At the same time, I am delighted to hear that the party I do support has conducted a thorough review of all its dealings with Russian oligarchs on their yachts and has found all allegations of impropriety to be entirely groundless. I trust this will be the end of the matter.

Of course it’s too late now. You just had to go flocking round Peston instead, didn’t you?

Peston my arse.

VOTE OBAMA/BIDEN!

VOTE MCCAIN/PALIN!

That’s how a demented, blue-haired, swivel-eyed, octogenarian maniac might have described David Cameron’s smug, vapid, nauseating, disingenuous, pointless, dessicated husk of an address to the Tory party conference yesterday.

I, on the other hand, might have described it rather differently.

Honestly, you’d think he was Chancellor of the Exchequer or something.

Update:
Sorry, my mistake: it’s short selling they’re talking about. About time too: imagine if they’d dithered until a big bank went pop.

A hedge fund chap popping into the FSA for a pair of shorts earlier today. He thought it said C&A.

You can give a pig a big hairdo and a blue handbag and elect it leader of the Conservative Party: it’s still a pig.

Ever the opportunists, the Tories were quick to seize on the comment as an alleged slur on their leader, Mrs Thatcher. And despite Callaghan’s protestations that he’d used the pig as a metaphor for the opposition’s shameless policy recycling, the accusations stuck and Thatcher romped to victory just two months later.

And the rest, as they say, is history: Thatcher reigned for a thousand years, presiding over a slew of policies that would change the face of Britain forever: the outlawing of milk; the war with Denmark; the unilateral withdrawal from the Eurovision Song Contest; the invasion of Mars.

I trust the moral is clear, America: vote for the pig woman and you’re looking at no end of trouble.

Get in there! United, United!

Seasoned commentators including Christopher Hitchens, George Monbiot and all those smart-arses with their blogs have so far been unforthcoming with a counterpoint, so compelling is Southendcockneyboy’s argument.

Nothing cheers me up like a good bit of debate.

I promised them that I would be joining them soon, but I could not look them in the eye. It’s the end, my friends. We’re doomed.

Can you smell it? I can smell it.

Is there a window open somewhere? Smells like it’s coming in from outside. Poo, it’s horrible.

Do you mean to tell me nobody can smell a smell?? What’s wrong with you people??

Update:
Sorry, it looks like there’s a tuna sandwich under my desk.

When officers had turned up to investigate they found Batchelor still partially dressed and with his flimsy thong on the wrong way round.

It’s so easily done, and after a few cans of Special Brew I’m told the chafing just doesn’t reach the brain. There are hospitals in Glasgow that specialise in reattaching testicles after just such incidents.

To the untrained eye, just two ordinary guys. Can you spot which one has his thong on back-to-front?

I’m pretty sure I’m not.

A blogger blogging himself to death, yesterday

You know his wife, right?

You know her guinea pig?

It’s dead.

This, according to the Sun, is the biggest story in Britain today.

I mean, seriously. What about the canoe guy? What about Diana and Dodi? What about that nice bachelor man who gave all that money to that nice Mr Brown? About these pressing issues the Sun cares not one jot.

The country has truly gone to hell in a hand-cart, and to be honest it wasn’t even much of a hand-cart. The country has gone to hell in a wheelbarrow.

Turns out that in September I offended a group of Icelandic fundamentalists with my cheap fisting gag. Icelandic fundamentalists are a lot like Islamic fundamentalists but with warmer coats and a fanatical hatred of Kerry Katona. They did some digging and found that I’d recently named my pet cat Björk and after that it was just non-stop hate mail, effigy burning, flaxen-haired trawlermen outside the house demanding my death – you know the sort of thing.

In a last-ditch attempt to placate them I renamed the cat Atomic Kitten and that’s when the shit really hit the fan. Should I have known about the Kerry Katona thing? In retrospect, yeah, perhaps I should. Call me naive if you like – I just thought it was a nice name for a cat. In the end I felt I had no option but to stage my own death, cash in on the life insurance, go to Panama and buy a couple of yachts. Honestly, it’s been a living nightmare.

But now I find myself back in the UK and I’ll say one thing for British prisons: they know how to keep a man safe from Icelandic fundamentalism. I could get used to it in here.

Just one final note for my next-door neighbour (whose identity is obviously best not revealed for her own sake): please tell Atomic Kitten I forgive her for all the trouble she’s caused and I’m not dead after all. And make sure you do it that way round: get her feeling guilty first and then hopefully you can slip the not dead thing in “under the radar” as it were. I know one day she’ll understand.

Took me a while to realise he was talking about fishing. Honestly, they should teach them to speak properly before they let them on the radio. I’m having trouble sleeping now.

Let me be the first to rectify that situation.

See, this is how it goes with judges. One day they’re telling you you can’t do 90 in a built-up area, then it’s no murdering on week days, and before you know it’s all gone to their heads and they’re meddling in areas they know nothing about. These things should be left to experts such as Jamie Oliver and Ainsley Harriott.

The country’s gone to the dogs. I no more want an overpaid drag queen in a bad wig to tell me what to eat than I would seek legal advice from Gillian McKeith.

I know one day the world will accept me, but until then I feel I’m best off stopping home, drinking gin and watching Cash In The Attic.