Following on from my frankly brilliant and not-at-all lame idea that Alan Sugar should encounter his demise by being dissolved in a cup of tea, I’ve decided (perhaps unwisely) to try your patience with a few more name-based celebrity fates, and invite your contributions. Eg -

Sheryl Crow - murdered*.
Tom Cruise - hit by a missile, or alternatively mobbed to death by gay people looking for casual meaningless sex.
Jimmy Page - died from a particularly nasty paper cut.
Tiger Woods - Went down on (to) himself today, evidently not sure of the big surprise which followed.
Kate Moss - forced to become an inanimate object living on a log until picked up by a starling and used as bedding for its prodigiously defecating chicks. (I’m “lichen” that idea…)

Very poor, I’m sure you’ll agree, and am likewise confident that you can do better.

* - an easy 5 Shit Sandwich points for anyone who explains the reference here.

Big apologies for my uselessness as editor over the last week; if there’s anyone still out there, my excuse is pressures of work (no, really) / a quick weekend jaunt to Italy (where the weather was worse than it is here) / good old fashioned indolence.

Anyway, to welcome back everyone’s favourite reality-television-programme-which-thinks-it’s-superior-to-”I’m-a-Celebrity”- and-similar-pap-but- isn’t-in-the-slightest (phew!) “The Apprentice“, I’m shortly going to inaugurate a new poll. Now Technical Monkey doesn’t like “Sir” Alan Sugar one bit; in fact, one mention of the computer world’s Arthur Daley is enough to turn TM from a placid PG Tips-style chimp into a raging King Kong. The poll will be about fantasies for Sugar’s demise, and here are some of TM’s suggestions -

- Him getting permanently lost in one of his massive warehouses filled with all those shit Amstrad phones that he never sold, possibly having a tower of them collapsing on him, possibly just wandering around aimlessly among what constitutes an enormous monument to his failure eventually dying of starvation or, given his hefty gut, more likely thirst.

- Him somehow disappearing up his own arse. Specifics of the mechanism for realizing this don’t concern me enormously, but I suspect it’ll have something to do with him moving in ever decreasing circles until he does. Or maybe his pomposity, which makes him a big arse, will increase so much that, he will become such an enormous arse that he’d collapse in on himself up his own arse, a bit like a black hole. Frankly, so long as he exits existence via his own arsehole, I don’t care about the method.

- Maybe God could apply to be on the apprentice and when “sir” Alan fires him, God could smite him or turn him into a pillar of salt or something

- Maybe he could spontaneously combust when he says “you’re fired” … burning for many an hour, given what a fat shit he is.

- Maybe he could choke on his knighthood … or the “Sir” bit of the sign on his door

- Maybe there could be a special Apprentice finale, in which Alan is forced onto the other side of the table facing, for example, Richard Branson (who is less annoying and significantly richer) … who could then buy Alan’s shitty business interests and actually fire him…..
……or just beat him to death with a real entrepreneur’s wallet – one at least 7 times thicker than anything Alan could put together … or maybe a giant Dildo with entrepreneur written on it, which jazzed out cash every time a blow was struck until Alan eventually dies among a piddling pile of cash equal to his own meager fortune in comparison to that of whoever was doing the beating … maybe they person doing the beating could wear a bishops outfit and we could call it bishop bashing and make a TV program out of it … I swear to God, I’m wasted in insurance, I shold work in TV production.

Woah there!! Good work, TM…. anyway, you get the message… I’ll add one of my puny pun-based ideas to the mix, and you’ll have your new poll. “Tous les autres idees aussi bienvenue”, as the French don’t say.

A (reasonably) glorious outing for His Shitness at the Folkestone Table-Tennis Championships on Sunday; I won the 2nd division doubles tournament with my partner (though not in the biblical sense) Barrie. However, I also discovered the following -

- Now that I’m over 30, I’m considered a “veteran”.
- Being as my ranking’s so low, I was encouraged to give the main Mens’ Singles a miss and go for the “handicap” tournament instead (where I started with a points advantage - in spite of which, I still lost in the first round).

Add these two pieces of nomenclature to the fact that the NHS already thinks I’m a retard…

Sports Minister Richard Caborn confirmed this week that the Olympics will now cost £9.35 billion - treble the original estimate. £9.35 billion for the privilege of watching British athletes get their arses kicked on home soil rather than abroad. Ken Livingstone has assured Londoners that they won’t be paying any more council tax to make up the deficit - which obviously means that myself and selected other non-London taxpayers will be expected to rally round. And for what? A series of velodrome-based corporate jollies for the tossers in Canary Wharf, and “regeneration of East London” - i.e. a house-price leg-up for a bunch of cockles-and-whelks-munching gor blimey East End BNP barrow-boys.

The best you could say is that I’m “Caborn-Neutral” about the whole idea…

I’ve been very good all year so far, so get ready for a blast of “bah humbug” of epic proportions…

Comic Relief, followed by St Patrick’s Day, followed by Mother’s Day? Which cretin in the calendar department thought that one up? Already I’ve had to avoid self-righteous charity collectors in red-nose get-up in Sainsburys shaking buckets full of loose change… have you noticed how they always pick the fattest members of staff? And position them, in a positively Leonidasian way*, at the narrowest points of passage? I already give copiously to charity - particularly to impoverished farmers in the Rioja and Jacob’s Creek areas - and, frankly, think that the Beeb should be paying ME to watch the sack of shit I’m going to have to endure on the telly tonight.

Then St Patrick’s Day tomorrow; why the hell should I celebrate the patron saint of a bunch of jollier-than-thou self-mythologising English-haters? And for that matter, why can’t I celebrate St George’s Day or St Retreatus (patron saint of Italy)’s Day without being called a right-wing bigot?

And finally, Mother’s Day. Luckily, mine’s in Italy so I won’t actually have to DO anything apart from a quick reverse-charge call… but it’s the principle of the thing. Mothers get an easy enough ride as it is without needing an extra birthday. Plus it’s the thin end of the wedge; they’re already flogging Father’s Day (which didn’t exist when I was young) to death… what next? Brother’s Day? Plumber’s Day? I say scrap Mother’s Day and replace it with Motherf#cker’s Day, in which we all buy presents for people like Samuel L Jackson.

* - 5 Shit Sandwich bonus points for this one. And a clue, since you were all so rubbish last time - a current film about twelve Cockney ponies…

The answer to the last piece of wordplay was “Gratin Dauphinoise”, a potato & cream side dish which I’m sure at least some of you have heard of. The “dauphin” was the French equivalent of the Prince of Wales - the next in line to the throne, hence the French royalty reference. The company was called Grattan. There, not that hard, was it? Ten bonus points to me.

I was rather disappointed with “Comic Relief Does the Apprentice” last night; I had tuned in expecting Lenny Henry, Billy Connolly, French and Saunders and sundry corpulent superannuated comedians lining up to have a steamy romp with Sir Alan Sugar’s bit on the side - ahem - gifted businesswoman and winner of the last series Michelle DullChavvy…

Imagine my chagrin when it turned out instead to be Piers Morgan out-arseholing even Alistair Campbell and Danny Baker in a (supposedly) amusing rehash of the regular show. I haven’t been so disappointed since I discovered that “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” had nothing to do with cocaine-fuelled coprophilia.

Another fairly gargantuan faux-pas, this time not entirely of my own making: I was on my way to a table-tennis game at Sandgate Farm Catholic School with my team captain (who was giving me a lift in his baby-puke-smelling people carrier). The conversation drifted towards television; specifically “quality” telly on UK and US television. I was trying to convince him that the days of Morse, Cracker etc. were long gone, and that the Yanks now held the upper hand: The Sopranos, Deadwood, Sex and the City etc - “Although”, I added slightly smugly, “the only thing Sex and the City seems to have brought to mankind is acceptance of the practice of rimming”.

15 minutes later, we’re at the Catholic school with the opposing team and a small crowd of supporters (mostly their parents, though there may have been a priest in there too). The coin is tossed for serve in the first game. “Heads”, my captain calls, “and by the way, Mike, what exactly is rimming?”

Midget scientology freak Tom Cruise…

… and his taller, gayer and altogether much nicer doppelganger, Captain Jack from Torchwood, the irrepressible John Barrowman.

In the latest bizarre twist in the Goody saga, fat racist thick chav Jade has been nominated for “Celebrity Mum of the Year“. Presumably, the award is voted for by the kind of mum who considers turkey twizzlers to be haute cuisine, and who barges into schools threatening (and often performing) physical violence on any teacher who tries to discipline their horrendous brat. In which case, it’s entirely appropriate that Jade should be nominated.

There are, however, 20 nominees for the title, which appears to be sponsored by cruddy clothes retailer and manufacturer of potato / cream side dishes for French royalty*, Grattan…. hang on, I’d struggle even to name 5, let alone 20, famous women who’ve dropped a sprog recently; what an extremely pointless accolade. Thus “Celebrity Mum of the Year” is my first nomination in the Sandwich’s “Dumb and Meaningless Awards of the Year Award”, which I’ll be running throughout 2007, and for which I’ve created a special new category of posts on the site. Feel free to nominate any you come across…

(* - 10 Shit Sandwich Bonus Points for the first person to understand what the hell I’m on about here… and I WILL be formally launching the Shit Sandwich Bonus Points system very soon. There’ll be prizes!!!)

Slightly wacky story of the day - those cerraayzee folk in South Korea are drawing up an “ethical code” for robots; apparently, within 50 years, our metallic friends will be demanding the same rights as humans. Far be it from me to say anything robotist, but until I see something a bit more sophisticated than a wobbling fish singing “Take Me to the River”, I shall continue to mete out abuse to them at will.

More to the point, haven’t the South Koreans got their priorities a bit skewed? Dog-lovers everywhere probably think so…

All of this raises an interesting question - what about Doctor Who’s robotic (and probably quite tasty between two sesame baps) companion, K9? Now that’s a major ethical dilemma for the Seoul….