Just to encourage the site’s dwindling global coprophile fanbase - the further adventures of marvellously-named footie coach Otto Pfister. As we discovered during 2006’s World Cup, his team (Togo) finished BOTTOM, and he definitely had a HAND IN IT. Now he’s BACK with another SIDE (Cameroon, in the African Cup of Nations), and, as the ever-wonderful James Richardson mused, Pfister’s opponents are probably having TROUBLE KEEPING IT TIGHT AT THE BACK.

* Stop press * - Cameroon have lost their first game, so Pfister probably needs to PULL HIS FINGER OUT.

Perhaps other readers etc…

A poignant reminder for your “humble” editor of the wisdom of not trying to be too much of a clever dick. Am currently out in Italy drinking way too much and interacting when necessary with the locals; they often ask me (as you would) “Parli Italiano?” (”Do you speak Italian?”) - to which, if I were wise, I’d reply something along the lines of “Un po’” (”a little”). Instead, I have for the last few years taken to saying something more florid along the lines of “Yes, to a limited extent, but not particularly well”.

Problem is that I’d confused the word “bene” (”good”) with “buono” (”good”, but mostly applied to food being tasty). It was only yesterday that someone pointed this out to me; hence the opening stages of my conversations with the good citizens of Imperia have actually been going: “Ah, you speak Italian?” “Yes, but not particularly deliciously.”

That’ll explain some of the looks.

No doubt about it, TV seems to be getting nastier; as well as the annual shit-fests of “Big Brother” and “I’m Not a Celebrity” (which people, having now realised that there’s never going to be any shagging, watch purely on the off-chance of a blazing race-row), we have an increasing number of shows where established stars / media figures are out to inflict a psychological roughing-up on contestants for our delectation.

At the light end of the scale there’s “The Apprentice” (although, to be fair, Alan Sugar can barely stop smirking throughout his carefully-scripted cockernee character assasinations). Slightly stinkier is “Dragons’ Den”. The prog’s premise is spurious in the extreme: anyone with half an ounce of business sense a) can easily raise £100,000 without resorting to begging the likes of the ageing, long-jowelled self-deluding “Dragons”, and b) would never consider giving away 50% of their great idea in a million years for such paltry sums if the idea was in the slightest bit workable. (No business has ever succeeded on the back of the five series and hundreds of hopefuls on the programme). So why does it exist? Simple - to satisfy a grubby public craving for seeing someone made to look a fool on camera.

There are others, but luckily, at the moment, there’s only one prog which is genuinely disturbing in this vein, and that’s The X Factor. Thousands turn up for auditions; we never see the majority who are a) there for a laugh, or b) mediocre but prepared for failure. All we see is a) the very good ones (fair enough), or b) the ones who are shit / mediocre, but who spectacularly fall to pieces when rejected. These people are obviously deluded and emotionally vulnerable to be taking it that seriously in the first place; the last thing they need is to be made to look idiotic in front of a slobbering judgemental nation by an utter prick like Simon Cowell - but the public apparently loves watching it. It’s as shabby and voyeuristic as Jeremy Kyle, but worse in that it’s completely one-sided. Not nice at all.

Step back, though, tafkass, and consider what might be the alternative? I’ll tell you - “Deal or No Deal”, where a room full of strangers engages in an infinitely-grimmer puke-tastic hour of group empathy and mutual arse-licking - “You really deserve this, you’re such a fantastic person (etc)” - based not on good deeds or genuine love and affection, but on opening boxes containing random amounts of money. Hitch your strides back up, Cowell - you’re still in business.

Following launch of Very Poor, a number of bugs have been pointed out. If anyone notices a bug or runs into any problems - could they please post comments here with details … and by details I mean as much detail as they can provide about what specifically went wrong.

At the moment, I’m aware of the following:

- Email notification of new posts not working
- Polls Archive not working (this might be because there aren’t any archived polls … so will have to wait for new poll to test this theory)
- Something annoying going on with apostrophes - specifically they’re sometimes pre-pended with \.
- No Search functionality
- Site being difficult to read

This latter point is someting TAFKAS raised as an issue. As a consequence, the font size for posts has been raised and the background has been turned black in the hopes of contrasting better with the posting area - feedback on this would be welcomed.

I enjoyed an excellent cocktail-based soiree at the swanky Kings Road pad of a good friend and former work colleague last night; but as per usual, the evening obviously wasn’t going to pass off without me covering myself in inglory. The bottle-and-a-half of wine which I consumed with another friend before I even arrived at the party seemed like a good idea at the time.

The litany’s longer than usual , so we’ll leave to one side the fact that I spent 10 minutes slagging off the recruitment industry to a total stranger, subsequently to find out that she works for the recruitment company which I left 5 years ago (and was thus the prime object of the slagging). We’ll even gloss over my ham-fisted attempts to argue with a far-more-informed-than-me Norwegian lady about the pros and cons of whaling (my knowledge-base coming more or less exclusively from the fact that I’ve seen “Free Willy” a couple of times.)

The highlight of the evening was meeting one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen (a 23-year-old recently arrived from Moscow), and even getting on quite well with her. The lowlights? 1) Resorting to Kettle Chips shaped vaguely like the county of Kent as a visual aid to explain to her where Folkestone is in relation to London, 2) subsequently eating said table-dusted crisps, talking with my mouth full and getting potato-based spittle-mush on her nice black dress, 3) thinking that “martinis are a FANTASTIC way to get drunk really quickly, don’t you think?” was a good conversational gambit, 4) thinking that “hmm, what about that British Council stuff, eh?” was a good subsequent conversational gambit (etc etc…)

Despite all this, a male friend and fellow attendee seemed to think that she quite liked me. Oh yes, ‘cos that happens all the time; 23-year-old oligarch bride material who looks like a Hed Kandi album cover - specifically this one - being interested in a badly-dressed catastrophically-drunk 34-year-old. But I did give her my number (mental note to self; next time you meet a girl you like, it’s probably a smarter tactic to ASK FOR HER NUMBER) - and guess what? We’ve been texting sweet nothings to each other all day.

Sorry - that should read “texting nothing to each other all day”.

As the song says, music was my first love, and it will be my last… actually, that’s not strictly true. Exercising my already-prodigious vocal cords in all-night protest at not being constantly fed was my first love, and my last will probably be pretending to be deaf in order to annoy shop assistants.

Surprisingly, though, my taste in music is fairly narrow; I own 2000 CDs (approx), and, as oft-remarked by perusifiers of said collection, only 300 of them by artists other than Van Morrison and Mike Oldfield. Naaah… it’s not really that bad… I’ve certainly broadened my horizons since the dark early ’90s days of owning every Yes album PLUS every solo album by Yes members (probably the musical equivalent of being able to remember plot details, full cast and crew lineups and size of Uhura’s earrings for any given episode of “Star Trek”)… but a few supposedly great artists have slipped through the net so far.

Echo and the Bunnymen, The Small Faces, Elvis Costello, The Walker Brothers, Eminem, Squeeze, The Cure,  Smashing Pumpkins, Wu-Tang,  Pixies, Nine Inch Nails, Public Enemy, Sonic Youth - I know at most one or two tracks from their oeuvre. And there are plenty more. So as a New Year’s Resolution, I’ve decided to become a fan of one of the above (or someone else entirely) - reasons for your choices, plus other nominations very welcome*

(* - TM, don’t bother with Ashlee Simpson, I think we can take my disdain for her “la la” as read. Similarly LZ / Bride of Chomsky - I know all I need to know about Miles Davis’s ’70s fretwank period.)

The rumour on the music grapevine has it that Robbie Williams is to delay presenting his latest album to EMI in protest at the “plantation owner”-style behaviour of new label owner, evil financier Guy Hands. Ostensibly, this is in solidarity with the “thousands” of jobs which are said to be on the line at EMI, but look a little closer at Robbie’s statement and the subtext becomes clear: “We have no idea how EMI will market and promote the album. They do not have anyone in the digital sphere capable of doing the job required”.

Bear in mind that avowed ladies’ man Robbie’s last album, “Rudebox”, stank the charts up appallingly, failing to sell anywhere near what EMI expected and hilariously getting thrashed by Take That’s comeback album. Robbie blamed - guess what - EMI’s “lack of promotion”. Hmmm.

I dunno… maybe I’m being cynical, and Robbie’s reaction to EMI’s Hands-job is admirable. In fact, why not take the action further? Perhaps a dirty protest, to mirror the quality of his music lately? Alternatively, TM suggests that Robbie’s righteous indignation might “either extend to death by hunger strike, or a quick and violent suicide…”, later sensibly reflecting that the latter is preferable because “I don’t want valuable Daily Express column inches that should be about Diana or Maddy being allocated to “Day 42 of Robbie Williams’ Hunger Strike: The Fucker’s Still Not Dead Yet”. Word, TM.

I’m resorting to a lookie-likey in a desperate attempt to cure a dose of newbie-blogger’s creative block. So here we have soup-bothering plop-art titan Andy Warhol -

… and F1 boss and new owner of QPR, barking Bernie Ecclestone

I was privileged to try some of Duchy Originals’ organic wholegrain mustard at the weekend, and it’s an excellent product - the balance of sweetness, tang and heat is perfect. My condiments to the chef. However, I couldn’t help dropping my jaw at the price tag - a whopping £2.15. Most own brand wholegrain mustards come in under 40p, and even “premium” brands like Coleman’s or Maille are well under £1.

Consider this; Duchy Originals is Prince Charles’s commercial venture, and most of the produce is grown on his estates in Cornwall; so essentially, the land (or at least his privilege of administration) belongs in spirit to the nation. So shouldn’t he be distributing the fruits of his labours (or even better, the profits in hard cash) gratis to his loyal subjects, rather than ploughing them into the hopeless cause of young pikey improvement that is The Prince’s Trust? At the very least, we should all be entitled to a free B&B at Clarence House once a year. I’d possibly even settle for a go on Camilla.

A massive welcome, be it to regulars or first-time visitors, to verypoor.co.uk, the brand new karmic manifestation of the blog entity formerly known as Shit Sandwich. But, I hear you ask in your thousands tens (if I’m lucky) - why the change? And what the FACK is the new name about? Well, the reasons behind it are threefold -

1) to allow everyone to view the site at work without nasty bosses worrying that you’re some kind of pervert, and similarly to discourage American and Far-Eastern coprophiles from spamming the site.

2) to pay tribute (in a one-off, extremely lazy way) to comedy titans Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer - “Very Poor” was an early catchphrase. The anti-spam words are all Vic ‘n’ Bob related.

3) To succinctly describe the content of the site quality-wise. And of the grammar, as Bren points out below.

Nothing else has changed, apart from the fact that I’ll be looking for a new name. “Shit” is no longer relevant, whilst “VP”associates me with nasty time-is-money business types, or the likes of Al Gore and Dick Cheney. Any alternative ideas welcome.

Huge thanks to Technical Monkey (who will of course retain his name) for sorting all this out. Hope you enjoy our new direction…