"Allow to stand for fifteen minutes or until bludgeoned to death."

Quite simply, the blog post of the week.

Boyle or Boiler?

I don't especially care about the X Factor, and I never see the Saturday show anyway as it's strictly Strictly in this household. However, I watch the results show on Sundays, so I reckon I get a decent deal - all the egotistical bollocks from the judges without any of the weekly crucifixion of great songs.


I saw Susan Boyle perform on Sunday night (and, thanks to JM's marvellous weekly review, established that she didn't really) and enjoyed it. The material she's doing is very easy listening, of course, and as well as the new single, her album also contains a version of Madonna's You'll See, which I heard on Radio 2 the other day.

I would have loved to have been inside the brain of Dannii Minogue or Cheryl Cole as they watched this performance. Yes, those two have looks, youth and got lucky early etc - but they must know that despite all their riches, successes, hunky conquests, profile triumphs and the like, that they simply have absolutely nothing in comparison to a frumpy, bashful, untouched woman who kept her talent and ambition hidden until her dying mother instructed her to try to get noticed.

We've all heard the usual showbiz mantras about how image and looks and style matter too much in the music business. Here's the proof. It's pejorative and too simple to call Susan Boyle ugly, but frankly, she is no beauty. And yet her voice projects more light and drama and grace and theatre than any younger, thinner contemporary whose audience she now seems to be chasing. Could this amazing battle of talent over image really change the music business as we currently see it?

Look at Dannii Minogue. She got a record deal because a) she was in an Australian soap; b) she looked good when she was 19; and c) her big sister was already a proven pop star on little discernible talent and there were currency signs in some executive's eyes when the next Minogue rolled off the production line. There was no sign of a d) suggesting that she was a good singer. Listen to her debut hit Love And Kisses, if you dare. And even when she did break into the charts with that hideous record, she never got even close to Kylie's stranglehold and had, all told, a very ordinary pop career.

As for Cheryl, well she came through a reality show to make Girls Aloud and I do find that group entertaining, as well as easy on the eye. But that bum note she hit at last year's Brits will haunt her for life - and now she's telling unknowns how to sing and perform.

Three things have gained her individual status from the rest of her group; her court case, her marriage to a footballer and her role on the X Factor. None of the things have made her essentially the Chief Girl of Girls Aloud have anything to do with her ability. She could have released a fart and it would have gone to number one in the charts (and judging by the blandness of the record, hasn't strayed far from that notion) but that song has got to number one not because of artistic excellence, but of the personality and image behind it.

Cheryl Cole and Dannii Minogue are professional singers who didn't hit any branches on the way down from the tree. However, would they rather have the best looks, as they do, or the best voice, as Susan Boyle does? Even though it's a singing business, as Dannii herself likes to say when deciding who to keep in the show, I bet I know how both would answer.

"Hope your room is to your liking..."

Facebook has got me in touch with a few old college pals lately and, being the nostalgist I am, subsequently had me thinking about my solitary year of education away from home.

I didn't go to university. After passing my A-levels, despite the best efforts of my head of sixth form to force me to fail, I went to Darlington College of Technology to train as a journalist. The course felt quite exclusive as it was the only direct training course available at the time and gave you recognised trainee status after a year of study if you passed your exams at the end.

So, upon acceptance on to this course, I received from the college a list of available accommodation premises in the Darlington patch, some within easy walking distance of the college, some a bus or bike ride away. I opted to stay in a guest house rather than take on student digs; I figured that this would make me a little more disciplined in getting the right things done on the course as stuff like housework and meals were done for me.

The guest house was run by a Scottish family and had a smattering of students, but it was mainly made up of doleites and long-term pensioner residents, plus the usual array of shift workers and overnighters. The pensioners were an interesting bunch; all men, all widowers, all somehow affected by their working lives to the extent that they couldn't cope with the idea of living alone and so, upon the loss of their wives, moved into a guest house.

As a teenage student who knew bugger all, their stories would be most enlightening but often they were told second hand, as they didn't seem to trust any of the younger people who shared the dining area with them. One chap was called Rudi, a German prisoner of war who stayed in England afterwards and built a family life here. A second chap was as introverted as any person I've ever met in my life, apparently suffering from lifelong traumas caused by what he observed and endured in the Korean conflict. Yet though I was able to smalltalk with them, they didn't choose to tell any stories. The landlady was, instead, the relayer of this fascinating information. As a trainee hack there were potential interviews there but it was impossible to know where to begin.

Three doleites stayed at this guest house too. One was called Craig, a chap who was pleasant on the outside but, as it turned out, was a bail dodger who was facing charges of obtaining money by deception; essentially this involved vulnerable pensioners and non-existent conservatories. When he left the guest house in a hurry, he owed me £35, which was a lot for a student on what the dreaded Humberside County Council considered a worthwhile grant. He nicked more than £200 from one of the other doleites, a simple but likeable local boy called Keith, who spent his money on records. Weeks after I moved out, I later learned he had been fooled into lending his record collection to someone who promptly flogged the lot and disappeared. There were some vile people in Darlington in 1992...

The third doleite was called Alan, who was a temporary resident who had injunctions against him as he battled his way through a horrific divorce. I remember once he went out to visit his wife, all smartly suited and booted, and came back with a nosebleed and black eye after an encounter with her new bloke. He and I talked about all sorts but mainly football and music, and only disagreed once when I was watching the Conservative Party conference on the communal television and he came in to switch over for the horse racing. I lost the row.

I do wonder what happened to each of these people. I would suppose that none of the old chaps are with us any more. I hope Craig got caught, punished and rehabilitated but I also hope Keith and Alan are doing okay. In the end, a lack of stimulating conversation and a need to fend more for myself took over, and I moved out after one term and took a room in a house where two other chaps from my course lived. Aside from a mad, drunken Welsh building student in the room downstairs occasionally smashing the place up, it was a decent six months there and I was able to combine studying with partying to good effect, and could make a killer pasta 'n' sauce for four.

Looking back, I should have done that from the start though when I think back, I was the same as most of the other 18 year old school leavers on the course (there were five of us; the rest were graduates or mature students) as I chose to live in a place where help was at hand. Two of the other school leavers did likewise, although they lodged with families instead of taking a room in a guest house. The other two school leavers were already local to the area and so stayed at home.

To be honest, I'm not sure what the point is to telling you all this. I suppose I should find one. Well, I'm twice the age now as I was in Darlington and yet the year I spent there remains very influential on how I've lived ever since. Leaving home for the first time and seeing how other people live strengthens you and enlightens you, and as I didn't immediately get a job in newspapers upon finishing the course, it was a little bit of a culture shock when I had to go back to my parents' house again, aged 19, with a professional qualification and desperate to experience real adult life. A year later I found work, moved out and never went back.

Right now, there are people I went to school with who, for varying reasons of misfortune, are still living with their parents. I don't pity them at all, but I also don't envy them. To have your own space, be it a dingy room in a guest house or a decent home of your own via a mortgage, is totally invaluable.

I want to know about your student digs, and your first home after shuffling free of the apron strings.

"It's wrong to wish on space hardware..."

A New England by Kirsty MacColl. A glorious, joyous cover of one of Billy Bragg's more interpretable tunes that I rushed out and bought as soon as I heard it (and as soon as I'd saved enough money).

I had little knowledge of Kirsty MacColl before this song. Upon later hearing There's A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis I realised who it was, but the song itself passed me by when it was in the charts. The only time I'd read or heard her name before this 1985 release was in the songwriting credit for They Don't Know by Tracey Ullman in the sleevenotes for the original Now! album. Her backing vocals on that huge version of her song suddenly went from anonymous to obvious.

MacColl always struck me as someone who probably wrote and recorded loads of stuff but probably only released a quarter of it, given that she was notoriously uncomfortable with fame and especially of singing live, despite being evidently very good at it. Maybe this was why she did so many co-vocal or secondary vocals on people's material, as it gave her the security of knowing she wasn't on her own if she ended up onstage with the band. I don't know, and I can't recall her ever being asked about it, but it's a theory...

The video of A New England sees our heroine wandering around a snowy scene in various millinery items while mouthing the song to camera, amidst sideways shots of big wheels and helicopters and children at play. Timing was everything here, as demonstrated by MacColl's word-by-word revelation of her expanding stomach as she approached the line "you put me on the Pill" - and made it obvious that she was very pregnant indeed. In fact, upon introducing the video on Top Of The Pops, Gary Davies even offered a message through the camera to the lady herself ("Good luck with the baby, Kirsty!") thereby ruining the gag. Mind you, I was 11 years old and only vaguely knew what the Pill was...

The lyric had to be re-gendered from its original male-to-female theme, so while Bragg was an active persuader of contraceptive use in his version, MacColl had to be the passive recipient in hers. In the chorus, Bragg was looking for another girl, whereas MacColl was asking the man of mystery if that was his intention. Etc. It was clever stuff, aided by the kitchen sink simplicity of the lyrics. Re-gendered songs don't always scan so well, though the re-doers of Cher's version of Walking In Memphis did a top job when rebranding Muriel the pianist as a man called Gabriel.

Smash Hits caused a stink and some confusion upon the printing of the lyrics, as there were errors everywhere. "You put me on the Pill" was actually typoed as "You puy mr on the Pill", in perhaps the most memorable of the anomalies. One person wrote to Black Type next issue and asked if the magazine had "started employing dyslexics". Such a caring generation of pop fans in the 1980s, we were...

And my mum, who can raise eyebrows of ire as well as any protective woman of her generation, did not approve at all when she heard MacColl singing "But that was bloody yesterday". Tame now, but "bloody" was a taboo word for children in front of their parents during this period, as were words like "crap" and "fart", as well as the more obvious ones. To have such a word in a song lyric was tantamount to pop stars encouraging kids to stab their eyes until they bleed, but I was allowed to keep the record, on the reasonable understanding that it would be heard on the radio before long anyway. I should point out that a few weeks earlier my parents had bought Bachelor Boys, the spin-off book by the Young Ones, for my brother and I to share at Christmas, only to then return it to the shop after reading it and deciding in mild disgust that it wasn't for their delicate sons. I've still never read it to this day. Bah.

After an unusual appearance by a pubescent gospel choir in sunglasses, we get the third verse of A New England. This was written for MacColl's version by Bragg in order to prolong the song to a reasonable length for a single release. I absolutely love, to this day, the line "When at last it didn't ring I knew it wasn't you", summing up the desperation the wronged half feels after a break-up and the slight hope they maintain that some reconciliation is possible. The image of MacColl sitting on the stairs waiting for the phone to ring (everyone's phone was at the bottom of the stairs back then) was immediately in my mind when I heard the lyric back then and still appears today. Naturally, like all performers in the 1980s, the word "telephone" in song is illustrated by the singer extending thumb and little finger next to ear. By the closing chorus fade, she seems happy in her tartan trousers and trilby, doing aeroplane impressions with a smile on her face.

A New England was produced by MacColl's husband Steve Lillywhite and entered the Top 40 at the end of January 1985 and peaked at No.7 a month later, with no album to follow. MacColl concentrated on the family stuff for the rest of the decade, not emerging as a solo chart star again until her version of Days four years later. However, she did the backing on Ask by the Smiths and a certain co-vocal with the Pogues in that time, and then helped tune up Shaun Ryder when the Happy Mondays churned out Hallelujah at the end of the 1980s.

Electric Landlady was fantastic, with My Affair still a regular player on my iPod and Walking Down Madison probably coming close to the record for the most people ever to appear on one Top Of The Pops stage. She did her usual harmonising shtick the same year on hits for Bragg and the Wonderstuff. Her love of Cuban music then took hold of the rest of her career.

Kate Nash and Katie Melua have taken her place on performances of her most famous recordings, including A New England, in recent years following MacColl's death. Although it's almost exclusively her collaboration with the Pogues that keeps her name alive with the wider public, it's A New England that I best remember her for. I've never quite understood what sort of strange ideas one can get in one's jeans, though...

"I feel I've let Ian down... *blub blub blub*"

Here's a foolproof way for Chris Hollins, my favourite competitor on Strictly Come Dancing, to get to the final.

Feign an ankle injury. You'll get a bye to the next phase, then the next, then the ... etc until the final itself. After Jade Johnson's injury at the weekend, it appears that it is now possible to survive a further week without actually doing any dancing.

That really doesn't wash, does it? Her injury was genuine, of course, but injury usually means game over. Had she been taking part in a long jump competition and suddenly done her knee in, she wouldn't have expected a bye to the next round while an able (ie, abler) competitor was eliminated.

More baffling was the public's decision to save Laila Bouass, who only managed half a dance with a bad ankle and ended up being dragged and carried around the floor by her partner Anton du Beke while she bawled her eyes out. Inevitably she was in the bottom two after the judges had scored "on what we saw", and with some heart-sinking predictability, the GBP fell for for the "plucky trier" card and made her stay. Phil Tufnell, who danced really well, ended up exiting despite being a) able to dance; and b) not bursting into tears and saying it was all so unfair. I reckon a decent lawyer could make a "loss of earnings" case for him, given that he left while dancing, while someone else stayed without dancing.

The two injured women should both now be out of the competition; moreover, they should have offered to exit the competition. It would have ruled out a phone vote and robbed the BBC of plenty of wonga of course, but that shouldn't have been an issue.

Chris is my favourite and either he or Natalie Cassidy will win if the personality issue comes through strongest; otherwise, it's the skilful but charisma-free Hollyoaks bloke.

Oh, and I love Ronnie Corbett, but please don't ask him to do anything like that ever again. The poor chap was embarrassing. However, Claudia Winkleman was and is completely loopy, and so brilliant for it. The show only actually missed Bruce Forsyth and his gigantic ego because they didn't adequately replace him, not because he was absent per se. Sort out a decent stand-in for his next bout of lurgy and maybe the time will arrive to ask him to step down.

New year, new decade, new beginning

I shall be starting a new job in January. Yay!

"How the intercourse are you? Where the intercourse are you?"

It's Alex and I, across a corner table at a bar called Scrooge's in Blackpool, where we and our regular group of compadres met for the latest Nerd Night.

I've never had a night out in Blackpool before. I've been five times in the past; four times for football matches, and in those instances it's always a case of park up, find the pub, go to the game, watch it and - invariably in my case - leave as quickly as possible after an inept defeat. The other time was for a photo session.

So it would be a new experience for me as I hopped off the teatime train that took me into the town and dragged my sorry self through the biting November gales to the Travelodge where most of us would be staying. A few phone calls were exchanged as we established where we all were.

Now poor Charles Nove, of Radio 2 and the esteemed deputy voice of the balls, had a dilemma. He had chosen to drive up from London but discovered upon arrival at the nearest car park to the hotel (which didn't have its own parking facilities) that it would cost £13 for an overnight stay. Fine, except it didn't accept a) credit cards; b) notes; and c) £2 coins. This meant he had to have £13 in pound coins and lower denominations, something which you only have in Blackpool after a few hours in one of the amusement arcades.

Eventually, a loose plan was hatched to meet in the hotel bar at 6pm for a few warm ales (Travelodge fridges never, ever work) prior to another pub and then our restaurant booking. Suitably refreshed and suited, I was just reaching for the door handle to exit my room when I heard this astonishing groaning noise from the corridor.

Briefly, I paused. I don't know why - it may have been that I was about to walk in on some hotel spook (which was unlikely because Hallowe'en was a week earlier, the hotel was too new to be haunted - oh, and because ghosts don't exist) and shivered a little. Then I regathered my sanity and opened the door, just as another large groan - and this time I established it was female - sounded.

Very quickly, as the groans increased in speed and volume it soon dawned on me what was going on. In the room almost directly opposite, a woman was privately pleasuring herself but a combination of her obvious skill and the criminal thinness of the walls meant her shrieks of enjoyment could be heard down the whole bloody corridor. I was not perving in the slightest; I had no choice but to hear (note: I heard, not listened - thanks) as I walked past her room and even as I went through the exit door and called the lift to my floor the noise continued. I swear I heard one last groan as the lift door closed and I began to head down to reception. The recorded voice saying "stand well back" seemed quite appropriate.

Anyway, I made it to the bar, took a lukewarm ale to the table and one by one the other chaps arrived. I related this story to each, and wondered how on earth we were going to top that in Blackpool, having not even left our chain hotel. Fortunately, while carnal exclamations of invisible people were not audible at any other stage of our evening out, we did have a lot of fun.

Regular readers of this blog (I know, a contradiction) will know what goes on at these evenings. A bunch of us meet up, drink, eat, drink some more and chew the fat about the radio industry, swapping anecdotes and stories and exchanging the sort of gossip that could trouble the Official Secrets Act.

In our first pub, the nerdishness of the occasion was quickly established by my pal Martin, who had uncovered, edited and saved some of Charles' past audio as a presenter of Radio 2's nightshifts back in the day when records were played on a horned contraption that had dogs peering down them. These clips were stored on his phone, complete with jingles and stabs, with only the music removed. Charles listened intently, quickly identifying the makers of the jingle package. This sort of stuff thrills radio professionals and quickly bores everyone else. I therefore shall move on.

On to the restaurant we went, which was a traditional English place and absolutely superb. They looked after us really well and the food was exquisite. We seemed to stay there quite a while, allowing the two waitresses to lean on the bar and laugh along at some of the tales told by especially Alex and Charles, the two more grizzled pros among us. The tale of the (very well known but not massively bright) presenter who went to the lavatory during a commercial break, forgot he was on air and got in his car and drove home had us in hysterics for quite some time. Usually with on-air mishaps most jocks can say "we've all done it"; however, I can categorically claim not to have ever forgotten I was doing a radio programme after that programme had started.

As we exited the restaurant, the waitresses' local knowledge helped us to our next bar, the aforementioned Scrooge's (the directions were "across the road, past the knocking shop and it's round the corner", which I doubt you'd get from Tourist Information). The alleged knocking shop was obvious as there were lights of a certain colour gleaming through the half-closed blinds (and a flourescent sign saying 'OPEN' which I thought was a bit of a giveaway), and we duly made our way past said house of questionable repute and happened upon our next bar.

This was a country-themed pub with black T-shirted bar staff and I loved it. It was exactly what we needed, as our combined age and wish to converse fairly normally with one another meant we didn't want to go somewhere with loud music. The stories continued to spill out and the ale continued to flow. As the Bellamy Brothers played on the speakers, we continued to relate and digest our tales of the industry before realising we were last ones there, with the music long stopped and last orders long called. We hope if you were a patron of Scrooge's that evening that we didn't bore you too much.

On to the Ché Bar, which adjoined our hotel. Simon Hirst had previously acquired us free entry to this place as he is mates with the owner, both from Barnsley. However, this piece of information didn't seem to have been handed to the fantastically bored girl at the pay desk who, after five minutes of spoon-fed information from the patient Hirsty, claimed she didn't know who her manager was nor who the big boss of the whole chain was, or indeed where her arse was in relation to her elbow. The doorman, evidently someone who had despaired of this colleague of his on endless occasions, took pity on us and shouted "Oh, just go in!"

But we didn't stay. It was loud, the floor was horribly sticky and the atmosphere didn't quite feel right. Mr Brightside by the Killers does sound fantastic in big speakers though. We wandered round this front bit, wandered into the back bit (The Key, The Secret by Urban Cookie Collective) and then wandered out again, carefully choosing an alternative door so the disinterested girl and the benevolent doorman didn't see us exit a mere minute and a half after finally persuading ourselves in.

There wasn't much after that, so it was a return to the hotel bar and more tales. I retired to bed after about an hour and can report that the corridor was blissfully silent when I emerged from the lift and headed, weary and drunken, towards my room. However, I had been given a room right above the Ché Bar smoking shelter, meaning there was still much noise to be had directly outside my room but far less appetising than previously, given that it consisted mainly of swearing and drunken giggling. Some of us are older and need sleep, goddamit!

It was a top night, as confirmed by all when we met for breakfast the next morning at various stages of the bleary-eyed, sore-bonced recovery period. I was on my train out of Blackpool by 10.45am. If you were in Room 326 of that Travelodge, congratulations on your achievement.

Brighton next. Heaven only knows what awaits us...

Ted

It's a big day today. My father in law, Ted, celebrates his 90th birthday. It's a fabulous milestone, but it is made all the more remarkable by the fact that he has been in hospital for more than a fortnight after suffering a stroke.

When a man of such advanced years has a stroke, you prepare for the worst. Indeed, we were told to do just that a few days after he was admitted to hospital. Yet almost from the moment the doctors told us he might not last another 48 hours, he has got a little stronger and a little better and so today his big day has come.

Ted, who already has Parkinson's, caught pneumonia once he was in hospital but has already fought it off with the aid of atomically-strong antibiotics. He has regained the feeling he lost in his left side and, although sometimes semi-conscious or confused, has managed a few conversations which included airing his wish for fish and chips on his 90th birthday, proving to us that he knew who he was and roughly where the calendar was at.

It's little short of miraculous that he has fought his way to this day of all days, ready for his family of four generations to make a fuss of him (though he won't get fish and chips just yet). However, I had a hunch he might see his birthday, despite the initial prognosis. Medical knowledge I don't have, but knowledge of this man I do.

He had not had a day of illness in his life, and therefore boasted a fully paid-up immune system to call upon for when adversity finally hit. He is a tall, heavily-built, strong old widower, rugged and handsome with a glint in his eye and, until recently, a happy capacity for long walks and the occasional drive.

He's not out of the woods yet and we don't know what sort of long term issues will come from this stroke. But that's for later. Right now, we're celebrating a 90th birthday that a few days ago looked like it wasn't going to come. I raise a glass your way today, Ted.

"If God hadn't meant us to eat animals, he wouldn't have made them meat-flavoured..."

There's a Bob Monkhouse joke about vegetarians in the Bible, who had there been any, would have "killed the fatted cabbage", thereby re-influencing all Christian dietary habits thereafter.

The very carnivorous Kevin Day once asked the Loose Talk audience if there were any vegetarians among them, only to add "yeah there is, but they're not strong enough to put their hands up".

Jeremy Clarkson went on Room 101 to bemoan "vegatablists" who expect you to cook an entirely separate meal for them when you have the grace to invite them to a dinner party, before expounding on a comically rational theory that the only way to preserve all animal species, endangered or otherwise, was to eat them.

Soap operas have mentioned it, in passing. The only episode of Brookside I ever watched involved a siege (about 1986?) during which one of the hostages was a committed vegetarian, but ended up scoffing meat as she was starving and it was all that was on offer. Maxine and Ashley briefly became vegetarian in Coronation Street, much to the chagrin of Fred Elliott, master butcher of Weatherfield. And Harold Bishop was a vegetarian in Neighbours, despite accidentally once eating meat in a stew he began to cook but then left to Eileen Clarke, who added ham to it without telling him.

Yes, vegetarianism is both a serious issue and the butt of many jokes, mainly at the expense of those who practise a herbivorous lifestyle. But yesterday, for the first time ever, I learned of someone who had given up many years of flesh-free diets and returned to meat consumption.

And it kind of knocked me sideways, genuinely so. Vegetarians don't do that, do they? Whether their commitment to such a lifestyle is through principle or just what their palette prefers, I assumed it was a case of once a veggie, always a veggie. Yet I suppose that a quiet commitment to vegetarianism, as opposed to a Hynde-esque political struggle against farmers and their customers, is as susceptible to change as any other lifestyle habit, such as drinking and smoking.

I am an animal lover but have rarely considered vegetarianism. I think it's more than possible to be both pro-animal and pro-meat. The food chain is nature, and we're merely at the helm. I like roast beef, bolognese sauce and bacon sandwiches (not on the same plate, although then again I've never tried that...) way too much to ponder giving them up. I don't like lamb at all, am so-so with pork and can do without most poultry, though the turkey at Christmas always goes down well. My taste in meat is limited but it does exist.

There are the meat substitutes of course. I remember Sissy Rooney got chucked out of the Big Brother house because, among other things, she was a vegetarian who - and this is the killer - also didn't eat Quorn. So the grocery budget had to have a vast percentage of it thrown to one side to satisfy one solitary person's medically-unrelated dietary needs and as there were still ten people in the house and money was tight, she had to go.

But while I can understand meat substitutes, I can't understand the need to make products that resemble meat in looks as well as taste. Vegetarian burgers, for example. Why make burgers? Why not just eat the vegetables? Is it about keeping up with everyone else? If so, what happened to all the revolutionary principles that go with not eating meat? "I don't eat meat, but, well, I want to look like I do..."

Then there are the half-committed vegetarians, like those who eat poultry only. They call themselves "vegetarians, except for chicken". That makes me a teetotaller, except for Guinness and the odd bottled lager on warmer days. Nonsense.

Howard Jones, my childhood hero, was such an extremist in vegetarian issues that he tried to get the family dog and cat to eat meat-free pet food. Only the dog conformed. As everyone knows, dogs eat what you give them and cats eat what they like.

My "lapsed" ex-vegetarian friend, whom I won't name in case he has militant pals who will call him a traitor and smear his windscreen with deer's blood after reading this, says he had "few, if any, principles behind it" and so regarded it as "pointless" and re-invested in steak knives, a George Foreman grill and a tenderiser. Maybe he sees it as a growing up exercise, which is harsh on him as he is already at the highest of maturity levels (except when ratted).

But either way, despite all the vegetarians I've known (and I'm related to one, shared houses with at least two others, used to go out with one, and can think of half a dozen more whom I've known or worked with), he is the first I've ever heard of who has happily ditched the lifestyle and reverted back to how God (through his messenger Fred) apparently intended. I suspect there aren't many like him.

"The next voice you hear will be your mum's..."

I was watching the football tonight and, upon the shrill of the half time whistle, did a spot of channel-hopping. I happened upon Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? on ITV1, a programme that was once discussed round every watercooler in the country.

Like, I suspect, many more people, I haven't watched Millionaire? for years. Yet within seconds of finding it here I stayed tuned in as Chris Tarrant mentioned that the middle-aged lady in the hotseat was from Brough. If you've ever driven or travelled by train to Hull from the west or south then you'll always go through Brough. Nice place.

So, with a slightly tenuous local interest, I eschewed the restart in the Champions League and stuck with the last 25 minutes or so of Millionaire? as this lady blundered and quipped and twittered (in the traditional sense; modern day twittering would be regarded as cheating, I fear) her way through questions she didn't know the answer to but, by hook or by crook, managed to get right nonetheless, eventually reaching £75,000 before a question about the first ever House of Lords speaker finally dried up her luck and she ran back towards the A63 with the cheque.

Do you remember just how massive Millionaire? was when it first arrived on our screens? It was ten years and more ago. It is the simplest of formats - Chris Evans describes it in his (very good) book as the best format for a TV show he has ever seen - and it just seems so odd that the finest creators of TV concepts never came up with something similar in all the years of gameshows that preceded it.

It was high noon, with the contestant sweating and worrying while Tarrant offered a mixture of concerned assistance and clownish goofing in order to fulfil his brief of reassuring the competitor while entertaining the audience. The music was brilliantly dramatic, a mixture of stabs and underscores that could be fired off the playout systems whenever the situation demanded it. The tension sometimes was unbearable, especially if you were yelling the answer at the television while someone in the studio was deliberating, a mixture of bewilderment and self-doubt.

I remember one woman going over the answers to a question over and over again and eventually blurting out in all her desperation: "Oh Chris, I don't know what to do!" You felt for her. You also wanted to reach through the screen and offer a hug to the woman who, upon reaching the £8,000 mark, looked at the gurning multi-millionaire Tarrant and explained, coldly and matter-of-factly, that as a nurse and single mum this was already a sum that would transform her life.

There was the controversy over Judith Keppel, a woman as unlikely an applicant for an ITV quiz show as you could find (though the money on offer does dispense with principles; you couldn't imagine Judith doing Pass The Buck or Keynotes, really) as she was, as Ian Hislop put it, "a rather agreeable woman who lives in Fulham". For a good while questions were asked about whether she was planted as the first millionaire of the show because of the clash with the final episode of One Foot In The Grave on the other side. Given her wretched performances on Eggheads, she was either a set-up or just fantastically lucky. A sport question on £2,000 would have sent her home early.

The major and his wife, and the terrifically-named Tecwen Whittock, all conspiring to get an evidently unintelligent man all the way to the million. The bloke who struggled and spluttered and agonised his way through to half a million and then didn't know where Chester-le-Street was. The guy who changed his mind a thousand times about the occupation of Tom Cruise's Jerry Maguire, before finally choosing the right answer.

And the tricks were soon learned. Don't use Ask The Audience after around £4,000 as you'll get a mega split, as too many simply won't know. Don't say out loud what your suspicions are before taking 50/50, as the computer will always "randomly" leave you with the two answers you were most attracted to. Don't be afraid to take your time - the also-rans on contestants' row, despite being desperate to try another Fastest Finger First, would do the same were it they in the chair.

I didn't know, such was the length of time since I last saw it, that the prize money ladder had been altered and now a thousand quid was achievable - and guaranteed - within two questions. A bit late to comment on this, I suspect, but the one thing Millionaire? lacked was the facility to make it dramatic from the beginning. The questions leading up to a grand were kindergarten standard, with only the odd dense contestant falling victim, and it became a slightly pointless watch.

For all the drama of the Brough lady, I don't know if and when I'll watch it again. I hung around because of where she was from and then quickly began rooting for her big time because she managed to put on a show for the crowd while working through the questions. And there was real drama in her decision to choose Frog as an answer as soon as a question )"What kind of creature is a treecreeper?") came up, double checked with her son on the phone, and trusted his call when he said Bird. He was right, and he won his mum £50,000 in being so. Good on them all, though it's not as if Brough isn't already full of residents with that sort of cash - half of Hull City's first team squad lives round that way.