Special Guest Blogger: Jules Albert de Dion

The Tour de France started shortly after i was arrested for attacking the President of France at a local racetrack but you would be forgiven if you thought that was as ridiculous as it got.
I was an extremely wealthy aristocrat who ran France's biggest car company and when the French President was replaced by another who did not share my views on race inequality, i decided to somehow show my displeasure and by sheer luck he appeared at a Paris Racetrack and i took the opportunity to whack him over the head with my cane, crunching his hat and a melee ensured with the president's bodyguards causing me to break my elegantly jewel-encrusted cane in half over a policeman's head earning me 15 days in prison.
What really hurt was Le Velo, France's biggest sports paper, calling me a dickhead so i withdrew all my advertising and then founded my own competing sports paper and although i was considering setting up a motor car race, to add an even bigger middle finger to the paper, as Le Velo was sponsoring bicycle races, i created an even bigger and better bike race with a huge cash prize for the winner and called it the Tour de France.
The massive prize attracted a huge field of contestants determine to win the cash and in the first race the favorite had to drop out midway through after drinking a poisoned bottle of lemonade and fights regularly broke out with the eventual winner, Maurice Garin, pushing his biggest rival, Hippolyte Aucouturier, to the ground, stomping his bike to pieces and then serenely cycling across the line, insane but the public loved it so we did it again the following year.
The bike stomping winner from the first race took his place at the line alongside the previous years losing stompee but Hippolyte came prepared this time with a pocket full of nails and a lead pipe up his sleeve. The cheating was imaginative, there was itching powder and ground-up stones in jockstraps, slashed tires and riders pushing each other off their bikes and some simply had themselves towed behind a car for large chunks of the route while some even more simply jumped on trains and raced ahead.
At some point the spectators felt that the point of attending a sporting event was to attack as many contestants as possible and ambushed riders on multiple occasions, sometimes ramming them with cars to run the riders off the road.
Maurice Garin was again crowned the winner, only to be disqualified for cheating as was the second, third, fourth, actually the majority of the cyclists but all the drama made the Tour a huge news event, sold loads of papers and made me a tonne of money, so we went ahead and held it for another century anyway so that American with the fridge full of performance-enhancing drugs was just sticking to the original sporting ethos of the Tour de France of it you can't win, cheat and it would be if we found a clean cyclist who had not actually taken any performance enhancing drug of any description that would pose question mark over the continuation of my cycling race.

Special Guest Blogger: Emilie du Chatelet

I was many things in my life, an aristocrat, a scientist, philosopher, musician and the translator of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica but most people know me as Voltaire's girlfriend.
I was born to a wealthy family but much to my mothers horror i possessed intelligence which saw her shuffle me off quickly to a convent but my father was not so easily embarrassed by a brainy daughter and arranged for me to meet many notable scientists of the era and with their guidance i discovered the precursor to infrared radiation, clarified the concept of energy and energy conservation, and published several important papers and in my spare time i translated Isaac Newton's tome into French despite being told due to the haphazard and nerdy way Newton wrote his notes, was impossible, but i took his theories and during the translation made them even easier to understand.
I guess if i had stopped there then i would be known as Emile du Chatelet, one of the foremost scientists of my time but despite already being married with three children, i began dating the distinguished writer and philosopher Voltaire which admittedly did help me get a platform for my scientific ideas but it ended up sabotaging my legacy.
The scientific community already scoffed at my work because i lacked the necessary and vital instruments to be taken seriously as a scientist, such as a pair of testicles and a penis, so they assumed that Voltaire was behind it and credited him with everything despite him denying it and i was relegated to Voltaire's girlfriend for the next 16 years until adding a second lover to the husband and famous lover i already had.
Poet Jean François de Saint-Lambert was his name and it was a bit of a scandal at the time but contraception was a faint glimmer in some future chemist's eye then and i became pregnant but it was a difficult birth and i died days later from a pulmonary embolism aged 42.
One of my greatest works was a book i called 'Discours sur le bonheur' or in English 'Source of human happiness' where i examined it from the perspective of a woman suffering the injustices of 18th century society in France but thinking back on that, the source of happiness could be having two lovers with the second being 10 years younger, yep, that's happiness right there , back of the net!

Special Guest Blogger: Mahavira

You may have heard of the philosophical system that i founded called Jainism, it's almost like Buddhism but nothing like it.
I lived a very simple life, being born on the thirteenth day of the rising moon in the month of Chaitra in the Vira Nirvana Samvat calendar era (aka April) into an overtly wealthy royal family but aged 30 i gave up all my worldly possessions and spent twelve years sitting under an Ashoka tree in pursuit of spiritual awakening and seeking perfection through intense meditation, fasting, severe austerity and being totally stark bollock naked and never once sitting down.
I pondered on such  puzzling questions in life like why are we here, what is reality and how come hair and toe nails are not allowed into heaven and at the age of forty-two, i attained omniscience, the capacity to know everything, which comes in very handy in Heaven's quiz nights.
I preached for 30 years and attained Moksha (liberation) before reaching Nirvana which is when the soul rises to heaven and leaves behind only finger nails and hair.
I taught that every living being has sanctity and dignity which should be respected as one expects one's own sanctity and dignity to be respected, you should be truthful, never steal, should stay faithful to your partner and show an attitude of non-attachment to worldly possessions and i came up with a brilliant symbol for the four arms of existence (Heavenly beings, human beings, Hellish beings and subhuman like flora or fauna) which i called the Swastika.
My Nirvana came and i achieved the release of my soul from karmic bondage during a preaching when the entire crowd fell asleep, awakening to find that i had disappeared and leaving only my nails and hair obviously (see above), which they cremated.
Jainism is still a thing today, i regularly get the whiff of burnt toe nails wafting my way but the use of the Swastika has fallen out of fashion after a certain Austrian decided that my sacred symbol that symbolizes peace was perfect to use and then kill 11 million people with.

Special Guest Blogger: Leo Tolstoy

Saluton! Nobody becomes a success overnight, even World famous authors of those books noone has ever gotten to the end of have to toil in order to get the life experiences needed to write rocking books so i would keep a notepad i called 'Rules for life' and the first entry was dropped out of University and treated in hospital for venereal disease but i used my down time wisely and listed all the weaknesses such as laziness, mendacity, indecision, sensuality, and vanity and would tick off the ones i had displayed that day.
Laziness put in quite a few appearances because after University i spent much of my time going between Moscow, Tula and Saint Petersburg not really doing very much except running up some gambling debts so when my brother suggest i join the Army, i went along with it and served as a young artillery officer during the Crimean War but i was shocked by the amount of death involved in warfare so i left the army and decided to concentrate on my writing where nobody is trying to rain shells down on my head.
I had a few stories published and went to Paris to meet Victor Hugo who showed me his yet to be published 'Les Misérables' and his depiction of the battle scenes in the novel inspired my own in 'War and Peace' and after meeting French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and watching a public execution in Paris, my political needs were met and i became a pacifist, i also nicked the name 'War and Peace' from his Anarchist pamphlet.  
News of my new found pacifism found the ears of a young Indian guy who wrote to me to say i had inspired him and asking for advice on his nation gaining independence from colonial rule, i used that in my 'A Letter to a Hindu' book later so thanks Mahatma Gandhi, hope it all worked out well for you.
My wife and i had 13 children so between writing and wiping smelly botties, i joined some causes such as the Esperanto movement which i thought would help bring about a peaceful co-existence if we all spoke the same language but i was continuing to use real life experiences and my political and religious views as an example for my books, the Anna Karenina story of an adulterous woman trapped by society and War and Peace is pretty much 1,400 pages on the futility of war.
My Anarchists views did not go down well and when i said that the Anarchists are right in everything and no ruling authority could not be more violent than that of the existing Authority all hell broke loose and i was excommunicated from the Church (hello, atheist here, what did they think i would care?) but someone must have agreed because i received nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1902 to 1906 and for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, 1902, and 1909, note i was nominated, never actually won a damn thing.
My wife and i argued frequently about my views as we aged, especially as i had been ill for a long time and she thought i should be resting so i left home one winter night in an attempt to escape from another of my wife's tirades and caught a train to Astapovo, sat at the station and quietly died.
What i did learn is that whatever particular era of human society we are in, it will probably have the shelf life of bagged lettuce. There is no good old days, it is always a bunch of jerks just winging it until something better comes along except absolutely everyone in every era before thought the same thing. It turns out that every attempt to 'improve thing' just makes it worse so Adiau kaj dankon and if you understand that then the Esperanto thing must have really taken off.

Celebrities Save The Day Again!

What a day! It was my day off but typically Sunday's is the day when i can only contact celebrities for advice so typically the day started off with me running out of Blusher and i was stood in Boots faced with far too many shades so i calmly called former Make Up Artist Mariah Carey for help and she advised that as i have fair/light skin, i would be best off going for a shade of soft pink, light coral or peach. Thanks Mariah.
I had a long walk back to my car and my new shoes were rubbing so i rang the only former Shoes salesman i know, George Clooney who told me the best way to break in new shoes quickly is to go the woman's toilet, put my shoes under the hand heater and when they are soft, put them, on and walk around, which i did and it worked so you saved me a few blisters there George and yes, i do understand that the 500m injunction remains in place.
I decided as i missed breakfast i would stop off for a sandwich but when they asked me what bread i wanted, i asked them to wait while i gave Kate Winslett a call, she used to work as a sandwich maker in a Delicatessen and she said i should go for Sourdough bread as it has a low glycemic index and will not cause tiredness due to a sugar crash later in the morning.
After her generous help i didn't want to bother her with my coffee Carb question so called one time waitress Sandra Bullock instead who said that either an Espresso or Americano would not cause me to falter on my keto diet.
It was on my way home that i clipped a cyclist with my wing mirror, he was riding in the middle of the road to try and overtake me at a junction when i hit him and he was saying he was going to sue me so i rang Gerard Butler who was a lawyer but he said that as he overtook my car, he must have been 'cycling furiously' which is a fineable offence under the 1847 Town Police Clauses Act, so i told the cyclist to pick himself up and he is lucky i don't report him to the fashion police for wearing lycra.
When i got home i realised that such was my haste to get the blusher this morning, that i came out without my key so i thought about it for while before phoning ex-fireman Steve Buscemi for advice on breaking down my door and being a real sweety, he suggested i hit the weakest part of the door, the opposite side to the hinges, with a heavy object which meant that the ugly gnome Auntie Karen sent me last Christmas came in handy after all.
With a busted door i had no choice but to telephone one time carpenter Harrison Ford for the best front door to buy, he was filming but stopped to say i should go for a Accoya Wood Door as it is tough and comes in an inherently modern design that still boasts an authentic appearance.
I just had time to make the Choux buns that i had promised the kids but i couldn't find my recipe book so in a panic i checked my celebrity list and thankfully had Harry Styles who was a baker before finding fame in One Direction and he explained that i had to gently heat milk, butter and water until the butter has melted, then bring to the boil before beating in the eggs gradually to a smooth dough.
All i had left to do was wash up but i had used the last of the washing up liquid to blow bubbles at the cat earlier and now all the shops were shut but good old Dwayne Johnson came to the rescue, he said that in his previous employment as a dish washer they would sometimes use very hot water and a little biological washing powder as a substitute.
Thank you Celebrities!!

Let Us Feckin Pray

During a recent four-day, religious live TV event in America, the Pastor Jesse Duplantis made the bizarre claim that Jesus has not yet made a reappearance  because people weren’t donating enough.
Who knew, the son of God was so money motivated but as the news isn't reporting that Jesus put in an appearance i am guessing the Pastor's bank balance didn't swell enough so he stayed in his Heavenly home although i am sure there was some gullible rednecks called Jim Bob or Bobby Jo saying 'Y'all put down 'em gun's youngun's and fetch momma her wallet, we got us some prayin' to do'.
Now i have no problem with people having faith, i don't share it and think they are either brainwashed by parents or just haven't asked enough questions because i'm not sure what they have seen, read, watched or been told different to me for them to say 'Hallelujah, i'll believe that' but that's there look out, as i always say you don't ram your beliefs down my throat and i won't ram my mountains of evidence why religion is a crock down yours.
What bought this up was the report that since lock-down, more young people are praying which is great for them if it helps them in some way with where we are, then fill your boots, no harm to anyone.
The prayer frenzy is being driven by the Internet with many faiths setting up online prayer meetings as the places of worship were locked down, the Church of England alone said that 6,000 people phoned a prayer hotline in its first 48 hours of operation and the majority were young adults aged between 18 and 34.
The most frequent subjects of prayers were for the safety of family (53%), friends (34%), NHS Staff (28%) and themselves (28%) but 24% were also thanking God for something, probably not giving us a killer virus because despite creating everything, he only gets the thanks for all things bright and beautiful apparently.
They also found that the most popular religious figure on TV was The Vicar of Dibley's Rev Geraldine Granger then Sister Evangelina, played by Pam Ferris from Call the Midwife and Father Ted Crilly from Father Ted taking third place although personally if Father Jack was presenting Songs of Praise, i'd watch it.

Cleaning Up Your Mess Costs

The UN Climate Change Conference (Cop26) takes place in Glasgow in November and Governments of the developed World will pledge billions to help poorer countries much in the same way they agreed to provide £100bn a year to poorer countries to fight climate change in 2009 so that's good, or it would be if they do it because they seem to be offering more when they didn't reach the original target.
A report commissioned by the United Nations and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) concluded the £100bn target has not been met since the pledge was made, the 2016 figure was £58bn, 2017 was £71bn, 2108 £78bn and the 2019 figure was £79bn.
So who of the richest nations is skimping on the cash they promised?
Within the G7 the three countries that have paid their share was Germany, Japan and France with the UK and Canada falling a bit short but the two big tightwads are the United States and Italy.  
Joe Biden announced that he will double the current US Contribution which is a nice considering it was his country that caused, and continue to cause, most of the problems in the first place but the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment said that: '£100bn a year isn't going to do it anymore' which stems from the decades of global Governments doing nothing about it.
Time to pay up developed nations, we need ambitious climate targets and you are going to have to dig deep to clean up the horrific mess you made over the past couple of hundred years.

Racist, Misogynistic And Homophobic Scum

Labour Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, is being asked to apologise after calling senior Conservative members 'racist, misogynistic and homophobic scum'.
Hang on there Rayner, that's a bit strong because it isn't as if the leader himself said that Muslim women in Burka's looked like letterboxes or that Africans were picanninnies with watermelon smiles or that the problem with Africa is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge any more. Oh, he did.
Okay then, has he ever described women attending a conference as 'hot totty' or that women vote Labour because they are 'naturally fickle' and the way to treat a woman who could be a problem was to 'Just pat her on the bottom and send her on her way'? Hmm..that's right, he did say all that and there was that comment about his magnificent experience at the 2012 Olympics 'watching semi-naked women playing beach volleyball and glistening like wet otters'.
Ok so he may be a racist and a misogynist but has he ever said that he was against the teaching of homosexuality in schools or said same sex marriage was ludicrous and compared it to bestiality and said gay men were 'tank-topped bumboys'. Damn, he did didn't he.
Ok, but are the Conservatives really scum? Show me when they have cut payments to the disabled or applauded when Nurses pay-rise was refused or refused to give food vouchers to poverty stricken school children as they would be given to crack dens and brothels or or cut Universal Benefits or thanked the NHS staff during the pandemic by stiffing them on a promised pay-rise and offering them a pay-rise of 1%, £3.25 a week or spent billions of our tax pounds on handing Covid-19 contracts to their own friends or family?
Seriously? They did all that and the response from one Tory MP to you was to say that someone should plant a bomb in a Labour front bencher's office?
Wow, they really are scum aren't they, actually scum doesn't seem harsh enough. Carry on Angela.

Bootiful!

They say that Communism is good until you run out of other people's money but the Capitalism system doesn't have that problem because when it runs out of other peoples money it just turns to the Government who hand over oodles of other people's money or as we call them, our taxes.
Of course they don't call it Communism, Socialism or even Nationalisation because they are all nasty Marxist lefty things so they prefer to say they are 'Saving Christmas' because one of the things about to collapse was the supply of Turkeys.
We saw it with the banks when over £200bn of our taxes went to private owned banks instead of equipping hospitals or silly things like that and it is happening again now with an unknown amount being shoveled towards the CO2 producers who had threatened to pack up their things and go home because the price of gas was forcing them to not be quite so profitable until the Government stepped in waving a cheque book at them so Christmas is back on or it will be if they can sort out the shortage of migrant workers to slaughter and pluck the birds and get enough HGV drivers to deliver them to stores.
As what normally happens when the Government says everything is under control and not to panic buy, the British public took that as a clear message to panic buy and have been ordering Turkeys extra early to make sure they get one and the stuffing is literally not knocked out of their Christmas dinners.
Boris Johnson, who can always relied upon to say one thing and then completely renege on it, did say last year, after he cancelled Christmas get togethers due to Coronavirus, that 2021 was going to be a 'two-turkey Christmas' but when challenged on his comment with the shortage looming, joked that people can defrost last year’s bird instead although the following up question should have been with Gas bills rising by up to 40%, will the family home even be warm enough in December to defrost last year’s bird and if so, will there be any electricity or gas to cook it?
If the thought of not having turkey sandwiches, turkey salad and turkey soup until the other side of New Year fills you with horror, you could always go for a boars head but make sure they remove the eyes and it hasn't been anywhere near David Cameron or his pals. Eeewww.

Sorry Foreigners, Please Come Back!

Bloody foreigners, they come over here and exploit us by doing jobs no one else wants to do like HGV drivers and fruit pickers and then just because we voted for Brexit to kick the lot of them out, they all returned home and now we don't have enough fruit pickers or HGV lorry drivers so the petrol is running out and the food isn't getting to the supermarkets. Bloody typical.
The Government have said that it is all under control and not to panic as they have a plan to recruit more HGV drivers although nobody seems to have told the Road Haulage Association who have warned that: "There's no early end in sight to this' and the shortage will go on for 'at least another year or so'.
So what is the Governments plan? To issue short-term visas for overseas drivers to attract the same people back that they were so gung-ho to boot out in the first place in a brilliant Brixit U-turn.
With the National Insurance rise, food and CO2 shortages, 40% rise in gas prices, NHS backlog, the Universal credit cut and rising Coronavirus cases and deaths, the Government has got enough to be getting on with without long queues at the petrol stations but if the Winter of 1979 was called the Winter of discontent, the winter of 2021/22 isn't looking all that rosy either.

Special Guest Blogger: Nicolas Chauvin

You would think that having your name turned into a common word that is still in use hundreds of years after your death would be cool but i really wish that everyone would just stop saying my name.
I was a French army soldier and was the number one fan boy of the tremendous and heroic Napoleon Bonaparte and was his go to guy whenever a battle was raging which is why i ended up minus three fingers, a shoulder fracture and a horridly disfiguring facial wound but whenever Napoleon called, i would say something grovelly like i only need two fingers to shove my sword up the British nether regions and would ride off wondering what body part i may not come back with this time.
Such was my devotion to my Emperor that people started to say i was taking the whole patriotism thing way too far but all the time Napoleon was in charge i was in favour, problem was when he wasn't my name became ridiculed and derided and through the pen of songwriters and vaudeville comedians, it became a synonym for anyone who was overly patriotic to the point of stupidity.
At our final defeat in Brussels it is said that my battalion was surrounded, i supposedly shouted we may die but we will not surrender but that's rubbish, my final words were actually 'Merde!'
Somewhere in the 1960's, the word 'chauvinist' was adopted by feminists looking for a better way to describe men who are irrationally convinced of their own superiority, because sometimes 'Moron' just doesn't cut it and the new meaning soon overshadowed the old one and my name became suffixed with 'Pig' as in 'Chauvinist Pig' for which i only need one finger to show exactly what i think of that.

Special Guest Blogger: Draco

It's not easy being cruel and popular at the same time but in the ancient Greek city of Athens the legal system was a bit of a pig's ear with the ruling elite governing the masses any damn way they pleased. They used a system of oral law and blood feud which only they knew, so they were free to arbitrarily do whatever they wanted in the Grecian courts and the Athenians were clogging up the courts on charges arguing that they didn't know whatever thing they did was a crime so the governing aristocratic families decided to put the laws in writing and hired me to write them down.
I wanted to keep it simple so i wrote stealing equals death, trespassing is also punishable by death, idleness means death, murder mean you are put to death unless you can think of something worse than that in which case do that too but you get the general idea and i presented a document of the laws by which the public were bound.
When asked why i had fixed the punishment of death for most offences, i said that most lesser crimes deserved it and i could not think of anything worse for the more important ones so pegged that at death also, which seemed fair enough.
So that no one would be unaware of them, they were posted on wooden tablets and placed in the City Centre and i achieved my goal of punishments which equaled the crime and not so dependent on what mood the judge was in that day and the Athenians liked that and i was so popular that special shows were put on to celebrate me where the Athenians would show their appreciation by showering me with their clothes as was the fashion at the time.
One show was delayed as a bronze statue of the star heavyweight boxer Theagenes 'son of Hercules' Thasos was being thrown into the sea after it had fallen onto someone and killed them showing that even inanimate objects were not above the sharp edge of my laws.
At one show i stepped out to soak up the praise of my adoring fans and as per tradition hats and cloaks rained down on me, and then more hats and cloaks and then more cloaks and hats until i had so many hats and cloaks piled on top of me that i was unable to move and suffocated to death.
From what i hear everyone has gone soft now and not many countries put their own people to death for trivial crimes much anymore but it is up to people like me to tell people what they can and can't do. Because if not, they're gonna live like heathens, steal your apples and be hanging around on your property. We need order!

Special Guest Blogger: Chinese God Pan Gu

If your idea of religion is giving up a Sunday morning lie in to kneel on a hard floor in a draughty
Church singing about rowing a boat ashore and listening to someone in a frock bang on for an hour about talking bushes then you are in for a shock because that God is just one of thousands that have come and gone and each comes with its own creation of Earth story so sit back and listen to how i, the Chinese God Pan Gu, did it.  
In the beginning, the Universe was like a huge black egg floating in the void of Space (you don't need to know who laid the egg, just accept it was egg-like) and inside the egg was me and i had been sleeping inside it for 18,000 years and decided now was as good a time as any to grab a handily
placed axe i kept inside the egg for just such occasions and bash open the shell and watch on as the Universe formed around me and very pretty it was too.
The egg white floated serenely upwards and became the Heavens while the much heavier yolk sunk downwards and became the Earth but it was lacking something to keep the two apart while it was still tacky so being as tall fellow, i stood between the two and held them apart while things settled down.
The flaw in my plan was i had no idea how long things would take to stick so i could let go so to make sure the sky and earth was properly set, i held on for another 18,000 years and in that time i grew and pushed the sky further up and the earth further down until i was certain that there was no danger of it ever collapsing and let go.
Holding up the sky is a tiresome act and my heavy breathing became the wind, my sweat the rain and my voice the thunder and the fleas that infested my shaggy fur coat dropped to Earth and became the human race so there you have it, nobody ate any apple's and there was no talking snakes, just an egg and a Chinese God with very, very tired arms.

Special Guest Blogger: Barbara McClintock

Despite what certain people would have us believe, women throughout history have done things too and sometimes those things are quite important it's just that men have written most of the history books and wouldn't you know it? Us darn, sneaky ladies are nowhere to be found so let's put right that wrong now.
Geneticists ideas adhered strictly to the thought that parents pass on genes to their offspring via chromosomes that are immutably locked, meaning a parent passes on chromosomes just as they received them from their parents, and so on but while doing my Science job at the University of Missouri in 1948, i discovered that chromosomes can split and then repair themselves, leading to mutations which are then passed on to the offspring.
I took my findings to the top scientists at the University who smiled, patted me on the head and said my hair looked nice today and told me i was disturbing their very important meeting about important stuff and carried on without me.
After being being regularly excluded from staff meetings because obviously a woman's brain in a meeting would infect all the clever men with my knowledge of towel folding and how to iron pleats into a pair of trousers, i took off for the Carnegie Institution in New York instead and it was there, at the Cold Spring Harbor research facility, that nobody gave a damn about my silly lady-talk about chromosomes.
I continued to investigate my findings and discovered that certain parts of chromosomes could swap genes and took THAT to the head of Science who told me nah, you must have done the math wrong or something so i wrote letters and papers to all the scientific journals but to no avail so i gave up trying to get my work accepted, and moved on to other studies.
Three decades later the science world was abuzz about a male geneticists who had discovered that chromosomes can mutate and that certain parts of the chromosomes can swap genes and now that the work had been officially verified by testicle owners, it was accepted by the science community as revolutionary.
I wrote a piece for American Naturalist pointing out that i had discovered the same thing, in 1948, and provided all my workings and i was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and the role of key researcher at the Laboratory so don't give up ladies, if you have something important to say then say it and if a man ignores you and tells you to stick to baking cookies, smash him in the face with a baking tray instead.

Special Guest Blogger: Sigurd The Mighty

We all hope that when our time comes, we go out gentle into that good night. Or perhaps we go out into that good night on a flaming long-ship or in the midst of a heroic battle, either way is good but that's assuming we have any control over our own deaths but we need to remember that karma can be a raging bitch with a flair for the ironic.
Us Scandinavians have not always been the gentle and accommodating nations you know and love today and after one huge battle in Norway which saw loads of Vikings told to leave, the exiled men found a new home in the Orkney and Shetland islands off the coast of Scotland and after a couple of raids, the King of Norway decided to put a stop to that shit so sent amongst others my brother and him a few buddies to crack some heads and they did such a good job that the King gave him the islands who in turn gave them to me as it was the Shetland Islands, what the hell was he going to do with them?
I landed and immediately decided i needed more room so began invading bits of the Scottish mainland which was no mean feat, a few hundred years earlier the mighty Roman Legion had to build a wall to keep out the horde of ginger maniacs and here was i cutting a swathe through them which is how i got my nickname of 'The Mighty'.
The only fly in my Highland ointment was a local native warlord called Máel Brigte the Buck-Toothed, nicknames were pretty much say what you saw back then but seriously, that man had a set of front teeth that whenever he sneezed he risked biting a hole in his chest but he was a mean SOB and after a few battles which ended with neither side winning, i challenged him to a fair, winner takes all fight with 40 of his best men against 40 of mine.  
The big toothed berk accepted and his 40 men were roundly defeated by the 80 i showed up with, yep i was a bit of a stinker like that so in triumph i cut off his head to keep as a trophy and strapping the decapitated noggin to my saddle and rode home to nail it above the fireplace.
Unfortunately, i forgot about Máel Brigte's massive buck-teeth and they scratched my leg as we rode, my leg became inflamed and infected, and as a result i died shortly after from a combination of blood poisoning and the worst case of embarrassment, killed by my mortal enemy from beyond the grave with a mouth full of bacteria. Yep, that sucked.

Why Christmas Can't Be Cancelled

Seems like Christmas may be cancelled is the latest thing as the Co2 shortage means turkeys may be in short supply and the lack of HGV drivers mean the toys may not be on the shop shelves.
As a vegetarian, the lack of dead fowl stinking up the supermarket shelves will have no effect on me and with children who will no longer care if Santa brings a LOL Surprise Dance Dance Dance Doll that won't bother me either.
If you are the sort of person who will throw your hands up in the air and cancel Christmas because you can't have any other type of meat on Christmas Day or because your darling child will be visiting therapists in their adult years because of the trauma that they never unwrapped a Barbie Dreamhouse, then i think your problems run deeper than just a bit of a lean Christmas this year.     
To me Christmas is all about the build up, not the day so it's the Christmas movies, the tree, the songs, the way everything glitters, the Carols, the TV Specials, the drinking, the cards, the decorations, the mince pies and i will even enjoy going to watch the Grandson's Nursery Nativity play this year, the day itself will pass in a blur of food and alcohol and then waking up the next day with a hangover and the realisation that it is all over until next year.
To some its a religious thing, apart from being played by a doll in a manger at the Nativity Play, the baby Jesus plays no part in it for me so but each to their own but Christmas is so much more than Turkey and the right present and with the way things are heading, Coronavirus may well play a very big part in what we can and can't do anyway so stop worrying and shove a mince pie in your gob, Christmas won't be cancelled whatever happens.

Yep, I'm A Lefty

The best place to be politically is in the centre and that is where most people start and then move slightly to the left or right but over time people tend to move about but some go to the far side of their political leanings which is something i see time and time again, especially with bloggers for some reason.
I have seen many friends slide past me to the edges of the left and seem confused that i don't join them way out there and no more so than the current Texas ruling on abortion.
My opinion on abortion has always been to not have an opinion on it, that decision is far too important to have someone else opine on it so i have delibretly stayed away from it.
It isn't just a thing on the left, i have known people who have shifted so far right that they are unrecognisable and having some raging racists in positions of power recently just seemed to think it was safe for them to break cover and speak and write some utter nonsense.
Anyone who reads this blog will quickly notice that i am obviously on the political left and no doubt right wingers will read my words and consider what i put out there is utter nonsense and i am fine with that, it is a compliment that someone with a right wing view doesn't agree with me, would be worrying if they did to be honest, but i do wonder if ALL my views are lefty.
The origins of left and right go back to France where those who wanted to maintain the status quo with a monarchy sat on the right side of the political chambers while those who wanted change and a republic sat on the left and in many ways that hasn't really changed.
The right wing today seem to want to keep things as they are or to regress back to a 'better time' while the left want to change things in order to reach the 'better times'.
When i look around there is much wrong with things today, we are wrecking the environment, still have a long way to go with regards to civil rights, equality is still an important issue and Capitalism has gone way too far with the richer growing ever richer and the poorer ever poorer and Democracy needs a long overdue overhaul and don't even get me started on wars.
Going with the original meaning of the left wanting to change things in order to reach that 'better' state, i am completely on the left because if the right believe this is as good as it is going to get, then i really don't think they have been paying attention.

Throwing Our Lot In With America Not A Good Idea

Great Britain was once the biggest and baddest empire but now it is just a windblown, rainy island off the coast of Europe but our leaders still fancy that they are one of the main players on the Planet but that stopped a long time ago and once we stupidly withdraw ourselves from the EU, even more so.
With that in mind the Aukus deal with Australia, the UK and the US for nuclear submarines has not gone down well with the French who we royally stitched up and cost them £50bn in lost sales as they had a deal to sell the Australian's French built diesel submarines.
Quite rightly the French have been livid and China, who the submarines are meant to deter, just kinda shrugged it off but it seems the UK has decided that it will throw it's lot in with the Americans despite all that has happened recently.
The States has become a bit of a basket case recently with Donald Trump dragging his obese carcass through 4 years of absurdity and mind numbing stupidity and now Joe Biden who made a big deal of saying that America was back but has so far followed to the letter the awful Trump deal with the Taliban to pull US forces out of Afghanistan and has now annoyed two of the World's major players in China and France who is one of the biggest fish in the EU pond.
As we are now in bed again with America and rather bizarrely Australia (a nation everyone seems to forget about until something happens there), it puts us in a difficult position because of the big boys of US, Russia, China and the EU, the only one we are on friendly terms with is the one in the White House and they would sell their grandmother if it meant a few extra bucks.
A country in Britain's vulnerable position cannot afford to be on bad terms with 3 out of the big 4 and completely in bed with the other one who see us as a fig leaf for their dodgy global deeds so Boris had better get out his best Downing Street notepaper and send a grovelling letter to Beijing, Moscow and Paris as we need them much more than America flogging us their dodgy chicken and beef and asking us to join their ill conceived military adventures.
Over the past few years we have made some terrible decisions here and the tiny island off the coast of Europe cannot afford to be isolated both politically and economically and sorry America but we shouldn't be trusting you to see us alright.

Special Guest Blogger: St. Joseph of Cupertino

I was not never the brightest kid, my teachers were said to have been totally shocked at just how much more uncleverer i was than the other kids and the Friars said i was too unclever to be a Friar in their Friary but they did give me this great job mucking out the stables. Only one problem, it was a terrible job but i spent years shoveling horse poop about until they said i could join them in the Friary as long as i did nothing and stayed at the back quietly out of sight.
Problem with that was i could fly and would soar above them at functions and wave and they didn't like that, thinking i was showing off but i can't help it if God gave me the power of flying.
I always had a thing with God, when i was a kid he would give me these really vivid visions and my mum said it was because i was born in a stable just like God's boy, him because his mum got caught short while out riding on her donkey but me because my dad died and we got kicked out our home and it was the nearest place with a roof.    
So flying, that's pretty cool right, most Saints would have used their God given powers to heal the sick, feed the hungry or something good but i just soared into the sky and flew over crowds of people like a superhero in a Friars robe.
During a procession on the feast day for St. Francis of Assisi, i was just helping out, walking around like the rest of you humans, when i suddenly became overwhelmed by the spirit and soared into the air, hanging out over the crowd until one of my superiors ordered me to come down.
They said i wasn't flying, but climbing up really high on things and then jumping off and shouting 'look at me, i'm flying' but them and the many eye-witnesses who saw me climb up and jump off things are mistaken, i was actually flying like a penguin or whatever.
The Friars put up with it for a while and then said i was being too disruptive so they put me in a cell and i was forbidden from joining in anywhere where there was people, the words that they said sound passive, but also aggressive. I feel like there should be a term for that.
Some nice men from the Inquisition came to pay me a visit and they took me to another Franciscan friary in the region to watch me fly and they were so impressed that they handed me over to some other Friars who looked after me and let me make my own rye bread which contained something called ergot but i think i was allergic to it because every time I eat more than 8 loaves i'd barf.
God may have made me fly but he didn't stop me from dying but i was made the patron saint of the mentally handicapped which is probably something cool like other people like me who can fly like flying machines or astronauts so every time you look up at the moon, think of me as i will be looking at a moon. Not the same moon, obviously. That's impossible.

Whitty v Minaj

Usually, whenever Boris Johnson is holding a press conference, the only bollocks is what comes out of his mouth but this week it was Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty talking bollocks, or rather talking about Niki Minaji's.
Asked a question about the rapper spreading nonsense about her cousin's friends testicles swelling up after having the Covid vaccination, The Trinidad Health Authority came out to say that they were unaware of anyone on the island suffering from that particular medical difficulty and to be fair you would surely notice someone walking gingerly to the chemist for a bucket of Sudocream and Whitty poo-pooed it and said she was talking nonsense and should be ashamed and Boris Johnson also commented saying he wasn’t aware who she was.
Rather than doing some research by reading peer-reviewed academic journals on the safety of Covid vaccines with regards to sprouting unfeasibly large testicles, Minaj fought her way past her cousin's friends gigantic balls to find her phone and deciding not to take on the professor, fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, Companion of the Order of the Bath and Ebay seller of 'Next Slide Please' mugs, but tweeted that she forgave Johnson and 'loved him' and his accent followed by ugh! Yassss boo!!!
Now i don't know if Minaj's ugh! Yasss boo!!! was an attempt at British but she did later put out a voice mail which did have quite a decent British accent admittedly although the references to Margaret Thatcher who hasn't been in the news since leaving office 30 years ago show that her dedication to British politics only stretches to current Coronavirus briefings.   
Minaj may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer but even she should know that if you want to mock a British accent, you use phrases such as 'tally ho, i say old chap fancy a cuppa' for posh British, for chav British it's 'oi init bruvv, we goin hit the legs this is well waffle munter bruv' and 'right, i'm off up the frog and toad to the rub a dub dub to get well Brahm's and List' for cockneys.   
I would go easy on the loving Boris Johnson though because we can forgive many things over here but loving the poor man's Donald Trump we could never forgive.

Special Guest Blogger: Jean-Baptiste Lully

There are many dangerous professions you could name such as miner, bomb disposal and even a chimney sweep but not many people would put Orchestra Conductor in the list but then nobody conducted like me.
It was a Franciscan friar who gave me my first music lessons, teaching me guitar and violin and i began out as a busker and was spotted by Duke Roger de Lorraine who just happened to be looking for someone to teach his niece and i was hired.
Between teaching her what a C and D chord was, i got to play with several of the other household musicians and i really enjoyed dancing with the travelling entertainers and my talent shone out so when the aristocracy was exiled to the provinces, i was taken on by young Louis XIV and made royal composer for instrumental music.
I collaborated on court performances with all the best musicians of the era and when Louis XIV took over the reins of government, he especially liked my powerful, livelier tunes and named me the superintendent of the royal music and music master of the royal family including director of his personal violin orchestra.
I would really give it some and while giving a particularly vigorous performance of 'Te Deum' i got so into the music and was waving my baton around with so much gusto that i accidentally crushed my own foot with a conducting baton.
Admittedly that doesn't sound too bad, a few people have been injured by jabbing one of those little sticks in their own eye hole but my baton was huge, more like a cricket bat and it crushed my toes which became infected and gangrenous and the doctors said they would have to amputate it but i refused as it would mean i wouldn't be able to dance in the future which turned out was a few weeks long because the gangrene spread through my body and ultimately infected my brain causing my death so with hindsight, bit of an own goal there.

Special Guest Blogger: King Charles VI Of France

Aurevoir, King Charles VI of France or as i became known, Charles the Mad, because i had a few mental problems which resulted in more moods swings than your pregnant wife but i had the best medical professionals that the 14th Century had to offer and after one episode when i was convinced that i was made of glass and would shatter if anyone touched me, the doctors suggested my mental state was down to boredom and to keep me entertained and occupied, i should throw a costumed ball.
As the doctors orders were to party hearty, i went all out and went for a wildlife theme with my knights dressed in animal costumes made from the very best grease-soaked linen covered in flax, resin, and feathers.  
It was going great and then my brother, the Duke of Orleans, arrived at the party late and as drunk as only a French Duke could be and grabbed a candelabra and joined the dancing line.
Now grease soaked lined covered in flax, resin and feathers make great costumes but are not so much use when they come into contact with a naked flame from a candle on a candelabra held by a drunken idiot. Bet you can guess where this is going.
The party become known as 'The Ball of the Burning Men' which is aptly named as all the Knights were burned to death except one who leapt into a vat of water and me as my auntie threw her dress over me to put out the flames which meant the party was a bit of a bummer overall.
If nothing else the incident did alert the Palace to the importance of fire safety but it didn't do much for my mental state as neither did the English keep trying to kill me which is why i personally took charge of the troops at Agincourt.
There are certain jobs in the world where you just assume that the people doing them are competent but sometimes circumstances conspire to put the fate of a nation into the hands of people you wouldn't trust to sit the right way round on a toilet so we were routed despite the English being outnumbered twenty to one but me forgetting which side i on was during one battle and killing eight of my own soldiers before being overpowered and held down by my knights until i fell asleep never helped.
That's my story then and there is so much more but i can't hang around too long as i have just been polished and smudges are a nightmare to get off. Bonjour!

What Will The Right Wing Watch Now?

The right wing are missing many things such as brain-cells, morals and intelligence but something the British right wing is not missing is a News Channel which panders to their misguided beliefs because they have the brand spanking new GB News which promised to represent the things the 'woke channels' don't but if you are a right winger you had better be quick because it is sinking faster than Prince Andrews reputation.
The brains behind the channel was Andrew Neil but the lead presenter and chairman has officially quit after 'taking a break' two months ago but he is only the latest name to flounce off since the launch which has amused us all with backbiting, technical problems, collapsing scenery, no viewers, advertisers pulling their adverts, briefing wars against presenters who are either 'not right wing enough' and those who are 'too far right' and amidst all that the jolly old British public keep sending in prank emails from people
claiming to be called names like Mike Hunt, Mike Oxlong, Cleo Torez, Tess Tegel and Hugh Janus.
With Neil now off to pursue other interests (aka crawling back to the BBC), the channel is free to turn into the UK equivalent of Fox News although Neil always denied they were aiming that low but now the channel has drafted in professional gobshite Nigel Farage and a bunch of his loony UKIP and Brexit pals to beef up the content, Fox News is hilariously where it is heading.
If nothing else the almost non-existent viewing figures indicates that the number of gammon-faced, frothing at the mouth right wing idiots in the UK is small and as the channel could very well be out of business soon, you will need to be quick if you want to see it unless Dave or the Comedy Channel step in.

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Cyprian of Antioch

There are really three stages of maturity for a boy in the Western world. There's the stage when you really want to play with toys, the stage when you find out your toys are not as much fun as they used to be and the stage when you discover girls and you really, really want to do things with them but getting laid is never easy. That said, as a pagan sorcerer called a theurgist, i made it a little easier with the demons i controlled, the 3rd century way to get her shit-faced and sorry in the morning.
My road to redemption and Sainthood begins like all great stories with an attempted rape using demon minions when a man came to me and said that he had his lustful eye on a certain wench called Justina and could i use my black arts to cast a spell to get her to bump fuzzies with him and despite him having the face not even a mother could love, i took his money and accepted the challenge.
I sent a few of the minor demons her way and waited for the confirmation that the deed had been done but she batted them away so i sent a few more of my more reliable spells her way and again she stood firm and kept her legs firmly at half past 6 and after i dug deep and conjured up the most sexually explicit spell i could and she still refused to buckle, the customer came to see me to ask for his money back and i went to see her and demanded to know how she could ward off the dozens of hell spawned sexual assaults i sent her way and she showed me that by making the sign of the cross, she was able to repel the evil spirits.
I had assumed it was to do with the man being so ugly he would make a bulldog cry so i was surprised when she said it was God protecting her and as Christianity was becoming more popular and my business would be heading down the gurgler with the use of a simple hand gesture, i became a priest and became firm friends with Justina.
The problem with becoming a priest in the time of Emperor Diocletian was that he got a bit head-choppy with them and when he found out he had both of us seized, taken to Damascus to be tortured and beheaded on the bank of the river Gallus.
I did write a book of powerful spells for praying or invoking Saints and included a few of the, let's call them love spells, but i can't be held responsible for any results of using these spells or any resulting husbands or wives who you thought would be your one true love but turn out to be huge douches.

Special Guest Blogger: Pope Innocent VIII

Being in a position of power brings out the best in people, taking on responsibility can prompt thoughtfulness, dignity, and responsibility but sometimes you just pull ideas out of your backside and go with it which is mostly what i did during my time as Pope.
I only became Pope because gangs were rioting in the streets and the election of the unpopular Venetian Cardinal Barbo was going to make things worse so i got the nod as the least bad option and found myself in the big chair and decided to take on Witchcraft, the Turks and the Kingdom of Naples.
Naples was easy, i invited King Charles VIII of France to come to Italy with an army and take possession of Naples which they did although it did spark an eleven year war but by then i had moved onto tackling  the Turkish Ottoman Empire.
The Bayezid II ruled as Sultan of the Ottoman Empire but his brother Cem was forever trying to overthrow him and when he came to us and offered perpetual peace between the Ottoman Empire and Christendom if we backed him, the Sultan offered to pay us 120,000 crowns and 45,000 ducats a year if we kept him captive.
Bayezid II didn't promise peace with the Christians but all we did to keep the peace was threaten to free his brother if his sights turned to any Christian nation which worked just as well.
With Naples and the Turks sorted, i decided to tick witchcraft off my to-do list and got together some experts who said that witchcraft was to blame for all miscarriages, crimes, ruined fruits and vineyards, bad weather and any failed harvests so i issued a papal decree which made it illegal to impede the inquisitors investigating sorcery.
So with a war raging in Naples, the smell of burning witches filling the air and the Turks tamed, i was pretty happy with my achievements and then i fell ill with a high temperature and growing weaker by the day, which was a problem because this was the 'apply leeches to the affected area' era of medicine so the pulling ideas out of your arse didn't only apply to Papal decisions and the best doctors came up with the idea of feeding me milk from a young girls breast.
As much fun as that was, they decided it wasn't working and decided instead of milk i needed a young persons blood to drink so they rounded up three ten-year-old boys and brought them to the Vatican to serve as donors.
Amazingly that never worked either and it didn't do much for the boys either because they drew too much blood from them and killed them all so days later three ten year old boys and Pope were laying dead, me with a horrible aftertaste in my mouth.

The Search For Conservative Partie's Moral And Empathy

At the end of an extensive worldwide investigation, i can today confirm that we have tracked down the Conservative Governments missing morals and empathy, bringing to an end the intense speculation that surrounded its unexpected disappearance during the Theresa Coffey interview where she exclaimed that she was 'extremely happy' with the £20 removal of Universal Credits and people could make up the extra
money by just working longer hours.
Coffey earns £149,437 and receives a further £10k a year rental income from a second home but i was contacted this afternoon by the Conservative Parties morals and empathy who both condemned Boris Johnson's repressive regime.
'It's terrible! The way we are treated at the moment is an absolute disgrace' said morals, 'We are ignored, sidelined. We don’t have the opportunities open to us that are there for others such as greed, ignorance and indifference'.
Empathy continued his rant saying 'Compared to Unscrupulous and prejudice we’re like third-class citizens, and don’t get me started on corruption'.
'Johnson has never shown one iota of interest in our feelings. We are just left in a cupboard most of the time' Morals added 'Put it this way, our lives are miserable, i just don't see any future for us with the Conservative Party. It's sad times indeed'.
At the time of writing, the search for the Conservative Parties honesty and fairness continues.

As Clear As Mud

I imagine it isn't easy to find ministers willing to be sent out to do the Sunday morning media run after the last few weeks because they seem to spend the first few shows defending the Governments position on something only for the Government to do a screeching u-turn and the embarrassed minister then finds himself made to look even more of a fool.
It happened again this Sunday with Vaccine Minister Nadhim Zahawi painfully explaining to Sky News why the Government are introducing Covid Passports to protect everyone only for Boris Johnson to put out a statement that they have been scrapped moments before he was appearing on BBC News and Zahawi found himself explaining why Covid Passports are not all that important actually.
Ever since the pandemic started, the Government have been as indecisive as Donald Trump faced with a KFC, Mcdonald's and a porn star and one of Boris Johnson's very first press conferences was to joyfully say he had been shaking hands with Covid patients just after his Chief Medical Officer had finished warning about not shaking hands with anyone. Obviously Johnson went down with Covid and ended up on a ventilator but that is par for the course for him.
Now after last week's announcement that Passport's were definitely coming in followed by yesterdays announcement that they aren't, a press meeting has been called for tomorrow where the Prime Minister will set out his plan to deal with coronavirus during the upcoming autumn and winter months, including Covid passports which he has said could now be an option.
So just to be clear, the official message is work from home but don't work from home and take public transport only we don't want you to take public transport but try not to go outside and shake anyone's hands but make sure you stay in and don't actually shake hands but you can go outside but you will need a Covid Passport which they are not introducing but definitely will soon.
Got it? Good, now explain it to Boris because he hasn't got a clue. 

Special Guest Blogger: King Goujian of Yue

Wars are generally won by the side with the most advanced technology or the most soldiers so it isn't easy to think up new ways to win them but i came up with the idea of the most unorthodox ways of winning conflicts by proving that if i was a madman with little regard for my own sides safety, the other side would begin to worry so that's exactly what i did.
My family ruled over Yue, a state in China, and we never got along with our neighbours, the Wu's, and when my father died and i became King, i got a nasty present for my coronation when the Wu's attacked and i was captured and was taken prisoner and held in captivity for three years until i convinced the King of Wu that if he let me return to my state, i would not make any trouble and play real nice.
With a hearty farewell i bid the King goodbye and spent the next decade devising strategies for some payback and waiting for the opportune time to strike which was handily provided by a locust-induced famine which struck Wu, so i marched my army and all of the criminals who had been sentenced to death in our prison to the border.
Wu sent their army to meet us and we stood either side of the border staring at each other waiting for the command to start hacking each other to pieces and this is where my masterplan came into effect.
I ordered all the convicts to the front and told them to take a few steps forward and in full view of the enemy, ordered the men to take out knives, scream, and slit their own throats.
A few hesitated but the massive army of armed-to-the-teeth soldiers standing right behind them soon solved that and after that, i sent in another wave of soon to be dead anyway convicts, then another until all the criminals lay on the ground with their windpipes slashed by their own hand.
The enemy troops, not knowing they were convicts and assuming they were regular army, stared slack-jawed and contemplated how they could hope to fight people who were prepared to kill themselves and as they pondered on that, the rest of my forces sneaked up from behind and annihilate them.
As we marched onto the capital, the King of Wu committed suicide and we eventually took over and annexed the state and everyone lived happily ever after, except for the Wu academics, we slaughtered all them but everyone else was okay about it.

Cheering On Emma Raducanu

Nobody seems to have heard of Tennis player Emma Raducanu until a few weeks ago and suddenly everyone is falling over themselves to try and find where they can watch her play fellow teenager Leylah Fernandez in the US Open Final tonight.
Previously the final was on Amazon Prime and you needed a subscription but hats off to Channel 4 who have paid a massive amount to Amazon to show it live on Free-to-Air TV so we can watch along at 21:00 BST tonight.
Hers is an incredible story, ranked too low to make the main draw, the 18-year-old had to come through three rounds of qualifying and has become the first qualifier to reach a major final and doing all that without dropping a set.
Her opponent, Leylah Fernandez, is only a year older at 19 and did face Radacanu in the second round of junior Wimbledon in 2018 with Raducanu winning that match 6-2 6-4 but we are being warned not to use that as a gauge as both have changed since and Fernandez has had a much tougher route to the final with four of her six matches going to three sets and featuring five tie-breaks.
You would have got great odds at the start of the tournament that the women's final would feature the world numbers 150 and 73 but although Raducana was born in Canada to Chinese and Romanian parents, she came to the UK aged two and is a product of the British Tennis Association so this isn't a Greg Rusedski or Lennox Lewis situation where they waved the Union Flag but were never really accepted as British, she is truly one of our own.
What is certain is that once she returns to Bromley, she is guaranteed a heroes welcome so well done Emma, well done Channel 4 and well done the Advertising Executives who have their new very photogenic and very smiley new star to flog us stuff we never knew we needed.

Singing Wakey, Wakey, Wakey Rise And Shine

The Big Breakfast was once described as like being woken up by a pair of cymbals which described it perfectly, it was loud, funny, colourful, anarchic and it just seemed to fall it's way through from 7am to 9am every weekday morning with mad game shows and weird humour which sometimes sailed very close to the edge.
It really hit it's stride with Johnny Vaughn and Denise Van Outen in 1997 and then in 2002 it ceased to be and left a huge void in many peoples Breakfast-time viewing, mine included because i loved that show.
This morning, almost 20 years later, Channel 4 bought it back for a one off special as part of it's Black to Front campaign which saw black presenters host some of Channels 4 most successful programs and with AJ Odudu and Mo Gilligan in the Big Breakfast seats, it was as brilliant and mad as i remember.
With the TV on offer while you eat your cornflakes limited to Good Morning Britain or the BBC Breakfast, i did wonder if the bosses at Channel 4 would use today's one off show as a pilot to judge reaction to possibly bring it back to our screens and my initial reaction is i hope so but the more i think about it, maybe not.
As much i miss the fried egg wallpaper and the whole madness at 7am, they tried it without Johnny Vaughn and Denise van Outen when they left in 2001 and after trying many different presenters, it sang its last wakey, wakey, wakey rise and shine song a year later and despite the same format, it was never the same.
I was never much of a fan of Johnny Vaughn in anything he has ever done since, i find his whole laddish thing a bit much but him and Denise was perfect together and so with a heavy heart i say don't bring it back, the odd special is fine such as today which was for a very worthwhile cause but those 4 years from 1997 to 2001 was as good as it was ever going to be, anything else, as funny, mad or brilliantly bizarre as it may be, it would be a pale imitation so let it go Channel 4 and don't ruin the fond legacy it has amongst us fans.

Special Guest Blogger: James Jameson

The problem with being an heir to a family fortune is the waiting for relatives to die so i had to find something to while away the days until the inevitable giant pile of family money dropped into my lap.
I was the great-great-grandson of John Jameson, the founder of the Jameson Irish Whiskey company and i got bored with all the drinking fancy wine, hunting and eating all the best food so i thought i would give exploring a try and tagged along on the expeditions of more accomplished explorers such as one led by Henry Morgan Stanley to central Africa to bring Belgian supplies to Emin Pasha, the leader of an Ottoman province in Sudan that was cut off by a revolt and as this was the time of various imperialist European countries fighting over which chunks of Africa they'd get to oppress, if we happened to spot some nice land ready to be annexed for the Belgian Free State colony in the Congo, that also.
It was on this expedition that i was accused of an unspeakable crime of purchasing a ten year old slave girl from a slave trader so i could see her get eaten by cannibals which i flat out refute.
Yes i did say it would be cool to see it but that was just locker room talk while i just happened to know a slave trader in Congo, his name was Tippu Tip but just because i handed him six handkerchiefs and he arrived with a ten year old slave girl in no way implicates me.
How was i supposed to know that the natives i handed her to were going to tie her to a tree then stab her in the belly and cut up the body and sit around eating the dismembered pieces of the child.
Such was my shock and indignation that i not only made some drawings but retired to my tent and turned them into splendid watercolours.
There was much noise and i made the English and Irish newspapers but another string to my bow of innocence was that nobody ever charged with anything, mostly due to my dying from some fever i picked up in the Congo not long afterwards but i was innocent of the whole thing and i have some brilliant watercolours of the events to show that i was in no way involved and it was not a case of a rich, thoughtless westerner using their wealth for evil, sure i felt sorry for the girl but remember i ended up six really nice handkerchiefs down on the deal so who was the real victim here?

Don't Cancel Your Plans Just Yet

Got any plans for September 11th, 14th and 26th? If so you may want to make sure you have kept the receipt to get your money back because a time traveller from 2714 has come back to warn us to stay at home those days.
A self proclaimed time traveller has turned up on TikTok and has been the recipient of much ridicule so he has responded with a request for proof by saying 'you still don’t believe I am a real time traveller from the year 2714, so remember these three dates in September'.
Those dates are September 11th when an alien ship lands and kidnaps 4,000 earthlings then on the 14th when the first ever category 6 hurricane slams into the US East Coast and then the 26th September when a chimpanzee is able to talk because of a mutation in its vocal cords.
The time traveller did claim that aliens were going to land on Earth on 11th August and start a war with humanity and i am sure that would have been mentioned on the News and in the papers unless i missed it, the Olympics were on the time so it is possible.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say there won't be 4,000 missing humans, the inhabitants of the US East Coast won't need to strap themselves in from a Category 6 hurricane and a chimp won't be verbally explaining the best way to peel a banana but boy will my face be red if i wake up on the 11th and find myself and 3,999 others in a spaceship destined for Alpha Centuri.

Another Crazy Scheme From The Desk Of Priti Patel

Despite once admitting that under her own rules, she wouldn't be allowed in the UK, the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, is doing her damnedest to make sure that other  non-Brits are not welcome here and her latest wheeze is to turn back rickety floating vessels overladen with desperate people in British waters attempting to cross the Channel back towards the French coast.
The French have called it dangerous and insisted that 'safeguarding human lives at sea takes priority over considerations of nationality, status and migratory policy' and has said that a large boat attempting to approach a smaller craft will cause it to capsize for which the Government have hurried out an explanation that it will only be used in 'very limited circumstances for sturdier, bigger migrant boats' which appears a bit pointless when most of the boats are inflatable dinghies
The UN Conventions of the Law at Sea says that 'every state is required to render assistance to any person found at sea in danger of being lost' and in response by lawyers that it could be against the Geneva conventions, EU legislation and Maritime Law to attempt to push back refugees in boats claiming asylum, Patel has ordered officials to rewrite Britain's interpretation of international maritime law.
In an unfortunate turn of phrase, the Immigration Services Union called the plans 'dead in the water' due to the legal implications or maybe it wasn't unfortunate as that is exactly what will happen as seen in the Mediterranean when the Italian Border Patrol tried the same thing and the migrants threw themselves off the ship rather than be forced back, so many drowned that the Italians stopped the practice.
As most of the migrants are coming from Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Iraq, the countries whose citizens are seeking to live elsewhere may ring a bell to anyone who has been paying attention to the news over the last few decades, for those who haven't it is where the West have intervened militarily and left the citizens in a more perilous state for it.  
Maybe our foreign policy needs to be looked at and the floods of refugees accepted as a consequence of our terrible decisions in these countries and not crazy, dangerous hare-brained dog whistle calls from Patel to her right wing brethren with schemes like her other awful scheme to install giant wave machines in the Channel.

Better Late Than Never I Guess

Each year, we foolishly throw billion of tonnes of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere and as we are seeing, that has terrible consequences for us living on Earth and as stronger hurricanes blow and the waves lap higher up in low lying nations, it seems we are already too late to stop the effects of Climate Change but while the most polluting nations countries seems to be doing very little about it, technology is lending a hand.
Iceland has began operation of the world's largest plant which will suck 4,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air per year making it the 15th such machine who altogether will capturing more than 9,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, according to the International Energy Agency.   
Global emissions last year were 36 billion tonnes, according to the International Energy Agency and i couldn't even do the math's for that on my calculator but Google reliably informs me that 36 billion divided by 9,000 means it would take 4 million of these machines to scrub out the CO2 we spew out annually.
While 9,000 will hardly make a dent in 36 billion, it's a start although depressingly it seems a case of too little too late for some, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated it causes over 150,000 deaths annually, while the rest of us and future generations are facing more extreme weather events as the global temperature creeps ever upwards.
The problem with Climate Change is that is was always something that was going to happen and it was easy to ignore or for the more gullible, deny, unfortunatley the going to happen is now happening as we literally reap what we sowed but at least we have made a start in doing something about it, many, many decades too late obviously but it's finally sunk into the thickest of skulls.

Special Guest Blogger: Charles II of Navarre

I was the ruler of Navarre, a tiny then-country wedged between Spain and France and it was during the time of the Hundred Years War with England and played them both, continually changing sides depending on who was the most useful at the time.
When the King of France was preparing to attack my territories for my role in having his son killed, i teamed up with the English and the King backed down and even gave me some more land which didn't go down well with the English who threatened to invade me themselves so i signed a treaty with the French to protect me but the English invaded anyway and took me captive.
As wars were coming thick and fast, my brother, Philip of Navarre, threw in his lot with the invading English army of the Duke of Lancaster for the next one and made war on the French and i was released and opened negotiations with both the French and English Kings, telling the English we should divide France between ourselves and telling the French King he could rule over parts of Navarre but the suspicious Kings no longer trusted me and the Kings of England and France agreed to jointly make war on Navarre's and i was overthrown.
I was making plans on regaining my territories when i came down with a bad cold and consulted a physician, who ordered me to be wrapped up from head to foot, in a linen cloth impregnated with brandy, so that 'i might be enclosed in it to the very neck as in a sack'.
It was over-night when this remedy was best administered and after the maid finished sewing me in, she placed the pan of hot coals under my bed to keep me warm.
Unfortunately, we need to remember that the karma is a raging arse and the maid given the job of sewing me into my sack that night wasn't the brightest and when she noticed an errant thread, she decided to burn it off with a hot coal and i went up like a fancy Molotov Cocktail.
On hearing of my demise, and the way that i died, the French and English took it as evidence of divine will and proof that God was on their side but as the war between them raged on for another 66 years, i think it was just evidence of crap medical advice and proof that material soaked in alcohol is incredibly flammable.

Special Guest Blogger: Phalaris of Acragas

If you close your eyes and picture your ideal death you are probably picturing either an elderly version of yourself peacefully snoring into the Grim Reapers embrace or some other dignified departure from this mortal plain but if you are picturing your final moments screaming while you are roasted alive inside a metal hollow torture chamber shaped like a bull than i'm your man.   
All things considered i was a pretty decent leader, i built Sicily into a prosperous, well-equipped place with amphitheaters, residential housing blocks, granary buildings, aqueducts, public baths, triumphal arches and a bronze bull statue with a trapdoor installed in the belly to shut people inside the statue and enough room beneath it to set up a roaring fire.
It was a present from a local blacksmith named Perillos who said that he had made it in such a way that the screams will sound like the bull is bellowing which i found hard to believe so he learnt a valuable life lesson that handing an ingenious execution device to madman was a poor decision so i demanded a demonstration from the inventor himself and had him thrown him inside it, got a roaring fire going and listened and you know what, it did sound like the bull was mooing. Burnt Perillos to a crisp in the process obviously but i thought it was a nice touch.
With my new toy i went on a roasting spree and stuffed victim after victim inside the brazen bull and i was enjoying myself immensely although the people of Sicily not so much because i was overthrown by a citizens uprising and was stuffed in my own metal chamber and though it was much more fun seeing other people inside it, my last thoughts were i wonder what makes it smell so nice inside here, then realised it was the smell of me slowly roasting.

Special Guest Blogger: Samuel Adams

Any American history book will tell you that the Boston Tea Party was the night when angry patriots gave birth to America by boarding a a bunch of British ships and throwing crates of limey tea into the harbor.
What the history books tend to overlook is that this event would probably have ended much differently if the angry patriots hadn't been raging drunk on the night in question.
I never really liked the English and hated the way they talked, I mean, do these guys realise how wussy they sound? They all think they sound so smart with their little funny accents and words like fortnight and penultimate..JUST SPEAK ENGLISH, YA LIMEY MORONS!!
The night began at a meeting led by me at the Old South Church, when a group of us gathered at the house of newspaper publisher and tea-hater Benjamin Edes to discuss what to do about the British ships, i stood up and said 'lets storm them and throw the tea into the sea' but there was a murmur and a distinct lack of interest so i sat down and had a few glasses of the red wine, rum and whisky punch or as i called it, Freedom Juice.
Hours and a few bowl's of punch later, we moved into the phase of the night when the Freedom juice was really flowing and drunk logic was starting to sound good so i stood up, wobbled a bit and announced that we should dress up as Indians, stumble down to Boston Harbor, and show the British how irrational they were being by wrecking their shit.
I also suggested we put on our wives dresses and go moon the neighbours but by then the patriots had all belched their agreement and we stumbled out the door and towards the Boston Harbour with our efforts only occasionally halted for bouts of puking.
We boarded the ships and spent hours tossing the tea crates into the harbor before falling back home giggling and dancing and then waking up six hours later a lot more sober and wondering what we did last night and why did our clothes smell faintly of tea?
The rest is history and we kicked the Brits asses all the way back to limeyland and America went on to become the land of the free, and the home of the brave and all it took was a bunch of drunks dressed like Indians having a massive piss-up.

Special Guest Blogger: Bob Ross

Hi, glad you could make it here today and i am very happy to see you.
I am known for three things, painting, big afro hair and aside from maybe Jesus, being pretty much the nicest person who ever lived with my smiling face and talk of happy little clouds and trees in a voice that never rose above that of a gentle lullaby but that wasn't always the case, i was a hard-assed drill sergeant in the Air Force for 20 years stationed in Alaska and would bellow at poor sods to clean the latrines, make their beds and shine their shoes.
When i eventually left i promised i would be the exact opposite of the awful person i was for those two decades and fortunately for me, i spent much of my non-screaming time taking art classes and painting the Alaskan wilderness around me of mountains, lakes, snow and log cabin scenes using a technique i saw on TV show called The Magic Of Oil Painting by Bill Alexander.
I began selling my paintings and found that i could make more money selling them than yelling at cadets for not having their boots properly spit-shined so quit and tracked down Alexander and asked him to teach me the technique he used, known as 'wet-on-wet' which was nothing new, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Paul Cézanne and Monet used the same technique to knock out paintings in double quick time.
As i was so good at it and could make a painting in under 30 minutes, i was approached by PBS to front a painting show called The Joy of Painting teaching Alexander's technique which i agreed to as it would help sell my painting and promote a line of my own art supplies, building what would become a $15 million business.
I painted over 30,000 paintings during my lifetime, many i donated to PBS for fund raising and would paint three versions of the one you saw on my TV show, the first one painted prior to taping and sat on an easel off-camera during filming as a reference to create the second copy which viewers actually watched me paint and after filming the episode, i would paint a more detailed version for my personal collection.  
People did wonder why i painted quite so many trees but i liked looking at trees and your options are to either paint one to look at or drag one through your home and put in in a corner leaving a wake of twigs and leaves that'll be showing up in the most random places for the next six months.
I often said that we don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents and that was exactly what happened with my hair which was a perm job, the idea was that it would save me having to pay out for haircuts when i started out as a struggling painter but once the art took off and it got incorporated into the logo so i had to stay with it, never really liked it much though.
A heavy cigarette smoker, i suffered several health problems over the course of my life and developed cancer and lost my hair and wore a wig to keep up appearances until i died at the age of 52.
So my message is enjoy the happy trees, mighty mountains and fluffy clouds but most importantly, be sure to use odorless paint-thinner. God Bless.

Phrase That Could Only Come From America

There are some phrases you hear and you think they could only have come from that country and i heard a quote today from an American doctor that was couldn't have been more American if it came with apple pie, was chewing gum and was wearing a baseball jersey.
The doctor was discussing how the Coronavirus hospitlisations are sky rocketing over there and how full the hospitals were and how the ambulance service across the nation were stretched when he launched this classic Americanism: 'The emergency rooms are so backed up that even gunshot victims were having a hard times getting to facilities where they can get definitive care and be treated'.
With echoes of when Donald Trump suggested drinking bleach may be an effective treatment against the disease (just in case you are wondering, no it isn't) he then went on to explain how the situation got worse after the influential podcaster Joe Rogan announced he had tested positive for Covid and was taking Ivermectin which is an anti-parasitic drug for cattle.
As well as Coronavirus and gunshot wound patients joining the queue outside American hospitals, now there are people who are poisoning themselves by drinking Ivermectin forcing the US Food and Drug Administration and American Medical Association to issue a warning that 'Taking this drug is
dangerous and can cause serious harm including nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, seizures, delirium and death'
The final word from the doctor was that: 'People are actually putting themselves in worse conditions than if they’d caught Covid' but he didn't add stop drinking poison but at the very least stop shooting at each other until the crisis eases up.