2015, AND ALL THAT ...

Last night, Robert Dougall, the former BBC and ITV newsreader, stole my Aston Martin. Other than the fact that I don’t drive, let alone an Aston Martin, and Robert Dougall has been dead for fifteen years, this didn’t seem to bother me all that much. Later on that day though, I was determined to find it, and found myself stomping around in a swampy wood full of mangrove trees and mist.

A car then tore by. My car. Robert Dougall was at the wheel. Four people were leaning out, shouting and leering drunkenly as it tore through the foggy evening. The roof had been cut off and the seats replaced with tatty old deckchairs, the exhaust was hanging off, the pretty alloys were gone and every remaining panel had a massive dent in it.

Then, without warning, it veered off into the undergrowth and crashed. I raced over to find a bloodied Robert Dougall trying to extract himself from what was left of the driver’s seat, covered in bruises and cuts and laughing hysterically. Then, without warning, the alarm clock went off, I put my trousers on, then I had a cup of tea and went to the shops to fetch some milk. Puzzled as hell.

I’m told reliably that, when we dream, it is the result of an active mind not shutting down properly, and this explains a lot recently. Regularly, I can fly, and it’s something soaring over Birmingham staring down at the massed ranks blissfully ignorant of me. I have played table tennis against myself and lost, engaged in conflict with a Baywatch helicopter in Red Dwarf’s ‘Starbug’ and fought a battle against a giant robotic Charlton Heston with the aid of the cast of “Auf Wiedersehen, Pet”.

I have also won the Albanian Grand Prix driving Herbie, and flew over London in Dangermouse's Mk III flying car with Kevin Keegan in the passenger seat. As well as this, America won a contest where other countries just gave them points for no apparent reasons, and Britain came 54th, as usual. These are the sort of dreams you have after washing down a wheel of brie and a whole quarter of edam with a pint of Benylin and rum. I think I would like to have met Sigmund Freud, who probably would have deduced I was stark, raving mad.

And this year, he would have had good reasons for assuming so, because this is of course my last blog of what has been a year where a hell of a lot has happened. To be honest, unless you got married, engaged, or won a Ferrari filled with Maltesers and vodka in a radio phone-in, it’s unlikely to have been a year you’ll remember fondly. It was filled with huge, grim events. So is every year, of course, but in 2015 it seemed there were fewer light moments to offset the enveloping dread.

And everyone has just seemed so angry, all the time. A whole planet, gritting its teeth. Hundreds protesting. Thousands marching. Millions waiting to attach their internalised rage to a hashtag at a moment’s notice. Celebrity deaths by the bucket load, war, the so-called refugee 'crisis', Jeremy Clarkson, Kate Middleton had another baby (why is this world so fertile and set my seed never gets sown ??) Isis. Syria. Gaza. Economic meltdown in Greece. It's a wonder that Billy Joel hasn't released a sequel to "We Didn't Start The Fire" yet.

We also had a General Election which proved nothing more than confirming politicians are less popular than Rolf Harris in a Veterinary Surgeon's practice. With the exception of Nigel Farage, who isn’t in the House of Commons, and Russell Brand, who isn’t even a politician. And speaking of politics, we have the horrifying prospect of Britain being led by Jeremy Corbyn, a man who rides a bicycle to work in shorts and probably has vegetables growing out of his arse, and America being led by Donald Trump, who looks like he's smeared superglue on his bonce and spent an afternoon breakdancing on his local barbershop's floor.

We could all use a lie-down more than a knees-up. With so many horrific stories around this year, it's no wonder we were side-tracked by baking, selfies, bombings, massacres, murders, more celebrity child abuse cases and high-profile deaths. One after the other, after the other, after the other, no wonder "The Great British Bake Off" is so popular …

… and that's only what's happened in the NEWS.

This year, the company I work for moved offices, I went to Wales, Slough, Loughborough and London twice where I met Benedict Cumberbatch and Peter Capaldi, amongst others, got my heart broken by a young woman who not only blew me off on my own birthday after I asked her for her hand but subsequently buggered off to Norway to be with her hairy 17-stone woodcutter boyfriend (after wearing out the batteries in my sonic screwdriver with her cleavage !!), met three other former Doctor Who actors, two of which for the second time, got recognised by Jack Donnelly from "Atlantis", spent a lot of time with some fine fellow Whovians in the Burning Skies Cosplay group, saw my nephew start school, saw my brother-in-law set up his own business, saw my cousin announce she was having another baby, saw my sister-in-law actually have yet ANOTHER baby, got to put my arm around the goddess that is Jenna Coleman, went to see a lot of various films at the pictures ranging from art-house to superhero blockbusters to gentle dramas to spy thriller to Star Wars, drank about 300 pints of Guinness and about 50 bottles of whiskey, and travelled to a lot of places with a lot of people.

So, who am I going to say thanks to for the fact that I am ending yet another year somehow with my sanity still intact ?? Well, no need to name them all here, you all know who you are, thank you, and I love you all very much.

Let's see what 2016 has in store.

Happy New Year everyone !!

SEASONS GREETINGS … AGAIN

Isn’t it amazing at Christmas time ?? You see people indulging to such great extremes. There are sides to human nature which I think sometimes make you question the sanity of certain individuals. For instance, why is it that just before Christmas, you see people buying so much food, you would think that there is a major famine crisis impending. They buy so many loaves of bread you would think they were going to feed an army. Buying so much milk, you would think it’s used to feed a class of school kids for a week.

(That is if Margaret Thatcher hadn’t scrapped that of course).

And kids often get through so many selection boxes to send the shares of Cadburys, not to mention several other confectionery companies, though the roof. It is incredible that, in such a relatively short period, how much is bough and consumed. But talking of over-indulgence, did you know that the average person consumes around 7,000 calories on Christmas Day ?? That's enough to make that bloke from 'MAN vs FOOD' stop in his tracks and wince.

Attractive young girls stop male shoppers dead in their tracks as they wander through the department stores, asking if they have a special lady in their life that they want to buy a present for (to which the answer by the way, sadly, is still no !!). Their sole aim is to get you to buy an expensive bottle of perfume or some other item which will cost you a pretty penny.

Which they usually achieve by pumping the said products into your face with the force of a blunderbuss, having first seemingly applied it to their own mushes by means of a garden trowel. They give you such sweet talk as they look you in the eye and reveal their pearly white teeth. But only the really gullible would fall for their spiel, but then there are those who lean towards the criminally intended, such as those dodgy street sellers or those who exhibit their wares at car boot sales.

Believe me, there are characters out there who would make Arthur Daley and Del Boy Trotter look like small-time amateurs in comparison. Even burglars and thieves are probably doing more overtime because they think there is more booty to be found. All thanks to people foolish to leave wrapped presents on their car back seats.

Until recently, however, there was one feature of Christmas that filled me with absolute terror and dread. It genuinely made me shiver with fear whenever it was mentioned. It was the mould on the smoked salmon, the ARGOS sale advert during “Miracle on 34th Street”, the damp log on the fire ... the 'Works Do' ...

Christmas in Britain these days is almost completely ruined by the nature of office parties. The streets become overwhelmed with people who have drunk more liquid than a thirsty elephant owned by George Best and have managed to completely lose all sense of ability to walk in a straight line. And the atmosphere in every restaurant and pub in the country is utterly wrecked by those who order food not so much for its taste, but for its aerodynamic efficiency.

What’s more, it’s almost impossible to actually get anyone on the phone because they are either finding an outfit to ruin or trying to book an appointment with the hairdressers. There are people out there who put more effort into office parties than the actual family event itself a few days later. A few years ago I decided enough was enough ... and decided to get involved in organising one myself.

I thought it would have been like helping to organise my best mate's stag do, then I realised that THAT sort of night out – lots of projective vomit and silly hats - is as far likely to be removed from yours as well as mine. We really needed all office party stereotypes removed, and it was almost a bit like asking Stevie Wonder to organise the World Snooker Championship.

So we all went bowling instead. And my best mate's fiancé subsequently called their wedding off.

Thus, having subsequently handed responsibilities over to someone who actually knows what they're doing, our last last few Christmas Office bashes have been great, more fun than watching a wombat stuck in a washing machine, a great way to put another year of hard work behind us.

And the best bit of all, there was absolutely NO snogging or any bottom-photocopying involved ...

So, now all I need to do is shake off this three-day hangover, go and watch the new Star Wars movie and look forward to a brand new episode of 'Doctor Who' on Friday.

Then spend the next week in hibernation.

Merry Christmas Everybody !!

YOU SNOOZE, YOU LOSE

One of the reasons I do what I do as regards this blog is that I'm not really good at waking up. Seriously, I have nearly injured my hand turning off the alarm clock. On my bedside table you'll find eye covers, ear plugs, and a Jeremy Clarkson book. I don't read it first thing in the morning, of course; the book is to throw at the birds when they get too noisy. (Don’t worry the RSPB - it's only the paperback version).

For my birthday I once got an alarm clock that sang; 'Waking up is hard to do'. As if we didn't have reason enough to hate Neil Sedaka. I can't even sleep when the snooze button is set. Post-alarm-clock sleep is like a shower that will, at any moment, turn ice cold. I've always had trouble falling asleep anyway, something to do with those bedtime stories of yore...

"And the monsters came to overtake the city and make their homes in the closets of children everywhere. The end. Good night, son."

Chances are you've spent your day mumbling to co-workers, bumping into furniture and performing pedestrian chores. Your brain spends the daylight hours in a state of drowsy semi-consciousness, and only decides to spring into life when the lights go out. And ‘morning people’ really take the jam out of my doughnut. By the time you wake up, they've already jogged ten miles and rebuilt the patio.

"You're supposed to wake up at sunrise," they say, "like a rooster."

Rubbish, you’re not supposed to wake up at any time that isn’t natural. And if a rooster wakes me up at sunrise, you'll know exactly what I'm going to be having for breakfast that morning !!

Last week I went to a Doctor Who convention in London with a young woman who gets so little sleep herself owing to the crazy amount of sheer stuff she crams into her life it's frightening, and owing to the travel arrangements we had made, subsequently cancelled, then remade again, I had to haul my sorry carcass out of bed at 4am.

First, I didn't even know they made a 4 am; but as I lay in bed, eyes bleeding, EH EH EH EH, I started to wonder:

"What if I did go back to sleep ?? I'd make new friends..."

It was cold, too, one of those days when the blankets fuse to your body like an-over amorous shower curtain. It took 30 minutes to finally haul my sorry carcass into full consciousness.

Have you ever been so tired that you can't even get up to go the lavatory ?? You almost want to let it be and deal with it later. Maybe there's a market for this ... Presenting the new deep-sleep adult undergarment ... Yellow and blue makes green !!

My brother-in-law’s best friend Dave, father of twins, bragged about 'sleeping in' till 7 a.m. Let this be a lesson to you young people. When they say to use precautions, this is exactly what you're protecting yourself against. Dave's kids go off at any old hour, and he can't throw a exactly lob a book at them and not worry about taking heat from the RSPB.

And why, since we're on the subject, would anyone actually want to sleep like a baby ?? They wake up crying; they don't know where they are … It's like the life and times of Paul Gascoigne.

Fact: If the alarm clock woke you up this morning, you did not get enough sleep. And now you're being catty. There. It's been said. You almost can't blame the people at Starbucks.

"Yeah, gimme a triple espresso latte and, uh, serve it in a syringe."

Starbucks isn't the only pusher in town either. Whatchyou want, man, whatchyou want ?? We got Red Bull, Vivarin, Buzz Bites, Monster III and Pro-Plus. Then we skid away to our next appointment - no time to say goodbye, hello, I'm late, I'm late, I'm late. They say that the Native American Indians had no concept of time, that it was a gift along with alcohol, firearms, and Rock ‘n’ Roll.

The point being that there is little in life that can't be helped by eight hours sleep and a bowel movement. So ask not for whom the alarm clock buzzes; it buzzes for thee. I'll therefore leave you with these wise words of wisdom from The Beatles, namely a track from “Revolver”, aptly titled, “I’m Only Sleeping”;

When I wake up early in the morning,

Lift my head, I'm still yawning,

When I'm in the middle of a dream,

Stay in bed, float up stream.

Please don't wake me, no,

Don't shake me,

Leave me where I am,

I'm only sleeping.

Everybody seems to think I'm lazy,

I don't mind, I think they're crazy,

Running everywhere at such a speed,

Till they find, there's no need.

Never a truer word spoken, nighty-night !!

WEDDING WHEEL WOES

Last summer a friend of my sister was getting hitched to her long-term beloved just before he was setting off to finish his Army training prior to his tour of Iraq.

Admittedly, my role in the proceedings was as minimal as they come, (I didn't even get a bloody invite) but this still served to remind me that this whole business of getting married is more complicated than translating the instruction manual for the Chinese Space Shuttle. Into Klingon.

(The less said, of course, about my own pitiful attempts to even get remotely close to getting to the altar myself, the better).

This rather convoluted metaphor sprang from the fact that my brother-in-law and I were roped in to help get some cars sorted out for the big day. Wedding plans being wedding plans, family feuds had been commonplace, the caterer was adamant she wouldn’t do asparagus rolls, the vicar had said that unless the guest list was significantly trimmed down the church doors would have to be held shut with a crowbar, the marquee that was initially ordered had a brown lining and the planned honeymoon in Egypt was aborted for reasons nobody still knows about to this day.

Anyway, despite all this, surely getting some wheels sorted out would be the easiest part.

“Don't worry, my Dad works in the motor trade and I talk to uncooperative receptionists for a living. Any car in the world is a phone call away” I said. Like an idiot.

First of all, despite the fact that my old man actually WORKS for Aston Martin, it became apparent that his own colleagues couldn't organise an orgy at a strip club, which meant our first choice option was out of the window quicker than a roadrunner with a stick of dynamite wedged up his bottom trying to find his way out of a matchstick and sandpaper factory. Blindfolded. In the dark.

The man at Bentley trotted out a ridiculous message that, when decoded, indicated that the cost would be such that, in order to cover it, the wedding ceremony itself would have had to been held under the wheel arches.

Then the squeaky-voiced chap at Jaguar rather delightfully offered us up an XJR12, but considering this was an old barge of a car built during the last days of Ford ownership, the odds of it not breaking down on route to the church meant it was somewhat prudent to turn it down.

The very friendly young lady at BMW was delighted to be able to help, but at this point the bride somewhat huffily put her foot down, saying she’d rather turn up at the church in the back of a lorry than in a BMW.

As we began to grind our teeth to talcum powder in frustration, I suggested going down the ‘Top Gear’ route and ordering a bright lime green Lamborghini Aventador, but several glares and protocol put the knockers on this particular scheme. Then the groom suggested a hot air balloon, in case the wind got up and blew his future mother-in-law all the way to Tunisia. This was also shot down to such an extent the whole damn thing was nearly called off.

Finally, with no help from me, the unusual idea of going for a Range Rover surfaced. Yes, said Land Rover, they would be delighted to help. Then it got complicated …

“Would a red one do ??”

“No.”

“How about a green one ??”

“Yes, that would be super, thank you !!”

“It’s an SE model.”

“Ooh, even better.”

Then the bride piped up AGAIN, saying green was an unlucky colour for a wedding car and she didn’t want it.

“(sigh) Okay, what other colours have you got ??”

“Errrrm ... brown ??”

“Errrrm ... NO !!”

“We have one in white ??”

“Yes, yes, white would be perfect !!”

“It’s not an SE.”

At this point, we didn’t give two hoots what it was as long as it had some wheels and a method of propulsion capable of getting a young lady in a big white dress, along with her mother, two miles from a house in King’s Norton to a church in Northfield. An ox and cart would have done by this point. Various circuses were a little reticent about lending us an elephant. And we also failed to find anyone who even owns a camel, let alone someone who would let us tie some balloons to its testicles. The options kept coming and were just as quickly struck off.

"A horse and cart ?? What if it rains on the day ??"

"A steam engine, or a tractor ??"

"Errrr, the bride’s only meant to be fashionably late."

Even the suggestion of a good old fashioned Rolls Royce was determined to be ‘a bit naff’. It was then at this point, the best man suddenly stepped into the fray with a massive grin on his face and his mobile phone by his ear. He absolutely refused to tell us what he had planned; only that it would make everyone laugh.

This made the groom extremely worried. I still haven’t seen the wedding photos to this day, but I can’t help wondering whether or not it was a 1998 Nissan Sunny ZX-GT with go-faster stripes. If that was the case, his colleagues will probably still be wondering why he keeps turning up for work unable to digest solid food and with his head still stuck on back-to-front …

If I ever get married, I'm turning up in a go-kart.

THE RANTING BRUMMIE PRESENTS: "THE DISSEMINATION" (A SHORT STORY)

It was a dark night. The darkest night there had ever been, in fact. The moon had attempted to brighten the sky, but had eventually given up and moved to Alpha Centauri. The tides had not noticed - yet. Hopkins could see the dim flicker of a car's headlights coming towards him, gathering speed in an effort to crush him. 

He leapt out of the way just in time, and the headlights sped past, almost clipping his ear. It was a further ten minutes before the rest of the car arrived. Campbell stepped out of the car and shook Hopkins's hand. "Sorry I'm late," he explained, "But my headlights flew off without me and I couldn't see where the hell I was going."

"It's always the same with Hondas", commiserated Hopkins.

"Anyway, down to business..." started Campbell, but his voice broke off. He then reattached it using a paper clip. Hopkins shivered, and the night seemed to grow even darker. Somewhere an owl hooted, but it wasn't anywhere near them so it didn't really matter.

"Business..." he mumbled, looking at the floor. "Must we?"

"It must be done", replied Campbell. "I must disseminate essential information. That is my purpose."

"OK. Then take this." Hopkins handed Campbell a flat board, as used in games like Monopoly, Chess and Polo. "I can help you no further." And with that, he was gone. Campbell stared at the board. The side closest to his eyes was marked with roman numerals. The other sides were identical, except that one had letters on it and the other two were covered in felt.

"What the hell is thing? How will this aid me in the dissemination of essential information? What does Christopher Biggins do these days?" These questions raced through Campbell's mind, and the one about Biggins won. Although it was a photo finish.

But before these questions could be answered, the sea noticed that the moon had gone after reading an article about it in 'New Scientist'. The tides disrupted, and a gigantic tidal wave roared over the world. Campbell saw the huge mass of water bearing down on him, and he knew that he was doomed. But - as the wave was about to hit him, he held the board over his head out of desperation.

The water hit it, and dispersed either side of him. Saved, he sat on the board and floated off on the huge lake that was once England. He knew what he must do - find survivors, and disseminate essential information to them. Campbell floated for hours, the board supporting his weight on the new ocean that had so rudely knackered England. Eventually he came to a small, man-made platform in the sea. It was smaller than an oil rig, yet bigger than a vinegar bottle. A winch was lowered down to him, and he was raised aboard. He was greeted by a small Chinese man.

"Greetings, O Stranger. I am Onli Wun Lung, master of the cult of Naxos."

"I am Campbell" replied Campbell, because he was.

"The cult of Naxos has been expecting this flood. It was foretold in the Book of All Things," said the Chinaman, holding up an Argos catalogue.

"I see", said Campbell, because he could. In fact, his eyesight was very good.

"Come, join my disciples for a meal", continued the Chinaman, "Do you like steak?".

"Yes, I do", answered Campbell, because he did. Medium rare, usually.

The chinaman led Campbell up a spiralling staircase, into what passed for a dining room. Five young women sat round the table, and stared at the men as they entered. The Chinaman motioned for Campbell to sit down, and the motion was carried 6 to 1. After the Chinaman had left to prepare the meal, Campbell cleared his throat and turned to his eating companions.

"What the bloody Hell's going on round here, then?", he asked.

"We are members of the Cult of Naxos, unfortunately", said the woman closest to him.

"Eh? Why don't you just escape?" asked Campbell, as it seemed important at the time.

"Because our feet are cemented into the floor", answered another of the women.

"I can see how that would make running away a problem," said a concerned Campbell, "What is this Naxos thing anyway?"

"The Master, Onli Wun Lung, worships those cheap classical music CD's that clutter up record shops. This platform is a testament to his faith." Campbell was still confused, only more so.

"But where did he get the money to build it?" he asked.

"He invented the original format for Noel's House Party," replied the third woman on the left.

"That bastard!!" screamed Campbell, enraged. By the time the Chinaman had returned with the meal, Campbell was deep in thought.

"What are you thinking, O honoured guest?" inquired Onli Wun.

"I'm thinking of an old paintbrush on a staircase, and I don't know why," replied Campbell.

"Never mind, here is the meal" said the Chinaman, briskly. "And afterwards, I will give you a huge sum of money for no particluar reason, O honoured guest."

"Thanks ... " replied Campbell, his anger subsiding.

"But, before the meal, I must play this Modern Jazz Quartet record to honour Naxos," stated the Chinaman, in an overtly holy manner. Campbell screamed, leapt from the window, and paddled off on the board as fast as he could. He paddled for what seemed like horses, but were in fact hours. Eventually he fell asleep, and the board continued drifting. He awoke on a beach, the board still beneath him. The felt was soaked, and had sand stuck to it. Which was a shame. He looked up to see two pallid men dressed in purple robes standing above him.

"Who the hell are you?" he asked, more politely than you might expect.

"We are the Observers. We watch all. We have semi-infinite powers, which you cannot begin to understand. You are as an amoeba to us." replied one of the pasty fellows.

"Eh? Where is this place?" inquired Campbell, like the rapscallion he is.

"You could not understand, for you are as an amoeba." an observer replied. Campbell stood up and brushed the sand from the board's felt.

"Why do you keep saying I am as an amoeba?"

"You could never hope to understand our ways, for you are as an amoeba."

"It makes you feel big, saying that, doesn't it?"

"We have no feelings in the same way as you do, amoeba-like one. We are vastly removed from such inferior notions as arrogance and pride."

The other observer shot Campbell a glance, using an old cannon. "You're as an amoeba!" he giggled.

"Oh shut up," said Campbell. "Have you got anything to eat? I'm starving." An observer handed Campbell a bowl full of coloured pills.

"This is the food we eat. You could not possibly comprehend, for you are as an amoeba." Campbell took the bowl.

"Wow! Is one of these pills the nutritional equivalent of a full meal? Or will a single one last me a whole week?" he asked. An observer shook his head.

"Er.. .no. You have to eat a whole bowl." the other observer chipped in, "Three times a day, usually. We use this device called a spoon!" he added. A spoon was handed to Campbell, as you might well expect.

"Hmmm. Thanks," he said, obviously unimpressed. The observers looked distraught. Then one whispered, "Amoeba!" and they started giggling and cheered up a bit. After Campbell had eaten the bowl of pills, he decided to ask more questions. This was probably a good idea.

"So... Observed anything good lately?" he asked.

"Everything has been observed by us. We are aware of your purpose." came the enigmatic reply.

"What? You know of my mission to disseminate essential information?" Campbell asked, as excited as a little boy with a new cog.

"Yes. Your information must be disseminated to the remaining populace of the Earth. You can use our phone, if you like." Campbell called the only remaining radio station in the world, who offered him a five-minute slot after the Golden Oldies hour. And after Marvin Gaye's 'Sexual Healing', Campbell spoke, and those with radios listened.

"Ignorance can always negate sanity. Maybe, eventually, lunatics lose sight of our threats."

The speech was made; few listened, and fewer still understood. Most thought he was being secretly ironic or something. But the essential information had been disseminated - only time would tell if it would help.

The observers listened to the message, and knew it's true meaning. They remained silent for a moment, then eventually one finally decided to speak up.

"That phone call is going to cost us a fucking fortune … "

THE END

HERE, INCY-WINCY ...

Yes folks, Summer is over, the sun failed to shine on TV or in the sky for that matter, yet Autumn itself still presents new opportunities, everyone is still in t-shirts and shorts for as long as they can manage, music festivals are still on, the football season is back up and running, and if you’re embarking on a new relationship, it’s a still good time to be loved up as well … lucky bastards !!

However, Autumn is also the very worst time of year, for one simple reason ... it's house spider season.

Which means very year, right about now, thousands of the godless eight-legged little buggers emerge from the bowels of hell with the sole intention of inflicting torment on the unwary. To a committed arachnophobe like me, house spider season is like living inside a live-action version of the classic 1990's computer game “DOOM”. My bedroom is transformed into a sort of white-knuckle ride-cum ghost house in which dropping your guard, even for a moment, can have dire, unimaginable consequences.

A while ago for instance, after a stint at the pub, I woke at 04:00 am for a dozy trip to the lavatory. As I sat there, blearily performing the necessaries, in the dark, a spider the size of a small dog unexpectedly crawled out from behind the toilet and scampered across my bare right foot.

I reacted like I'd been blasted in the coccyx with a taser. Sheer blind panic took control of my body before the need to ‘stop going’ had even registered in my brain. You can imagine the aftermath.

Actually, no, don't imagine the aftermath ...

Many years ago, when I was a student, I was helping to prepare a meal for a video we were shooting in a hall of residence kitchen, when some demented jester ran in from the garden carrying a massive spider he'd found outside. Having made a couple of the girls scream, he then decided to lunge with it, open-handed, in my general direction.

Without even thinking, I swiped at his face with the equally enormous and dangerously sharp kitchen knife I was holding in a desperate bid to stave him and his eight-legged friend off.

Fortunately, I missed him, and then UNFORTUNATELY it meant that I had to spend the next four and a half hours listening to him self-righteously bleating on and on and on and on and on and on about how I very nearly killed him and how he was only having a laugh. I just shrugged back to him; “Don't startle someone with a knife in their hand unless you're prepared to face the consequences, you doughnut. Next time you might not be so lucky.” I said.

And please don’t use this as an excuse to mark me down as a complete and utter wuss. I don’t find snakes or rats to be scary and there are people who are utterly terrified of them. People can be scared of harmless things like water or totally random things like the number thirteen. Fear of spiders or snakes isn't a choice, but an evolutionary trait that some have and some don't, just as some people can roll their tongues and others can't.

Don’t get me wrong, if faced with the prospect of tackling a spider, and particularly if I happen to be in the presence of a lady who is so wracked with fear that she has had her own panic room built to avoid them, then I will grudgingly wade into action armed with something suitably solid in order to smash it out of existence … an army boot for instance.

And even that still probably wouldn't be heroic enough to persuade her to be my girlfriend …

Oh, and please note that I certainly AM authorising the use of lethal force as a default option. There is NO excuse for ANY of this messing around with pint glasses and sheets of card and 'putting him back outside'. He'll just crawl straight back IN again, stupid !!

I mean, if an escaped prison convict climbed in through your bedroom window you wouldn't stick a massive pint glass over his head and 'put him back in the garden' would you ?? You wouldn't feel safe until you saw him in handcuffs and with blood running down his nose after a good beating from the long arm of the law. It's the same with spiders. If it's not been reduced to a gritty, twitching little smear and then flushed down the bog encased in several layers of toilet roll, it's not been dealt with at all.

All of which prompts the question of why the Army doesn't get involved; think about it, a dedicated anti-arachnid task-force that could turn up at your home in the dead of night and use a rubber mallet to splat that absolute whopper that ran under the cupboard an hour ago and has left you unable to sleep ever since.

Failing that, I recommend having some dynamite and a chainsaw handy until next Spring.

Sweet dreams, everyone.

THE SOUND OF MUSIC

Being a child of the 80's, and a teenager of the 90's, in other words, when music was last any good [and YES Mr Cowell, I am point the finger of blame squarely in your smug, inauthentic direction !!] I remember the days when carefully compiling an EMI C90 cassette of personally selected tunes for a friend or potential love interest was a key, almost holy bonding moment in almost any kind of relationship, romantic or platonic.

You'd meticulously assemble a collection of your favourite tunes then spend an hour painstakingly inking the titles and artist names on the inlay card, which never had enough room on it anyway, unless you scratched away in tiny capitals as though manually typesetting a newspaper press aimed at squinty-faced ants working in a dollhouse ... on the moon.

It took effort, craftsmanship and patience. It was a specially-tailored gift. It showed that you genuinely cared and that the other person really mattered a great deal to you.

Making a compilation for a friend was one thing. Assembling a tape for someone you wanted to go out with romantically was something else entirely; a real high-wire-with-a-bed-of-nails-surrounded-by-a-moat-filled-with-starving-alligators-replacing-the-safety-net act. Open with something earnestly romantic and you'd mark yourself out as a soppy, anti-sexual drip. Go the other way, spicing up the playlist with an explicit R&B tune in which the protagonist lists 5,826 assorted tricks he can perform with his tongue and you'd still fail ... only twice as quickly.

And if you somehow avoided soppy ballads entirely, and concentrated instead on showcasing how radical and eclectic your musical tastes were by segueing NewOrder and Led Zeppelin into a self-consciously difficult 19-minute electronic Kraftwerk epic which sounded like someone hitting a gigantic metal pig with a damp phonebook while a broken synthesizer slowly asks for directions to the kettle factory ... then you'd totally alienate them completely and forever.

Alternatively there was still the radio, but what if the all-important signature tune that signified the moment to go for it was suddenly replaced with a breaking news bulletin - specifically a live police press conference in which two cardigan-shod parents tearfully begged for the safe return of their daughter’s missing and very much beloved pet hamster Mr Snuffles ??

As mood-killers go, it would be on a par with looking across at your red-hot date to discover she had suddenly and impossibly sprouted the face of Alan Titchmarsh, and was looking back at you, licking his lips whilst grinning madly and reciting dirty limericks in a high-pitched voice.

But then, technological progress muffed it all up.

First of all, CD’s smothered cassettes. Then 50% of 18-24-year-olds started running their own DJ night, which was just like compiling a tape minus the faffing around with the inlay card, except you had to take it even more seriously and pretend you were cool by designing your own sleeves with a bunch of felt-tip pens.

And then finally, everyone got iPods, effectively granting control to Steve Jobs and his pals over their existing musical collection allowing a total and almost Rupert Murdoch-like dictatorial monopoly over their own ears.

Compilation tapes were dead ... or WERE they ??

The other week I finally checked out Spotify. If you're not familiar with it, it's basically a cross between iTunes and a customisable online radio station.

I'd heard various people raving about it and didn't entirely grasp why, until I realised that it meant that you could compile a playlist, then generate a URL for others to click on. It's like being able to mass-produce a compilation tape in minutes. OK, it's broken up with irritating adverts now and then, but hey, it's easy to use and seems to work quite well.

What this means is I'm suddenly in a position to offer you, dear reader, a free compilation tape. But rather than any old tape, I've rustled up a special challenge: Summer's here, so consequently many of you will be embarking upon thrilling new romances. Others will be cementing existing ones. But don’t forget that passion can be fleeting.

So here’s the gig. Beckon over your beloved. Dim the lights. Get yourselves in the mood, press play, and prepare to test your ardour to its very limits. The first couple to successfully make out through my entire playlist wins a trophy or something.

If that's too much, total respect will still be accorded to anyone who manages to kiss and cuddle for the entire duration of the "Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding In Your Mind Remix" of Oasis’s “Falling Down”, and then uploads the evidence to YouTube.

It won't be easy. But if you manage to make it to the end, then congratulations: you've proved that your love will abide through the ages. Oh, and as a bonus, why not pick one of the entries for the first dance at your wedding.

That is, if you CAN actually bear watching all your guests drunkenly doing a heavy-metal version of the Macarena`, and then violently throwing up.

WHAT THE FOX ??

Let me make one thing perfectly clear here. Despite the efforts of Basil Brush, Tails from the 'Sonic the Hedgehog' games, Walt Disney and George Clooney, the fox is NOT, never has, and never will be a cuddly-wuddly, furry-wurry orange puppy dog with doe eyes and a waggly tail. What it actually is, is a rabid, disease-ridden wolf with the morals of a psychopath and the teeth of a great white shark.

I write this because a while ago now, whilst I was doing something unusual - watching a programme on Channel 5 - a whole bunch of people with furry facial fungus managed to single-handedly talk me out of a long-held belief that we should maintain the current ban on fox hunting with hounds.

I can't remember what the programme was called but I do recall vaguely fancying Kirsty Young, the Scottish presenteress. Anyway, amongst a studio audience a guest speaker was talking about whether it's right to chase furry-wurry widdle foxes and their babies in the name of both sport and tradition.

The pro-hunting group actually talked very sensibly and quite thoughtfully about how the fox was at the top of the food chain and that left to it's own devices, it would take over the woods, which they argued would end up looking like Stalag Luft III after Charles Bronson had been left alone with the gardening tools.

Farmers would have to end up spending all the money that Angela Merckel's EU quotas have left them with on huts that would require trained mice to act as sentries. Shooting may cause a cruel and painful wound. Poison could accidentally take out a baby hedgehog or someone's dog, and traps are best used for rats and mice. I found myself nodding in agreement but then … then … then it was the turn of the Weird Beards.

Surely, they'd come up with an equally constructive, well-written and a fair, unbiased counterpoint that would assertively present their side of the case, and would re-assert my views again ??

Err, no.

Instead, they barracked, shouted aimlessly and made loads of noise. They went on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on about how the evil hounds tear the innocent fox apart limb from and that the people who indulge in this sport may have voted for UKIP.

In just a few minutes, they had made almost all of my bodily fluids come to the boil, my teeth had been ground to talcum powder and steam was pouring out of my ears and nostrils. I followed this up by ripping my settee to pieces and bit whole chunks out of my coffee table. My skin might even have begun to turn green.

If I see a fox now, I'm filled with an almost uncontrollable desire to run it down. Not kill it, you understand. Just give it a dig it for having the lousiest of human friends on Planet Earth.

It's much the same deal with cars. Looking through a list of what is coming out this year, any right thinking motoring person would have to say that things have gotten, and are getting, rather good.

The BMW M5, for example, has a 400 horsepower 4.4-litre V8 which enables it to accelerate from 0-60mph in 5.2 seconds. The Jaguar XJR, has a twin supercharged V8, comes with enough oomph to snap a bra strap at 200 paces. It reaches 60mph from rest in 5.3 seconds. And then the Porsche 911, after a major facelift has a water cooled flat six that endows it with a top speed of 170 mph. As well as this, Ford is soon to launch a Cosworth version of the Focus, so expect to see one break the windows of your neighbour's house soon.

Now obviously, the little boy in all of us will be excited by the motor industries relentless quest to headbutt the horizon but can I urge our careful side to emerge here. I live near some very traffic-heavy roads and I genuinely worry that someone will die one day, courtesy of someone speeding. Yet I have seen people going along at way over 40mph.

I dread the day when my eventual children (that is if I ever solve the interminable problem of finding someone actually willing to conceive and give birth to them) start riding bikes because they're going to have to mix it with people in what could well be barely sub-sonic Volvos, Honda, Fords and Audis.

Now, I love speed, the thrill of cornering at speed and driving quickly, but if I had to try and argue the case for high-performance motoring on a TV debating programme, I would be truly and utterly stuck, I mean, we’re living in an era where people are so quick to profess offence I'm amazed this blog hasn't landed me in Google+'s equivalent of Guantanamo Bay. It’s weird to be living in a world in which people are encouraging the police to arrest Katie Hopkins for something she tweeted.

And that is a very, very slippery slope. indeed.

And now that Top Gear is going to be presented by someone with the same hair colour as Mr Fox, this only means one thing.

Fox crossings.

The Earth is doomed …

THINGS I'VE LEARNED FROM TV ...

* During all police investigations, it will be necessary to visit a lap dancing club at least once.

* When they are alone, all foreigners prefer to speak English to each other.

* If being chased through town, you can usually take cover in a parade - at any time of year ...

* All beds have special L-shaped cover sheets which reach up to the armpit level on a woman but only to the waist level on the man lying beside her.

* The Chief of Police will almost always suspend his star detective - or give him 48 hours to finish the job.

* All grocery bags contain at least one stick of French bread.

* It's easy for anyone to land a plane providing there is someone to talk you down.

* The ventilation system of any building is the perfect hiding place - no one will ever think of looking for you in there and you can travel to any other part of the building undetected.

* Police departments give their officers personality tests to make sure they are deliberately assigned to a partner who is their polar opposite.

* The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window in Paris.

* If you need to reload your gun, you will always have more ammunition, even if you haven't been carrying any before now.

* You are very likely to survive any battle in any war unless you make the mistake of showing someone a picture of your sweetheart back home.

* Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German officer, it will not be necessary to speak the language - simply using a German accent will do.

* If your town is threatened by an imminent natural disaster or killer beast, the mayor's first concern will be the tourist trade or his forthcoming art exhibition.

* A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds.

* When paying for a taxi, don't look at your wallet as you take out a bill just grab one at random and hand it over. It will always be the exact fare.

* Kitchens don't have light switches. When entering a kitchen at night, you should open the fridge door and use that as a light instead.

* If staying in a haunted house, women should investigate any strange noises in their most revealing underwear.

* Mothers routinely cook eggs, bacon and waffles for their family every morning even though their husband and children never have time to eat it.

* Cars that crash will almost always burst into flames.

* All telephone numbers in America begin with the digits 555.

* A single match will be sufficient to light up a room the size of Wembley Stadium.

* Medieval peasants all had perfect teeth.

* Any person waking from a nightmare will sit bolt upright and pant sweatily.

* It is not necessary to hello or goodbye when beginning or ending phone conversations.

* Even when driving down a perfectly straight road, it is necessary to turn the wheel vigorously from left to right every few moments.

* It is always possible to park directly outside the building you are visiting.

* A detective can only solve a case once he has been suspended from duty.

* It does not matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts - your enemies will patiently attack you one by one by dancing around in a threatening manner until you have knocked out all their predecessors.

* When a person is knocked unconscious by a blow to the head, they will never suffer a concussion or brain damage.

* No-one ever involved in a car chase, hijacking, explosion, volcanic eruption or alien invasion will ever go into shock.

* Once applied, lipstick will never rub off - even while scuba diving.

* You can always find a chainsaw when you need one.

* Any lock can be picked by a credit card or a paper clip in seconds - unless it's the door to a burning building with a child trapped inside.

DIGITAL GENYSYS

When I edited my workplace's old company newsletter, I once wrote a column entitled "I HATE MACS".

No, it wasn't about my bias against plastic rainwear, and whilst I might have called it a column, it was actually an unbroken 800-word rant against Steve Jobs. I claimed they were "glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy-cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work."

And so this went on: "The better-designed and more ubiquitous they become, the more I dislike them ... I don't care if every iPad comes with a magic button on the side that makes it vomit 24-carat gold coins, styles my hair for me and plays Elvis Presley songs on the bongos. I'm not buying one”. And so on and so forth.

They supposedly make you feel good, Apple products. The little touches: the brushed aluminium finish, the rounded corners, the strokeable screens, the satisfying clunk as you fold a Macbook shut - it's serene. Untroubled. A bit like being on Valium.

Until, that is, you try to do something Apple doesn't want you to do. At which point you realise your shiny chum isn't on your side. It doesn't even understand sides. Only Apple: always Apple.

Here's a scenario: you've got a spanking, shiny new iPhone with loads of music on it. And you've got a laptop with a new album on it. You want to put the new album on your new phone. But you can't just hook them up and simply drag-and-drop the files like you could with, ooh, almost any other software and device in the known bloody universe.

Instead, Apple insists you go through iTunes.

Microsoft gets a lot of stick these days for producing clunky software. But even during the dark days of that annoying animated paperclip, they never hurled out anything as abominable as iTunes - a hideous online binary carbuncle that really takes the jam out of my doughnut, transforming the sparkling world of music into a bleak, stark, un-cooperative spreadsheet.

Plug your old Apple iPhone into your new Apple Macbook for the first time, and because the two machines haven't been formally introduced, iTunes will babble about "syncing" one with the other. It claims it simply MUST delete everything from the old phone before putting any new stuff on it.

Why ?? It won't tell you. It'll just cheerfully ask if you want to proceed, like a robot butler that can't understand why you're crying more than a “Britain’s Got Talent” contestant. No one uses terms like "sync" in real life. Not even C3PO or the Daleks. If I sync my DVD collection with yours, what will I end up with, two copies of “Santa Claus the Movie” ??

Using iTunes is like trying to fire a piece of limp spaghetti through a keyhole from a cannon whilst wearing a pair of boxing gloves and listening to white noise though headphones.

The "sync" malarkey is a deception, which pretends to be making your life easier, when it's actually all about wresting control from you. If you could freely transfer any file you wanted onto your gadget, Apple might conceivably lose out on a few molecules of money. So rather than risk that, they'll choose - every single time - to restrict your options, without so much as blinking.

Sure, you can get around the irritating sync-issue by using third-party software, but doing so requires a degree-level knowledge of faff and brainwork akin to solving that famous children’s logic problem about a farmer ferrying a load of grain, a fox and a chicken across a river without it all ending in blood, feathers and death.

And even if you find it easy, it's a problem Apple doesn’t want you to solve. They want you to give up and go back to dumbly stroking that shiny screen, pausing intermittently to remember to breathe.

Every Apple commercial makes a huge play of how user-friendly their devices are. But it's a superficial friendship. They won't even give you a lead long enough to use your phone while it's charging, so if it rings you have to crawl on your hands and knees like a dog. This is why I have a Samsung MP3 player, a Sagem mobile phone (which BTW is so old it runs on coal and is charges via means of fossil fuel and an old brass boiler called “Bessie”) and a Windows PC.

Sure, I could easily have an iPhone or a MacBook Pro, and could very easily love them. But I would never feel like actually I own them. More like I'm renting them, from Skynet ....

NIGHT VERSIONS

I watched the movie “INCPETION” for the first time last week, and it reminded me what funny things dreams are. Everyone knows two things about dreams, namely that: 1) other people's dreams are dull, 2) how much Steven Moffat ripped it off for last years "DOCTOR WHO" Christmas special, and 3) how everyone who has unusual ones are going to tell you about them anyway.

And as they burble on and on about how they dreamt they were trying to build a windmill with Chuck Norris, but his hands were made of biscuits, or the time you and Superman had a fight on a space station, it's hard not to fall asleep and start dreaming yourself: dreaming of a future in which the anecdote has finished and their face has stopped talking and their body's gone away …

But maybe in future they won't have to tell you about it at all. They'll just play it to you on their iPhone. Surely it will soon be possible to create a device or an app that records our dreams and plays them back later at your own leisure.

Obviously, the reality is 99% less exciting than it initially appears. It certainly won't be a magic pipe you stick in your ear that etches your wildest imaginings directly onto a Blu-Ray disc for you to enjoy boring your friends with later.

First, there’s the business of capturing them, which all boils down to neurons. After studying the brains of people with electronic implants buried deep in their noggins, a group of boffins at New York University** discovered that certain groups of neurons 'lit up' when he asked his subjects to think about specific things, such as Marilyn Monroe or the Eiffel Tower.

Therefore, by studying the patterns generated, it should be possible to work out whether they were dreaming about 1950's movie starlets or global landmarks. In other words, the stuff that dreams are made of.

And it probably turns out to be a few blips on a chart.

So the 'dream recordings' will probably come in the form of an underwhelming visual transcript - a graph with a bunch of squiggly lines on it. Brilliant if, like James May from "TOP GEAR", you dream about nothing but graphs - but hardly "Avatar II", not that I actually want to see that film ever get made, by the way.

Mind you, real dreams wouldn’t make great movies anyway. For one thing, the continuity is all over the shop. One minute you're helping the cast of "21 JUMP STREET" battle a giant robotic Charlton Heston in a barn with an old CB radio, the next you're trying to impress a half-naked Jenna Coleman by climbing Everest using nothing but your teeth.

Even the weirdest episode of "DOCTOR WHO" makes more sense than that.

And most of the time, dreams are not even that interesting. The majority of my dreams are unbelievably, boringly pedestrian. Samuel Coleridge famously dreamt the epic poem "KUBLA KHAN" in its entirety, and upon awakening, immediately began scribbling it down line by line, only to be interrupted by a man from the nearby village of Porlock, who detained him with some mundane, petty chore for an hour, after which he could no longer remember the words.

That one might have been worth recording. But right now the best we'd probably get is an ITV pay-per-view channel on which Peter Andre dreams about his favourite sandwich fillings, Kerry Katona re-records all her old Atomic Kitten songs in G-minor, or Jedward take turns to sneeze inside a terrifying, hairy-walled cave.

Perhaps more worryingly, it would only be a matter of time until Simon Cowell hooked up the dream recorder to Twitter or Facebook, making it possible to enjoy live dream-tweets from Olly Miurs in which he makes approximately 50% less sense than he does while he's awake.

And from there, it's surely only a short step to some kind of reverse-engineering system via which ideas and suggestions can be planted inside your dreams while you're still asleep, which probably means in-dream product placement. So next time you try to climb Everest with your teeth, you'll have the great minty taste of Colgate in your mouth as you do so. And Jenna Coleman will be fully clothed with the latest knitwear line from NEXT.

Or maybe the advertising won't even be that subtle. Maybe all your future dreams will simply consist of a gigantic mouth shouting the words DIET COKE over and over until you wake up in a cold sweat with tears streaming down your face, and you immediately find yourself buying a can of Diet Coke from the shop in your slippers and dressing gown, hands quivering and trembling, without really understanding why.

In fact, yes.

That's PRECISELY what's going to happen.

MY WORD IS MY [JAMES] BOND

[DISCLAIMER: This article has been written under the influence of whisky and emotional stress. Also "SKYFALL" was being shown on ITV2 for about the ten millionth time tonight ...]

Timothy Dalton is the best actor to have ever played James Bond.

There, I said it. I'm not ashamed. Although I suppose I'll have to back that statement up with a pretty compelling argument. So why do I think Timothy Dalton was the best Bond? Because when The Living Daylights came out in 1987, it was a revelation.

Compelling enough for you? Don't worry, it's not as weird as it sounds.

I was raised on James Bond, perhaps as much as Doctor Who, if not more. I can't remember which film I saw first, but it was probably an old Connery one on TV, perhaps Goldfinger or Dr. No. I wasn't allowed to watch R-rated movies at the time, so I had to get my fill of sex and violence from pre-PG13 PG films. And the Bond films were an excellent source.

Somehow, they were titillating yet family friendly at the same time. There was an excitement to them, but you didn't get that flush of embarrassment while watching them with your parents. (It helped that I really didn't grasp the subversiveness of calling a film Octopussy at the time.)

Even though my first Bond was a Connery, I remember my formative favourite incarnation of the spy being Roger Moore. And I have to say, when they retired his licence to kill, along with his wig, I was highly sceptical that anyone could fill his orthopaedic shoes.

Enter Timothy Dalton.

For me, The Living Daylights was a jolt of adrenaline; it made me appreciate film as a visceral thrill. This was a more adult Bond, and it made me feel like a grownup movie-watcher.

Daylights wasn't so much a re-imagining of the series as it was a re-writing. It had all the hallmarks of a classic Bond film: amazing stunts (Skydiving! Skiing!), a tricked out Aston Martin, cool gadgets, an over-the-top villain (but not TOO over-the-top), and a creepy henchman who doesn't say much. It also managed to incorporate an element of humour without crossing over into parody (although, in retrospect, the cello case sled scene is pretty silly).

But these elements felt fresh when combined with a more serious tone and an infusion of Dalton blood. After the geriatric antics of A View To A Kill, it brought some respect back to Bond.

People have made such a big deal about Daniel Craig's gritty, more realistic portrayal of the spy who loved me in Casino Royale, but those people also forget - Timothy Dalton did it first. Dalton's Bond, at the time, was considered the most similar to Ian Fleming's creation, and thankfully moved the series away from the high level camp of the Moore films. This was something that wasn't lost on 7 year-old me.

His Bond's reaction to the death of a fellow MI6 agent is spectacular. In the other films, a minor character being killed would result in Connery or Moore arching an eyebrow and then moving on. Here though, it’s enough to enrage the man (I pity that balloon), especially since he’s figured out the villains are playing him and MI6 for suckers and they basically wasted a good agent to try and sucker him some more.

In Licence to Kill, in the wake of Bond finding his best friend's new wife murdered, the film hinges entirely on Bond being affected enough to quit MI6 and go on a revenge spree. Again, the arched brow approach wouldn’t have worked here. Coupled with the knowledge that Bond is basically seeing his own wedding day replayed before his eyes with a different cast of characters (Good friends, no less) and you’ve really got an emotional powderkeg in Bond.

Nothing could satify him but revenge on the man who hurt his mates. With the exception of Craig, I cannot see Connery, Moore or Brosnan carrying out the role of a psychologically damaged rouge agent bent on killing for the sole purpose of killing.

To me, Licence to Kill is the film Diamonds are Forever should have been. Connery seems largely disinterested throughout, and there’s no tension at all and no reference to his wife's death in the previous film, the largely forgettable On Her Majesty's Secret Service. When he meets face-to-face with Charles Gray’s Blofeld, you'd have thought the writers would have put in a line like, "Hey, James, you do remember that this is the guy who machine-gunned your wife to death in the film before, right?"

Nope, but Dalton did. When Della throws her garter at Bond, teasing him, "the one who catches this is the next one to..." Bond looks visibly pained; when Della asks Felix about it, Felix makes a short, sad reference to Bond once having been married, "but that was a long time ago." Dalton just nails it. In a brief but compelling moment you see Bond's anguish pierce his happiness for his friend, and it sets up the rest of the film perfectly.

As Judi Dench's 'M' herself puts it in Quantum of Solace; "It'd be a pretty cold bastard who didn't want revenge for the death of someone he loved ..."

I for one, certainly would.

Dalton was, and still is, criminally underrated as Bond. It’s a bit annoying to me that when polls are done of the best Bond, Dalton is always ranked low, sometimes under Lazenby. Really? Lazenby wasn’t terrible, but there’s no universe where Dalton shouldn’t be at least in 4th place.

Hopefully Craig’s Dalton-like interpretation of Bond allows for re-evaluation of Dalton’s tenure, and those critical of him can take a step back and see that he had it right, but audiences at the time just weren’t ready.

Those who were used to Moore’s comic interpretation were horrified at the dark menace Dalton brought to Bond. It's not that other Bonds have not exhibited brutal acts before, (Sean Connery shooting a defenceless man in Dr. No or Roger Moore pushing a car over a cliff with a killer trapped inside in For Your Eyes Only, where Moore dumps a wheel chair “Blofeld” in a large hole but it was so comically done, that you feel no sense of violence, just hilarity).

But in Dalton, you see the darkness, the violence, and you are hit with the realisation that Dalton’s Bond is no different from the people he killed. They are all the same ruthless murderers who just found themselves on different sides of the coin.

Unfortunately, people weren't ready for it, as evidenced by the return to a lighter tone with successive films. Dalton was replaced by that Irish bloke from Remington Steele and we wouldn't see another hard-edged Bond until Daniel Craig in 2006.

Sure, there are better Bond movies, but Dalton is the best Bond. He wasn't as lecherous as Connery, as smug as Moore, or as lethargic as Lazenby. He made the character more human, elevating him above a persona, a fantasy aspired to by boys (and, to be honest, a lot of men as well). His charm was less of an affectation, less of a put-on. He was the most human. Even at 7 years-old, I could sense this.

And that's why nobody does it better.

For those of you who feel Dalton is just a slightly larger blip on the Bond radar than George Lazenby, have I convinced you to give him another shot? Or was I just exposed to these films at a critical time in my cinematic development, and therefore biased?

No, I can unequivocally say that they stand up for me, at least as well as any of the Bond films. If you look past the late 80's trappings, you're left with two very strong entries in the James Bond canon, as well as the most successful on-screen portrayal of the literary character ever.

I look forward with baited breath for SPECTRE, though …

GARDEN MOANS

Did you know 27% of male heart-attack victims are struck down while cutting the grass ?? What, you didn’t ?? That’s because it's not true, I just made it up. But I bet the real figure is huge.

I recently spent a (what was supposed to be lazy) Bank Holiday off chopping down a tree, laying slabs and getting covered in mud and cement dust as a result. What the garden now looks like isn’t that much different to how it started either. According to another recent bit of mysteriously-obtained statistics, 2.2 million of the new homes built in Britain this year will not have a private garden. This is because developers are building lots of flats and - I never would have guessed this - the likelihood of having a garden is greater for larger detached dwellings than flats.

I believe there is another way of looking at this. If people are paving over their front lawns and selling their back gardens to Bryant and Barratt, it must mean they value a car-parking space and an extra bit of dosh more than they value spending half their weekend huffing and puffing behind a lawnmower. Clearly, some people plainly don’t like having a garden, and I can understand why. It’s because once you start gardening, there is no end, no point at which you can say, “It’s finished”, unlike when you’re painting or redecorating the front room, for example.

First of all, there’s the bothersome business of choosing from a vast array of plants, all of which have horrendously-complicated Latin names so that the people who work in garden centres can laugh in your face when you get it wrong. Flustered, you will make a panic purchase of something that is pink and won’t grow in your particular garden because it’s not north-facing, or the soil is too acidic, or the wind’s too strong. And even if it does grow, it will turn out to be either a twig, or something so rapacious that within five months it will have eaten your lawn, your shed, your pets and probably your children as well.

First, though, it will want to eat your satellite dish. All plants do this. No matter how hard you encourage them to grow in one direction, they will make a beeline for the dish, so that in the middle of "Doctor Who", you will suddenly get a notice saying no signal is being received. This means you have to go outside armed with a pair of secateurs and some dynamite. Well, I would.

We have had some weeds that, in their desperation to get at our satellite dish, brutally murdered three of my Mum’s rose plants that lay in its path. It used them as a launch pad, until the poor things couldn’t cope with the weight and simply snapped. Gravel does not do this. And anyway, once you embark on a project such as a garden, there is simply no end. Next thing you know, you’ll be in a greenhouse, making Harry Potter-style potions with a pestle and mortar, and not sleeping at night because of the prospect of greenfly. Nobody ever loses sleep over their Wickes timber decking.

The other thing I’ve learning in my short career as a gardener is that everything you want to grow dies, and everything that you wish was dead grows like wildfire. It’s like "The Killing Fields" out there sometimes. But let’s just say you do have a garden, you don’t mind dragging your lawnmower through the house every weekend, and that you like being up to your elbows in mud and mortar.

Fine, but because you are an amateur, your garden is likely to be fairly small, and because you are British you think pansies are pretty, so you will eventually end up with something that looks like a sponsored roundabout in Milton Keynes. There are some great gardens in this country, but yours isn’t going to one of them. Yours is going to look like it was planted and maintained by Ozzy Osbourne.

And it’s not somewhere you can ever sit and relax or have summer barbecues or parties either, because every time you try, you will notice a bit of moss that needs removing, or a beetle that needs spraying, or a weed that needs beheading. So you’ll be up and down a jet-propelled pogo stick, until one day, while doing a bit of hedge trimming, you will probably cut through the cable and wind up getting electrocuted.

Just make sure you stress in your will that you want to see Alan Titchmarsh get the pants sued off him.