free! If you check in online and take no carry-on baggage there are no costs. Yet if you want carry-on baggage you'll need to check in costing £3 (was £2), and then it's £6 (was £5) per pre-organised bag and £12 (was £10) for additional bags. Plus now you pay £3 (was £2) to pay by credit card, £1 by debit card (was 70p) and £1 for Visa Electron (was free).

Many congratulations to my famous Canadian actor friend, George, and his beautiful girlfriend, Charlotte, who have just announced their intention to marry.

Some of the latest entries for the Oxo Tower.

When my boyfriend told me he wanted to take me up the Oxo Tower for my birthday, I was a bit hesitant at first because I didn't really think it was my scene. How wrong I was! I mean, yeah, so it's a bit of a strain on the old back pocket, and I admit I did feel a bit uncomfortable initially. But a couple of cocktails helped me relax and soon I was really getting into it - we carried on well into the night. It was a great experience and I really loved it - so much so that I won't let my boyfriend take me anywhere else now! So if anyone ever wants to take you up the Oxo Tower, just throw caution to the wind and go for it!

Rachel

I agree with Rachel - Last Friday evening I tried to take my girlfriend up the Oxo Tower but unfortunately we found it was completely full, so despite our best efforts, we just couldn't get in. I even greased the odd palm in the hope of slipping in without too much of a fuss, but I didn't want to push it. .

The next weekend we planned ahead and I have to say, the whole thing was much smoother. Of course, it was still a bit of a tight squeeze, but we took our time, didn't rush in, and to my delight, we got inside.

One piece of advice: if you've never been there before, you might be a bit put off by the surroundings - sometimes you might find a few rather unattractive-looking hangers-on near the entrance but my advice is just keep your eyes firmly on the front door and before you know it, you'll be safe inside.

So go on - give it a try. Maybe it's not for everyone, but I know we'll be going back as often as we can.

Jason

Summer 2008 is lining up to be a little different. I'm off on a train ride across Alaska, from Fairbanks in the north to Anchorage in the south. I'm expecting spectacular scenery, a little snow and a splattering of train-spotting.

Watched The Good, The Bad and The Ugly over the weekend. My Lord, what a good film. The soundtrack and cinematography are second to none. I urge you to watch it today.