If you're super bored you could do worse than taking a look at a trial day of jokes we're running on Weds 23 April - keep an eye on the two following blogs, and send in your jokes and hilarious comments about the day's "news and most pressing issues". You get a fiver for each line we use!

http://www.gleenews.blogspot.com
http://www.gleetoday.blogspot.com


I am web monkey on the project. Give me a wave!

So I watched Star Wars (original film, episode 4, whatever) for the first time ever yesterday.

It's good.

Boy I'm crap at doing this. I have mostly been celebrating people getting one year older, married and/or born this past month. I really have very little to say. EXCEPT I heart Samantha Bee. Watch this:



I also went to my first residents' meeting last night. I was the youngest by at least 30 years. Pressing matters included: the recycling scheme (it's good, but not that good), laundry prices (boo hoo), and alternative energy sources (yum!).

The upside was that it was held in the William Booth College, aka The Scary Salvation Army building. As expected, it had lovely views from the top but inside was like a Czech youth hostel, full of people with dead eyes and fear etched on their faces at the arrival of normals from the outside.

Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to skewer the committee with my incisive question about bike racks, as there appeared to be a requirement for speaking that you a) had to have lived in the building for at least 32 years and b) were so deaf you couldn't hear anyone else trying to get a word in edgeways so thundered on about 230% price increases on the storage cupboards.

But I am now the proud maintainer of the RPH website! What a citizen.

Hoo-ha!

Good point by Paxman that the BBC should be doing "less better". But what a dick.

Prince was AMAZING - he played almost everything I wanted to hear and was really funny with it. He is also ever so good on guitar. He didn't, however, play either of the following:

i) I Would Die 4 U
ii) Batdance

Either of which would have sent me over the edge. As it was I spent the whole two hours screaming and dancing like a ninny.

We got the Thames clipper boat back to Waterloo, which was a beautiful way to end the evening. Completely in love with London again.

So I've got tickets for Prince on Friday. This is exciting, don't get me wrong. But then I see this in the schedules.

Curses!

* Please don't go all Sky Plus on me. I'm yet to make the jump to digital telly even.

Been in Edinburgh for the past few weeks, so no posts for ages. Here's a summary of things I've learned:

1) I love peanut butter.
2) I also like deep-fried Mars bars (no surprise there).
3) Facebook is purely a force for good.
4) Stay out of the way of cameramen (see the videos we're making on bbc.co.uk/edinburgh - I make accidental cameos in most of them)
5) Exercise = weight loss.
6) Take more than a single pair of jeans to wear on location.
7) Do not wear canvas shoes in the rain.
8) Stop after the third rose petal and lychee Martini.

More updates soon!

"the princes are partying and the queen is not amused !!!!

this much is clear - ic! berlin manufactures sheet-metal glasses and is waiting for you to place these on the beautiful noses of british ladies and gentlemen. your first task is to visit opticians and instil them with the ic! berlin spirit. to sell glasses!

you have known ic! berlin since your primary school, and have wanted to become an ic! berlin sheet-metal glasses salesperson since your childhood days. in addition to this, you love glasses, but do not need to be from the glasses industry. the main thing is: selling is your passion!

have the courage to finally make the dream of your youth come true! adventure is calling and it could be wonderful! we are looking forward to your application: covering letter, cv, qualification certificates, holiday photos, when you first heard of us, etc. good salary and benefits.

with steely-brilliant greetings
r. anderl
loyal uk steel-framed glasses salesman"


I can't decide which is my favourite phrase in all this. There are so many. Added to that, until I read this, I had no idea how much I wanted to sell steel-framed glasses. God bless the Germans.

I broke the only commuter rule today. On the train to Denmark Hill I couldn't contain my excitement at the sight of a huge, perfect rainbow ahead of me over South London, so I turned round to everyone on my crowded carriage and - thinking how uplifting and inspiring my words would be, in one memorable moment breaking the social shackles that keep us from looking each other in the eye, smiling and reaching with our arms outstretched in the spirit of common humanity and mass coexistence after a long day at work - said, "Look! A rainbow!".

The two people who bothered to glance up from their freesheets gave me such a look of derision.

Flight of the Conchords are coming to BBC4, which means I now have a very real deadline to get off my arse and buy freeview. It's been fun in analogue while it lasted though.

And for all those who thought white-middle-class-people-trying-their-hand-at-rap was becoming a little old hat:



You were wrong.

It's okay - he's not in a hotel room in Las Vegas drugged up to his eyeballs, surrounded by flunkies and unable to go to the loo on his own, let alone make another album! No, he's here, on the internet, moonwalking and dancing just like he always does.

Some people with even more time on their hands than me and even more inclination to use it on the internet took that footage from 1983 and did this with it.

This is it! Wake up, Michael! You CAN be great again!*

* To open-source programmers.

Hooray.

It's different down here.

Having seen him do new material on Friday night*, I have become alarmingly fixated on Russell Brand. It's lucky for him that he has since moved from the address he gave when I paid him last year at the club, is all I can say.

I've been rewatching his RE:brand series on YouTube, filmed during the time he was at MTV and on heroin. It was supposed to be overturning taboos, and whether it did or not - it glues you to the screen. This programme was about confronting issues with one's father, and features Brand staging a boxing match with his dad, who left him and his mother when he was a baby.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

* He did do a joke about MJ ("Neverland? Sometimesland, I think") which made me a bit sad but all in all he was fucking funny

Christ the new Mutya song is good. Groove Armada, what what?

If I think about the old chestnut of whether comedy should shy away from giving offence or not, my brain starts to hurt, so I don't know what to make of the reaction to Bernard Manning dying.

Former fat goth Marcus Brigstocke sure doesn't like him, but then this knob shouldn't be encouraged either.

And The Mirror's "Racist In Peace" headline is a bit much; the guy has a family for chrissake.

I used to think if it was a good joke and well-observed, it didn't matter if it offended some people. I seem to share that opinion with Manning (but that Auschwitz joke is funny!).

I never saw him do comedy, but, racist or not, I doubt he would have been my cup of tea. Charlie Higson makes the point that the kind of post-modern comedy of you get in shows like Extras shares too much with the original un-PC comedians they're ironising NOT to share their views too.

Hmm. My brain is beginning to throb.