Dermot Morgan cooler than Mrs Doyle's cucumber sandwiches died 9 years ago prematurely from a heart attack. Dermot Morgan played the part of Father Ted. The silver-haired, foxy, Father who was banished to Craggy Island for allowing a large sum of money to snooze in his account, along with the cretinous Father Dougal and the sot Father Jack.

On a remote island celebrations were in full swing to commemorate Father Ted. Smoking, drinking and cake eating abounded and "feck, arse and big gurls bras" were the copious catchphrases throughout the festivities. The local garda, however, were on standby. It's not the drinking that would cause too much of a problem but an early depletion of booze that would start the fighting.

"Woz you playin' a bum note there Paddy?"

I'm so vexed.

Why is the Champions league (or Tetley brewers yeast premiership or whatever) NOT on terrestial TV?

Why?

In particular the Barcelona v Liverpool match TONIGHT!!!!

We pay enough in TV licence fees (well I don't but somebody must do)

Instead I've had to go searching for Radio 5 live (on the internet). Oh the shame of it.

And then.....when I did click on the match Barcelona were leading 1 bastard nil!!!

Lummy, cripes, somebody has been given a yellow card but I can't read/hear/see who it is.

THIS PAGE REFRESHES WHEN I CAN BE ARSED; LIVERPOOL NOW HAVE 2 YELLOW CARDS AND THE SCORE AT TIME OF GOING TO BLOG IS: 1 ALL

And finally, after Bellamy and Riise goals, it's goodnight from me and goodnight from Liverpool - BANG! SOCKO! (Cartoon sounds of ball hitting back of net)

Buenos nachos/naches/(indiffernt shrug) Barca!

In other indepth soccer news: I wonder what Sulky Mourinho will have to say to his lads now......

The following contains scenes of a sexual nature, bad language and drug taking from the start........And so on to:

Would you buy an ice cream from this man?

It's our Frank!

Residents of the Chatsworth Estate would together with M&MS and Smarties too!

What we need around our parts is a local Frank Gallagher serving ice creams and what-not from the serving hatch of a van to the melodious strains of Nat King Cole's "It's a wonderful world" (and I think to myself).....

Yay! It's Tuesday. And it's a double scoop of Shameless.

Well actually I feel like being sick on it. My tiled white floor. It's 'im. Russell Brand. I know it was lampoon Russell week just before "The Shits" on Wednesday but I'm always keen to jump onto the Brandwagon later than everyone else.

Russell Brand - I mean he doesn't even suit tight blackpudding leggings and winkle pickers anyway. Maybelline mascara looks better on Robert Smith from the Cure and posturing was always done far better by Jarvis Cocker.

And that bleeding affectation in that faux Dickensian cringeworthiness of Uriah Heep without even reading David Copperfield. He doesn't even know how to wring his hands properly. Well I've had it. I would welcome Russell Grant into my home telling me the new moon is rising in uranus before I could suffer another beehive, back-combed up-do masquarading as talent.

Is Rosemary and Thyme on this evening - that heady mix of murder, mystery and pruning - I wonder?

TAKE TWO BOTTLES OF CONFUSED AND IRRITATED INTO THE SHOWER?

A glorious day for a run around my manor - the trees were singing and the birds were swaying - or so I thought until I ventured upon Lord Levy/Lionel Blair. I've never quite got the gist of just who is who nor the point of either of them.

Yes really.

One is an irritating, geriatric, tap dancer with a camp, fanta tan and a permanent stiffy-lacquered blow job.

The other a public waste of tax payers money, Tone's fund raiser and a vain-glorious liability just by drawing breath.

There, parked up beside bella-bella, pasta-lasta cafe society was a police outrider. Waiting. And then.......(DUN, DUN, DUN DRAMATIC-DRUM-ROLL-LIKE-SOUND) coming towards me flanked by four burly meatheads came Lionel Blair. All 4 feet 11 inches of him sporting a halo of bouffant silvered hair. Or was it Lord Levy? Lionel doesn't use meatheads when he nips out to the shops but Lord Levy is currently being protected and investigated by the police simultaneously - it must have been him.

Irked by having my morning so deliberately ruined by such a pompous, oleaginous goblin gawping at my breasts in tight lycra (as I mentioned before I was returning from a run), I loudly exclaimed he looked like a fat, middle-aged, hairdresser.

Perhaps Toni or Guy: hairdresser to the star(s) and former agent of seventies, uni-glover Alvin Star(s)dust. Oh the ignominy!

Zoe Heller is an exceptionally talented journalist and novelist. Regina Spektor is an exceptionally gifted, songwriter and songstress

Zoe wrote a book called "Notes on Scandal" a couple of years ago. Well today I went and saw the film. Books are nearly always better than their movie equivalents but this starring Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench was tense, striking and not for the morally squeamish.

What was amoral however was the cost of a cinema ticket and packet of nachos with a cheese and jalapeno dip - £10.35!! And the cheeky bleeders have the audacity to attempt to put the fear of good god through its audience by reminding us all that DVD piracy is a crime punishable by more expensive cinema tickets AND POSSIBLY death by dire advertisments. Mitchell and Webb please take note. And I love them but in this case I would opt for Pearl and Dean's papa-papa-papa-papa (yer know, that rousing brass fanfare effort).

Or Regina Spektor - a fresher, more original, quirkier version of Rickie Lee Jones maybe? A lyrically pure songbird just in time for lighter days and the first chords/chorus of spring

Anyone that may have seen Ben Kingsley in Ghandi drinking his own urine and navel gazing through a raffia flip-flop might be interested to watch him tonight.

Channel 4 - be there or be............somewhere else if you insist because tonight (Matthew) he plays a foul-mouthed pyschopath in a Costa del crime cock-up commonly known as Sexy Beast. I have never heard more expletives in a scripted film outside of.........well fuck it I'm at a loss to find the a scripted film that can compete. And I've lived matey. I saw Grease and Mary Poppins and there's no excuse for bursting into song when a firm expletive would do the job just as well.

Ray Winstone (a bruised heart throb and Amanda thingy - I used to go to the same girls' school as her) also star. If you don't like your Sunday evenings wrapped in sixities soundtracks and gawd-bless-yus coppers cosseting the elbows of elderly bingo molls in the village, watch this movie if you dare!

Carbon offsetting? Exuse me?

Another phrase so terribly fashionable right now.

If we eat blueberries from Chile or fly on a hen weekend to Prague must we plant a forest in Ecuador? Is this carbon offsetting? Rhetorical question really but the Bishop of London (formerly known as Dick Whittington) truly has a cross to bear. Or rather a crosier.

A crosier (crozier, pastoral staff) is the stylized staff of office carried by high-ranking Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican and whatever.
The crosier is the symbol of the governing office of the Bishop.

A Roman Catholic bishop bears it as "shepherd of the flock of God".

The Bishop of London carries his crosier in a Skoda. Is that carbon offsetting I wonder? Or could he dispense with such pompery all together and just travel on the Northern line.

As a shepherd with a flock to consider he would be setting us all a good example.