Surprisingly, most of you didn’t give a shit about Madonna’s child-robbing antics, despite a strong late showing for the idea that she kill herself. Even more surprisingly, nobody wanted her to kill Guy “I say, old chap, I’m a cockney, diven’t ya knaaa” Ritchie.

But enough of that - it’s Hallowe’en! Wooo! Spooky! Hallowe’en has recently shot up the retail league and is now second only to Christmas in the all-important “stupid people being tricked into buying things” stakes. What’s more, I’m (reluctantly) taking the advice of my girlfriend and NOT putting a “Trick or Treaters Please Piss Off” sign outside my house tonight - I’m waiting instead for a tidal wave of young thugs who will disturb my enjoyment of Barcelona / Chelsea, and cover my house in rotten eggs irrespective of whether I give them a Swizzells Double Dip or not.

But what does Hallowe’en MEAN? I mean, like, in a spiritual sense, man? Over to you, boys and ghouls…..

I’m sure I’m not the only one to have noticed a massive “ramping up” of the whole climate change thingummy in the last couple of months. In the UK at least. You can be sure that, over in Texas, Billy-Bob and other assorted good ol’ boys who’ve never had cause to utter the phrase “y’all dang ol’ global warmin’” are still driving their 18-litre pick-up trucks 150 yards to the drive-thru to collect their triple-double cheeseburgers with side order of burger, stopping only to set fire to a few cans of petrol on the way just for a laugh. And now Environment Secretary David Millipede has, in response to a report by shock-jock Howard Stern, suggested that green taxes will soon be brought in for UK users of cars / flights etc.

There’s no remaining doubt that something needs to be done about global warming, and flying is undoubtedly undertaxed, but is punishing the UK consumer really the right way? A forced reversion to a 1950s-esque situation where big cars and flights are the preserve of the rich would be HUGELY unpopular, especially (as is certain to be the case) if Britain and maybe parts of Europe are the only places to adopt such a regime, whilst the Yanks, Chinese, Indians, Brazilians and Russians continue blithely to burn all the oil they want.

Plus what is the government doing for consumers who WANT to lead a greener lifestyle? The answer is fuck all. There are grants for LPG car conversions / solar panels / wind turbines, but the qualifying criteria are byzantine and the grants relatively small. They’re not even subsidising energy-saving lightbulbs, for Christ’s sake. And I’M the bad guy ‘cos I leave my VCR on standby occasionally?

Using a big tax stick to whack the voters with is likely to have serious counter-effects for the green movement as a whole; I’m very much on the green side, and even I’m already pissed off by the rhetoric. I dread to think what Dagenham Dave feels about the issue.

Had an excellent boot sale find on Sunday; a CD single of a song by Heather Mills featuring Paul McCartney.

This is from 1999, so only a year or so after Linda’s death and a full 3 before Mills’s marriage to Paul. Naughty boy, Pablo. I think I’ll keep the CD and sell when the divorce settlement is about to be made; eBay is always at its most lucrative when “news-led”. I made a small fortune when John Peel died.

And what a fantastic record cover… in only begs the question - what would you have as the next icon on the sleeve? The disabled person kneeing a man with a guitar in the balls? Maybe a couple trading blows with some lawyers in the background counting money?

Having failed (again) to win the £75 million which I so obviously deserve in the Euro millions draw on Friday, the last thing I needed to hear is that there was more chance of me being killed in an incident involving my fridge than there was of my numbers coming up. Not any fridge, mind - only MY fridge.

From now on, instead of idly fantasising about what I’d do with the money, I’ll have a good think about funeral arrangements, or (best case scenario) how to spend the time in hospital in traction after a whacking from the white goods.

It came to my attention over the weekend that saccharine “adult contemporary” songwriter James Blunt’s real surname is “Blount”, and that he’s changed it for stage purposes. This I don’t really understand; there’s nothing wrong per se with “Blount” - it’s not Dido-esque, like “Blountington-Ssmythe” or anything, and it’s not at all hard to pronounce.

But even if he did consider it less than ideal, why the HELL would he choose “Blunt” as an alternative? Talk about making a rod for your own back; it could only be worse if he’d chosen “Blocksucker”…

I’m engaged in a rather bizarre flame war on “Youtube” at the moment (you’ll need to “view all comments”). I posted something slagging off John Lennon and Imagine, both of which I dislike, and, in reply, have been called a “dumbass” (which is fair enough), but rather more bizarrely, one commentator has intimated that I’m a potential murderer. I quote -

“This is really the first time I heard anyone say Imagine is a “stupid” or “crappy song”. Now I’m beginning to fathom how someone was able to go as far as murdering Lennon - there’s always one out there, a 1 in an infinity, that has to be decidedly different. But all it takes is one, as it did on 8th Dec, 1980.” (CUCK1971)

I’d have “imagined” that only a Yank could come up with rationale so weird, but no, CUCK71 is English and lives in Avebury. Chez - that’s (sort of) your neck of the woods; does Avebury have more than its fair share of dimbos?

A near-miss for what would have been a fabulous coincidence / irony combination… Claude Davis, Jamaican defender for Premiership strugglers Sheffield United, is reported to have threatened a team mate, attacker Ade Akinbiyi, with a cut-throat razor after a training ground bust-up on Monday.

This works as both coincidence and irony; the former because Sheffield United are nicknamed “The Blades”, and the latter because Akinbiyi’s striking prowess is famously about as “razor sharp” as a Gillette Mach Minus 5 which has been used to shave the stubbliest man in the world a million times, then left to rust for a decade and finally hammered into a completely non-razory shape.

Altogether now: “It’s like raaaay-yeeee-aaaaaaaaain…. on your wedding day….”

Arriving home late last night from a titanic table-tennis battle, I was forced into an hour’s channel-hopping / red-wine-quaffing to get rid of the caffeine high of the 2 cans of Red Bull I’d drunk in an attempt at giving myself an unfair sporting advantage.

I came across “The Mint” on ITV1, a “gaming” programme in which a presenter is constantly jabbering, repeating the same things over and over again, trying to persuade viewers to spend 75p to ring in for the chance to win £12,000. The only other person in the studio with her was a sound engineer, who would press a button to produce some massively unrealistic pre-recorded crowd noise (clapping / cheering) every 20 seconds or so. It was quite the most appalling thing I’ve ever seen on a major TV network. Even the fetid infernal imagination of Dante would have struggled to come up with anything quite so hellishly surreal. It was worse than anything I’ve ever seen on Italian channels, and that’s saying summat. And it’s on for FOUR HOURS nearly EVERY NIGHT.

It’s no wonder they call it the “graveyard shift”; I don’t think I’d be able to stand more than an hour of “The Mint” without killing myself. Has anyone else seen it? Maybe it’s all a cunning government ploy to cure insomnia / get drunkards like me to go to bed?

Frances Ingram, 33, of Chester, has placed a bet that she can convince Robbie Williams to marry her; she stands to make £10,000 if she can manage it. Aside from the fact that a single 33-year-old female Robbie Williams fan from “ooop narth” is almost certain to look like the back end of a dreadnought-class battleship, HE’S GAY, for Christ’s sake! He couldn’t be much more gay if he had spent the ’90s oiled up and writhing around in a boy band, gone solo, and had a conspicuous lack of girlfriends… oh, he’s already done all those - all that’s missing is the duet with Elton John and the embarrasing experience in a public toilet!

I confidently predict a “career-skid come-out” from young Robbie; he’s saving it up for a rainy day. And if that doesn’t get him back in the papers, apparently Madonna knows the number of a very accomodating orphanage in Malawi…

Whilst doing some of my interminable eBay data entry this morning (a job which is the end product of years of my parents’ hard graft to pay for a private education - I’m sure they’re VERY proud of me), I was clumsily typing in “Whitney Houston”. I managed to get the first name wrong twice, first coming up with “Whiney” and then “Whitey”. Mirth was unconfined (well, I chuckled briefly).

Bear with me, it’s been a long morning…. but not as long as Whitney’s, by the looks of it…