If you are wondering why letters you may have written to Homer, the wandering Greek, were never replied to, it’s because academics suggest the island believed to be the mythical Ithaca. is not where people had originally thought.  I am one such wr

Wrestling is back on the TV – live from a hotel in Brighton.  Yesterday’s big match features Jack “The Undertaker” Straw, Walter “The Wolf” Wolfgang” and twelve referees, all called Big Reg - with over three billion community service h

Junk food (that’s not what you get in restaurants on Chinese boats) is to be banned from schools next September.  I have three words for Ruth Kelly (didn’t she score Arsenal’s equaliser in the 70/71 FA Cup Final?) – typhoid; semolina; caterp

Following on, albeit over forty years later from Ich bin ein Berliner, we are starting to conjugate (there’s a word which will appear a lot in the forthcoming Channel 4 adult season) the verb sein – to be - with the phrase, Du bist Deutschland. 

…and they didn’t live happily ever after, if Channel 4 have their way.  C4 is to introduce interactive TV where you, the viewer, decide the ending of specific programmes.  This is going to start with a series set within tower blocks in south Lo

<span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Men beware!  That woman in your office c

“Oh, Pluto!” as Mickey Mouse might have said, but if the International Astronomical Union have their way, Mickey will be saying “Oh, 2003UB313!” because they are contemplating downgrading Pluto from a planet to just a simple mass of ice and r

I was talking to my computer earlier today (first sign of madness, second sign is looking for hairs on the back of your microchip) asking it if it were disappointed not to have won the 2005 Loebner Prize, a prize given to computers who can hold the m

Art detectives – they too wear plain clothes, but also don berets and are covered in specks of paint – have finished a four-year long project and discovered hidden depths to Da Vinci’s Adoration of the Magi.  Just when you expected Dan Brown t

<span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">“When giant raspberries walked the eart

Even presidents need the toilet.  I know this because the president of the Epsom and Ewell Public Amenities committee (of which I am the secretary, because there’s never a shortage of paper) has no problem with water retention and the very mention

Scotland Yard are investigating bread which has had glass and knitting needles put into it.  They say this is sabotage but I think it could be any number of other things.  Careless packing (good George Michael song) is one.  The people working in

Quarter to four I was up today to fill my Ford Anglia up with leaded two-star petrol.  I subsequently joined a queue of at least fifteen other cars who, like me, were making sure they had enough fuel to drive them to the Scottish Highlands where Gor

Today my gran will be taken ill (not hard seeing she’d be 105 if she and her lack of teeth were still with us), I have to suddenly do one of my children’s paper-rounds and I have an emergency optician’s appointment in Kennington at 10.30.  Wil

The sign proclaiming the street name, “Hitler’s Walk” is to be taken down in the Cornish village of Megavissey.  At last night’s meeting at the Genghis Khan Memorial Hall in Epsom we were discussing possible new street names for the new Kray

It’s like déjà vu all over again, I thought as I perused the Times crossword this morning.  But, approaching 50 (just a matter of time before I start acting it) this type of stimulation keeps you young (other types of stimulation can get a midni

<span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">“Get orf awt of it!” would be the fri

The nation’s favourite painting is not that green woman, the big swan with the naked couple or the laughing cavalier, but Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire.  As we rapidly approach the anniversary of the battle of Trafalgar (I was glad when the pi

Travellers on Midland Mainline are to be told of places of interest en route to their destinations.  Many of the places, unless you have X-ray vision (and even if you go to SpecSavers this is unlikely), cannot be seen or simply no longer exist.  My

I stay in hotels regularly as my football team, for which I have season ticket, FC Bayern München, are not in my country of residence.  One of the reasons I never dip into the heavily stocked hotel mini-bars is that there is the inherent danger of

How disappointed was I, after buying several 49p DVD players from Argos at the weekend, to find they had been wrongly priced.  I worked in a hospital shop for several years and once that machine starts spitting out little tags with the prices on, it