I’ve been looking forward to Kylie’s Showgirls show coming on TV for literally months. I missed the last one you see, and for about three weeks afterwards felt like my life had lost a bit of sunshine. Glitz is my hobby: I adore it all, feathers, glitter, high heels and razzle-dazzle – bloody brilliant. The highlight of my teens was being given both a marabou trimmed boudoir outfit and an actual train to sit in while I sang ‘Shuffle Off To Buffalo’. At that point my whole life jumped a very ritzy shark.

“I’m likely to get hyperactive and scream a lot,” I warn my Housemate as we settled down to it last night.

“How am I supposed to tell that from normal?” he says, crushingly. I sulked into my frozen yoghurt Ben & Jerry’s (don’t be fooled, there is one chocolate brownie in the entire tub, this is why it doesn’t make you fat).

After an unnecessarily drawn-out opening during which we are asked to guess who is starring in the show (K…Y…L… ooh, that bloke from Sex and the City, obv) Kylie turns up and stands very still, grinning for about five minutes. “It’s so lovely to be ha-owm!” she beams, another girl the UK has conveniently adopted for their own because our own celebs are mostly gash. Oh well. The reason for her general stillness must surely rest with the fact that she is covered in feathers and looks like Vogue’s Christmas leftovers (see picture). She’s also very delicately but unmistakeably giving the finger to someone. Housemate suggests it’s the one ostrich who escaped the Australian cull in the making of her outfit: “Come back! Kylie needs a shrug!”

Some songs. Hmm. First costume change brings Kylie out in a MIND-BOGGLINGLY awful fright wig that looks like Andy Warhol is trying to commune with her face, and she and her dancers do too many songs in 90s clothing while smiley faces and sunflowers flash up on the screen. It’s horrible. It carries on for ages. Somewhere out there, Gene Kelly is tap dancing his way out of his grave to come and kill the choreographer in his sleep.

“This one’s shit. What an appalling abuse of Kylie goodwill,” says Housemate making judicious use of the fast forward button. I’m too cross with the lack of fat in my skinny bitch ice cream to notice. Some karate kids come out and do some BBC ident dancing while Kylie changes into what Housemate calls her “Tit-off-khamen” outfit. He’s a lawyer, he’s already going to hell. It’s vaguely Egyptian and there’s a respectable lack of material. If the world’s glitter resources were in trouble after outfits one and two, three pushes them over the edge: the poor girl can barely see and one of her dancers has to use the fake-marionette-on-invisible-string method to drag her into ‘Confide In Me’. I loved Kylie’s indie period even if nobody else did, and it’s also clearly her best song, partly because it sounds nothing like the usual trying-to-be-Madonna stuff from the 90s, and also, it’s brilliant.

Kylie goes off for another inch of glitter and a bald man comes on to do some breakdancing, but he is deeply unattractive so we don’t care. There should be a clause that says that only fit people are allowed near capoeira-based activities. Bald man makes aggressive ‘CLAP ME YOU FUCKERS’ gestures at the audience who go “woo” politely. He gets a big stick and waves it about. Still not caring. As a last resort, he rather impressively throws himself down the steps backwards. Mild levels of caring. He rips off his trousers to reveal teeny weeny party pants with a daring Speedo stripe. “Eeurghhhhh!” Housemate and I chorus at the television. All chaos then lets loose when a new set rises out of the stage and a fleet of muscley men are revealed rubbing each other in showers I kid you not. I watched five episodes of Oz yesterday and there wasn’t this much homoerotica. For no apparent reason Kylie then rises out of the stage in the most appalling leopard suit complete with cutesy ears and red boxing gloves.

“Why is she sitting on a black pudding?” asks Housemate dismissively. It’s actually a gym horse – we’re in a gym! Is this not the gayest and least Minogue-flattering scenario you’ve ever seen? – but too obscured with men in tiny pants for that fact to be especially clear. Tiny-panted men then fall flat on the floor, presumably with boredom at her not being Judy Garland or a man, and Ms Kylie takes the opportunity to wail a bit of ‘Wild Rose’. As Nick Cave is too busy being The Shit to come and sing (see also Robbie Williams, replaced by a warbling backing singer on ‘Kids’) it comes to an abrupt halt after four lines, at which point the men in pants wake up and do such a frenziedly absurd dance routine to ‘Red Blooded Woman’ that I temporarily lose the ability to breathe. Imagine Legz Akimbo taking contemporary dance lessons from the Vauxhall Bearlesque and you’re still not even close.

It’s got to be nearly over: please god let it be over. This would never have happened to Madonna. Thing is, while Kylie certainly is both a national treasure and a top popstrel, she is a popstrel. Despite looking like a llama in lycra, Madonna has a back catalogue to kill your entire family for, whereas pre-2002, Kylie only has about three good tunes. While Madonna’s clearly had more sex than you or I will ever get and is totally comfortable with herself, Kylie wobbles a dangerous line between sex kitten (that ‘Slow’ video, Oliver Martinez) and virginal heroic icon (those gold hotpants were adorable rather than shoot your load sexy, see also outstandingly gay choreography and dancers, replace Garland drug battle with Minogue cancer) and tonight she doesn’t make either.

The show’s supposed to be all about her, but she just looks like a horrifically dressed fag hag. The organisers pander so heavily towards her hardcore gay fans that they might as well have beamed a Kylie cut-out onto a screen for all the importance her actual presence is given. It’s all about the dancers and their tiny pants (weights for Chrissakes, they’ve got WEIGHTS) and Kylie isn’t given the opportunity to flaunt herself at all. Fair enough, she’s probably not feeling her topper-most after all that treatment, but the stylist and choreographer should have nursed her through it instead of putting her in such godawful costumes. Glamour people! Glamour! (Note that this does NOT mean seating her in a glittery moon while wearing what appears to be a full-length Hallmark card in order to sing ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’. If you must rip off Judy, then at least nick a more original song.)

There was another 77 minutes to go, but I lost the will to watch any more. Kylie is sufficiently fabulous to warrant a pigeonhole of her own rather than being shoved into someone else’s so I skulk off to watch Singin’ In The Rain for proper ritz and fun. Minogue might be sweet as the Green Fairy, but she hasn’t got the balls necessary to fill Cyd Charisse’s green dress. No hyperactive gays were used in the making of that number.

Is your sex life shit? Here's another call out from Emap's lady department. Cheap way to earn £150 on a Saturday I suppose, although you'd need to be London and free on Monday and willing to have all your sexual problems cast in print for your mum to see in Smith's.

"We are desperately in need of a couple who can take part in a sex therapy real life story. Is your sex life not as it used to be, do you wonder where the spark has gone? Tomorrow we will need you to go to a face to face sex therapy session then on Monday take part in a glam photoshoot at either 9.30, 12pm or 2pm. It's all above aboard, no need to confess your filthiest sexual fantasies, just a gentle piece on relationships and sex. We need the couple to be 25 and above and can give £150 for your time. If this doesn't appeal to you then maybe it may to a friend so pass it round and get back to me with any possibilities."

I don't think I've ever read a "gentle piece" on relationships on sex. It sounds very comforting.

Email Nadine.Brown@emap.com or call 0207 208 3456. If you do it, please tell me as I am very nosey.

Yo Sushi are doing a 50% off deal until January 31 if you like that sort of thing. I bought RBT one of these sushi flash drives for his/our birthday - truly it is the greatest thing in the world ever. At least, that was what I thought until he got me the best of Jackie annual and a hole punch that clips the paper in the shape of sharks, and a card that would have made me cry had I not been start-of-the-evening sober. What more do you want, really?

"Dad died of a heart attack!"
"No. He died from fear. Fear of that shark."

It is very important that you see at least one show by these people at Bad Film Club a) because regardless of your sense of humour you will laugh like some kind of insane creature on crack b) you get to do slow hand claps and heckle at opportune moments c) there are often evil dwarfs (in the films).

Of course, the one that you should really come and see is Jaws 4 at the Battersea Arts Centre on February 10 which will be OUTSTANDING. There are lots of other films and dates but this is Jaws 4 and will be one of the greatest evenings ever because it's such a truly horrible bad film that it engenders great love and popcorn throwing. Michael Caine couldn't pick up his Oscar because he was on the set of this film. Rue the day Michael, rue it. Book tickets! Now!

Needless to say, mine are already nestled lovingly in my inbox. Come with me.

James Brown lying in state:

Despite being a journalist, see undeniable proof of the fact that I am loved, or at least gently humoured. If I were in Woman Mode I'd be crying into a cupboard right about now. Aren't people good?

Having given up in disgust on the odds of getting 'Love Me Or Leave Me' before I leave today, I've moved onto Judy Garland's always amazing version of 'Get Happy'. Those curls! Those languorous curling vibratos! Amazing. Anyway, Hype Machine doesn't have it, but I know of at least one person who will like this version. Right click, save as,ignore the Christian blatherings, get haaaaappy!

Am very annoyed as I downloaded a version of Love Me Or Love Me by Doris Day as the Nina Simone one was taking AGES, and it's so slow it basically isn't even the song. I'm always in favour of mixed-up versions of songs, but as that damned song has been knocking around my head for nigh on a week now I would much rather just play it into the ground and get it out of my system than be taunted by squeaky-clean cover versions. Even if it is by the mightily-barnetted one.

Proof that self-denial is a totally pointless and ghastly exerciseI have decided not to smoke until at least Friday because my voice is lowly getting fucked as was proved when I had to sing sustained notes on Monday night and fell into some atrocious wheezing instead. Also, there's no real need to, I'm not going anywhere where I'd ordinarily feel compelled to smoke. Of course now I've decided that, and given my tobacco to someone else (it was 3am, who seriously makes good rational decisions at 3am?) I am absolutely GAGGING for a cigarette. And a drink. A hefty alcoholic drink. I'm craving in the sort of way I do when I'm in a pub, or within a sniff of alcohol, when you get that panicky tightness in your chest and can think of nothing else. I know it wouldn't be particularly nice, my throat's a bit sore and I've had an on-off cough for ages, but it would be that sort of vindicated feeling of "A-HA!"

Ordinarily I'm not fussed about cigarettes during the day. I've smoked since I was 15 and only started inhaling when I was 16 and a cute boy with dreads pointed out that I looked like a complete twat as I wasn't doing anything apart from slowly giving myself mouth cancer. I can't smoke at all before lunchtime, the very idea of a cigarette makes me feel physically ill. In fact, I'm not physically addicted to cigarettes at all and can quite happily do without: it's the context, the notion of relaxing or indulging in a nice drink, of the prospect of a good conversation with a close friend, of locking yourself in another world for a few hours putting the world to rights or wrongs. Illicit cigarettes are my favourites. And unfortunately, alcohol makes up quite a sizeable portion of my evenings.

It's lunchtime. The only reason I'm physically craving a cigarette is because I can't have one: the only time I ever fall for the "what you can't have is what you want" mantra.

Something catchy and vaguely indie comes on the stereo, which is nice considering the dirge-like skindie grindie boy who’s been whingeing on about his A-levels for the last 20 minutes. Chris Swishblog is in charge of the stereo at work, so he occasionally gets emails from me along these lines:

“I like this song. What is it.”

“*Name of song* *artist*.”

Now, confusion arises when the conversation goes like this:

“I like this song. What is it.”

“Ike and Tina.” Total absence of River Deep Mountain High/presence of Arctic Monkeys-style screeching suggests piss being taken.

“Shurrup.”

“What? That’s what it is.”

“What, Ike and Tina of gratuitous domestic abuse fame?”

(All dirge-like skindie grindie boy’s songs sound familiar enough to mean that I’ve probably heard them at least once before, but I’ve never heard of a grindie band called Ike and Tina. And why would a grindie band that sounds like The Holloways and/or Just Jack call themselves something so kitsch and UnCool.)

“No, the SONG’S called Ike and Tina.”

“Oh. Right. Ye-es, but who’s the band.”

Incredulous look. ”It’s Jamie T.”

This is not fair. It has reggae in it and reggae is my fifth circle of hell. Also, the only thing I know about Jamie T is that he lives in Wimbledon, which, from my past recollections of Wimbledon, suggests that the only kids he’s likely to be down with are organically farmed ones from Waitrose.

“Oh. But you didn’t write the name down so I thought you were taking the piss?”

“I thought seeing as you have three magazines with Jamie T on the cover on your desk you’d know who he is.”

Explanation above. Oh well, Jamie T has one song that I do like listening to and that’s called ‘Ike and Tina’ and seeing as it’s only Tuesday, my new resolution is going very well.

I was having a “debate” about preconceptions last night over pasta and some very disappointing Paul Newman-branded vinaigrette, the opposition’s point being that all modern theatre is shit and me saying that’s not true, there are some truly outstanding actors/plays and that you can’t say that unless you see every single thing on offer which is bloody impossible and also wouldn’t leave me with any time to find vague solace in Jamie T etc etc. Having taken up assorted new year’s resolutions in the last two weeks and discarded them when I can’t be arsed (also known as “whims”), my latest one is to stop making generalisations and pigeon holing people after short notice, which, given I write about music and film and have a very low threshold for crap is really very hard.

The thing that spurred this one (replacing “Engage in neighbourhood activities: watch Celebrity Big Brother”, which lasted the opening show before I just couldn’t be arsed anymore) was doing an interview with the singer from Ghosts today, who recent readers will know are a band I absolutely cannot stand for being a) beige and b) wankers. On the phone the singer couldn’t have been nicer. He wasn’t remotely pretentious, gave decent answers and was basically much better and more patient than some of the people I’ve interviewed in the past who really should know better (Dot Allison, I’m looking at you.) So yes, I feel better disposed to Ghosts, even though their music is still deeply beige. Good luck to them, and I hope the singer finally gets to go to Glastonbury where I expect Jamie T will be playing on the main stage and everyone will know and love him apart from me. But I’ll cheer when he plays Ike and Tina.

As all the links I've been looking at recently seem to involve bands, porn, cats in various odd places and general unsuitable crap, I asked work for links to go in the Q newsletter. That's my favourite - Tickle Me Emo. Wait for the razorblades to come out and then reflect on the fact that no-one, Muppet or otherwise, should be in possession of that haircut.

Other favourites include...
- A Chinese frozen waterfall (not a euphemism),
- Jessica Simpson might be a cow. Pretty much just a news story, but a sublimely headed news story.
- Star Wars done 1920s style. Silent movies, silent Stormtroopers...
- Every book Art Garfunkel has read since 1968. The man is clearly lying about January 2006.
- Furbie in a microwave. You know, those toys your niece/nephew/some child you once saw in a street was totally obsessed with a couple of years ago.
- Give your soul away, win a DVD

The year's "People to watch in etcetc" lists have come out and somewhat surprisingly the Guardian have fucked it up the most. They've got Alexis Petridis for god's sake! Betty Clarke! Caroline Sullivan! And yet their list is a combination of the totally bobbins and that horrible moment you get on seeing your ferry sailing off without you - it's that backward.

The Twang - MOR The Feeling mixed with Kaiser Chiefs. But without the goodness of Fill My Little World and thus a totally superfluous blandity. We already have a Kaiser Chiefs, let’s not have any more.
New Young Pony Club - made an impact at Wireless at June, have already soundtracked a computer advert, ergo they're not new.
TTC - Parisian hip-hop. have you ever heard French hip-hop? It's like running a Skoda into your ears over and over again. Although, as the Journalist puts it: "I kind of give a fuck about French hip-hop. But my loathing of the country's people stops me from buying any."
Findlay Brown - "In short: the interesting James Blunt." Hang on, wasn't that supposed to be James Morrison? Either way, it in no way defeats the point that he’s a) being compared to that aural abortion Blunt and b) is on a MasterCard advert and is, again, not new.
The Kidz In The Hall – College educated rap. So, Kanye West, but two of them. As Angus Bateman goes on to say, “Like fellow Chicagoans Kanye West and Lupe Fiasco, naledge leavens his street talk with words of consciousness and wisdom.” Counting your pots of money and going all ghetto on our collective asses then, quality.
Art Brut – Did the Guardian music desk sleep through 2005? If not that, then the fact Eddie Argos et al are playing EXACTLY the same shows as they were back then when they were music’s NBT might shock their brains into gear.
Last Gang – Guardian’s explanation for their major label signing is based entirely around their ditching two words from their name. Surely an explanation for my success then – god, imagine if I was still lugging my middle names around I’d never have got anywhere.
The View – Again, broke in 2005. Will succeed because they’re The Libertines, but without the smack habits. Hotly tipped to become the next Kooks which should make them all go and jump off cliffs immediately.
Pull Tiger Tail – NME’s pet pin-ups of late 2006 which might explain NME scribe Leonie Cooper’s bigging them up in the Graun.

And I'm sorry, THE FUCKING SHINS? Garden State came out in 200-fucking4 for Christ's sake! The Shins are as old as my nail polish collection! And that’s fucking old! Ready to step up to the big stage indeed, they were signed to Warner in 2001.

The BBC concluded its own straw poll today having interviewed 130 significant music industry people (including Q editor Paul Rees whose favourite album of the last year was Razorlight. I am contractually obliged by Emap loyalty to make no comment on that fact.) The difference between their list and the one written by the usually on-the-button Guardian, is that their list contains people who haven’t had any major success.

“Artists were not eligible if they had already had a top 20 single or album in the UK, or if they were already famous for any reason.” So, not having 400,000 worth of album sales or a car ad then?

Paul Rees gets straight back in my favour for voting for ultimate me favourite, Mika, who tops the list and who even the Journalist likes, and he doesn't like anything apart from jungle, The Smiths and Akira The Don. Seriously, I know I’ve been going on about him for what seems like an interminable Bat For Lashes-esque period of time, but that’s because he’s bloody fantastic. He will OWN the pop world this year.

This is the Beeb’s list:

1. Mika – see above. Last year’s winner was beige personified Corinne Bailey Rae so they’ve actually voted for someone worth it this year which is very good of them.
2. The Twang – I’ll shut up about them now. NME favoured, blah blah.
3. Klaxons – big in 2006 but we’ll allow them this one as they’re only big in underground circles to 13 year old taking too much MDMA.
4. Sadie Ama – never heard of. Have horrible feeling will turn to be Corinne Bailey Rae and I’ll enter a coma.
5. Enter Shikari – spot on. if Mika reigns the pop world, this lot are going to make severe inroads into rock.
6. Air Traffic – indie favourites around London venues who sound like Semisonic fronted by Alex Turner. “…”
7. Cold War Kids – American boys doing languorous rock/blues that has really, really good guitar lines in it which I’ve been missing quite a lot. Why can’t guitar sound characterful? What’s with this incredibly tedious trend for it just all blending in? Check out Hang Me Out To Dry on their MySpace.
8. Just Jack – Not remotely my cup of tea (house with funk tinges = aural asphyxia) but a very nice bloke and he’s also a trained furniture designer. He refused to design me a chair though which takes points away, but he sampled ‘Lullaby’ by The Cure on an old track called ‘Snowflakes’ and Lullaby is my secret favourite song ever.
9. Ghosts – Another hot tip who are about as inspiring as beige paint.
10. The Rumble Strips – Lovely! Played loads of festivals this year and got absolutely minimal recognition for it. I’m going for Tiny Dancers instead though because as well as looking like they’ve invaded a child’s birthday party whenever they play, they are very nearly very good and just need some polishing.

BBC in hipper and more relevant than Guardian shocker? Seriously, if they turn out another list as crap as that one I'm going to spend 2007 listening to 'Maneater'.

Bands that should have been on that list that weren’t: Noisettes (yes, they've been around for ages but they haven't even released an album yet and it's a brilliant one)Robyn, Shiny Toy Guns, The Bastard Fairies, Example, Black DanieL. Le Disko by STG has an urgent appointment with your iPod, like, yesterday.

And of course, if you haven't already hear Bat For Lashes then you should be horse whipped.

"It really has to be one of the most frightening predators out there," says Dr Steve O'Shea of the quite frankly ENORMOUS squid they've just clocked off Antarctica. Well, you're not going to distrust someone a) with a doctorate b) called Steve and c) with TWO surnames are you? Helpfully the BBC website lists its size as being bigger than a giant squid which is indeed mightily helpful and goes some way towards explaining why this is called a colossal squid rather than one of those boringly giant ones. They could have come up with a more interesting name for it though, colossal just sounds like someone trying to describe what really big is without really knowing what big is. Maybe call it Reginald. Or Superfractalgolokkingmentalpudding Squid.

"It's been known since 1925, but no one really paid any attention to it," Dr O'Shea said which is a bit sad really, and makes me feel significantly better about being a loser at school. Five years is a picnic compared to 82 really.

The squid story has happily overshadowed the day's other big story (as opposed to war / bus collisions / global warming) which is that The OC's been cancelled after four seasons. The OC was so GOOD for two seasons, even though it had the fatal flaw of containing Marissa Cooper and her "No really, I am more annoying than Katie 'stroke smile' Holmes" voice. And then it all went to shit and I gave up watching it. This is why it's really good to download television actually, because it means that when TV shows start disappointing you, you can just ignore them and download something else. Viz, Nip Tuck season 4 vs Ugly Better and Heroes.

I should now like two dogs and a colossal squid please.

Just watch it from 1'10 to the end, over and over and over again. "You want your momma?" "AH-WAAH-MA-MWAAHWAH". Oh my god, what's that? I've died in a pile of my own joyous tears? Good grief.

I would also like the dogs from 0'28 and 0'38 thank you very much.

A conversation between two people that pretty much sums up the way I think about the internet.


B: Have you never considered that sex with "strangers" is better by default? You can't have good sex with someone you respect.

A: call me old fashioned. if i had my way (and budget) i'd be out in patterned marc jacobs dresses with swirling skirts

A: no, no. YOU can't have good sex with someone you respect.

A: although i doubt you've tried

B: Define "respect".

A: i suspect that the moment you get them into bed, some vestige of respect is automatically lost

A: umm, can i point out the fucking obvious?

B: Sure

A: that if you pick up emotionally unstable girls because theyre easy, THEY'RE GOING TO EXPECT YOU TO PROP THEM UP

A: people tend to have low self esteem for REASONS and ISSUES which surprise surprise, manifest themselves in relations with guys!

A: its no wonder us stable, emo secure girls cant find a guy. you're all trawling myspace for the girls dumb enough to post bikini shots for strangers validation.

My friend Cassie sent me this site as a new year's greeting equivalent. I'm not overegging the pudding when I say that Cats In Sinks might be the greatest website the world has ever known. It's cats...in sinks. Or basins. And there are lots of them. This might be better than the Kitlers site, but it's still got a way to go before it betters Stuff on my Cat. KITTIES: crack for hormonal girls, making the world a better place with every single whisker.

Like the new-born puppy sliding out of the birth canal of 2006 into the burlap sack of 2007, I am blind. Unlike that horribly tortured metaphor/puppy, this is because I've lost my glasses and can't wear my contacts, and so my world is currently a vacant blur of colours and approximate shapes to be ignored in the lift until they prod you.

This inability to see could be a metaphor for the year ahead, for trying to make sense out of the opportunities and travails wavering ahead but really it means that I'm totally fucked when it comes to going to the spin class I signed up to this morning in a moment of "Jesus, I'm ludicrously unfit" panic. I just know I'm going to accidentally switch the settings onto Really Difficult And For Swedish People Only.

But then New Year's attracts crap resolutions like a guilt magnet, as if the fact that you've just spent two weeks in the company of people you are related to by blood and very little else shouldn't automatically entitle you to a drink problem anyway. The phrase "Cough. I've given up smoking" has just drifted across the office and made me go even more cross-eyed than I currently am. If I were bored enough to consider giving up smoking it certainly wouldn't be in January when you barely get enough light to avoid rickets and need the glow of a cigarette just so you can avoid tripping over your own feet.

The onset of another year, despite being but a few days away from the perfectly serviceable old one, means that it's demanded that you become that butterfly. You know, the one you see married to Goran Visnjic/Gerry Butler in his 300 kit/the hot one from The Killers who nobody fancies but me, instead of a caterpillar who's perfectly content to sit around drinking cocktails and eating toast while watching Ugly Betty/Grey's Anatomy/Grease 2 again.

This ridiculous period means embracing all the things that make British people happy, like self-imposed suffering and yah-boo-sucks smuggery. On the downside it means giving up all the bad things that make you who you are: the smoking, the excessive drinking, the having of a gym membership and ignoring it in favour of the first two. It means a personality overhaul so exhaustive that by the time you've finished writing the list you feel cleansed enough to put it through the shredder. You'll become a green philanthropist, get involved with your neighbourhood, do a 10k run for Canadian orphans, read aloud to small children who haven't already been brainwashed by Martin Jarvis, read 52 books in 52 weeks. That sort of crap.

I don't want a personality overhaul. I'm going to settle into all my bad habits and enjoy them with a balance of being a nice person. A good person. A good me, more than anything. What I do resolve to do is to keep one evening a week to myself – no meeting up with people, no work, no gym, no nothing. I'll go home at 6 and stay there, and read, or watch telly, or whatever and then the other six days can be as mental as they like.

However, I do rather like the idea of getting involved with the neighbourhood so that's going to be my other resolution. I'm going to do that by getting behind something culturally significant to Britain, by which I mean watching Celebrity Big Brother. I loathe Big Brother like I loathe bananas, Snoop Dogg and sherry. Paris Hilton aside, I'm not massively fond of celebrities either. I do however very much like the idea of becoming totally engrossed in something that's totally bad for me for a fortnight without causing damage to anything other than my brain.

Ooh, Desperate Housewives starts tomorrow as well and I've still got four episodes of Ugly Betty on my desktop. The next 14 days are going to be AWESOME people.

She saw the night and it was hers. She stared into the corners of the black and every sweeping seam of it was hers. Flashing glares into shadows that shrank, she smiled, and licked her teeth, waiting for a figure to approach, and then, turning, spurn it for something better or worse. There were no words in the dark, no thoughts of anything other than the black glory she was wrapped in, and every inch of it sent beams out into the night. She saw a figure emerge in the lights she imagined for herself and smiled wider, intent on little and much all at once. Her stare was cold and bright and hard, diamond true and blank as mist. You could see everything and nothing in it depending on what you chose, but the only truth that emerged from it was that which was known to her. There was no need, no desire, no sex, no love, no passion, nothing that could be so tidily laced into letters and swept into tick boxes of want. She wanted what was known to her, what the voice in the centre of her mind cooingly agreed upon as next. So she took it. She swept the figure down with her stare, laid it down and fucked it. She ran the body along hers and measured it with her breath, kissing it with bites and leaving nothing behind but the cold of the night air. She took it into herself and used it, discarding it, panting and exhausted. She turned her gaze onto the night, and moved on.

When I was living in France with the Orchestral Blonde, her boyfriend used to send us care packages with lovely things like Empire and Essential X-Men in for me, and books and Cosmo for her. It was while reading a particularly dreadful article about something possibly called the heart orgasm that I realised a) even in a country where English mags cost upwards of £6 a go I couldn't bring myself to read its ridiculous power bitch witterings anymore and b) I'd read the same article about 8 years previously. Now, I know that women's magazines make a living out of recycling ideas and pretending that they're new and inventive, simply because if they were new and inventive all the time their readers couldn't keep up, hence why you'll never get a woman's mag going "Fuck off you silly bitch, it WAS your fault because you're needy and desperate and have the self-esteem of a damp cupboard."

I flick through the women's mags when my friends get them simply to stay in touch with what's going on and it's pretty much always a chronic bore. New Woman's relaunch earlier this year was genuinely exciting and for a moment I felt a bit hopeful, but then it calmed down a bit and stopped. Glamour, my hitherto reliable source of gorgeous things to look at and fairly sensible articles has lost its head in a fluff of control, and that was pretty much it.

Anyway, while fruitlessly trawling the internet to find out stuff about trendy shagging for a mag pitch, I found Syd Allan's article on keeping up with trends in sex. If you have ever fallen into the trap of ignoring the person you're having sex with in favour of thinking that the people who write the sex columns in Cosmo/Glamour/B/More/etc Must Be Right (and god, it's so ingrained in my head that I still catch myself daydreaming about physically unlikely sex moves that require set squares and a very specific sort of silk scarf) then you need to read it because it's the most perfectly sharp evisceration of women's magazines I've ever read.

At one point he's going through a Cosmo list about 50 sexy surprises. It's all very dry and ridiculous, rather like the sex Cosmo readers probably end up having.

7. Sexy: You sense he's ready to climax from oral sex, so you let him release on your breasts.
Sex-traordinary: If you're monogamous, pull his butt toward you and let him climax in your mouth. "It's way more intense," says Peter*, 32.

*Names have been changed.

[Thank goodness they remembered to change Peter's name; that guy's a freak!]

17. Sexy: You trace your tongue along his lips, then slip it inside his mouth.
Sex-traordinary: Use your tongue to draw the tip of his tongue into your mouth so you can suck on it, suggests Iris Finz, coauthor of Secret Sex.

[I wish I had gotten that Secret Sex book about a month ago: a woman tried sucking on my tongue a few weeks ago and it freaked me out! "What the fuck are you doing?" I screamed. "Where did you learn such bizarre behavior?" If only someone had warned me that women have started doing this tongue-sucking thing. That's why I am going to get a subscription to Cosmopolitan: I want to be on the leading edge of every new technique.]

This is turning out to be a really good day for good articles which makes me very happy. Even if that one was written in 2003.

So much weird stuff has happened this week that I haven't had the time to take the piss out of it properly. Such is the sad fact of Christmas and the last week of work. I blame The Kooks, causing harm and destruction like so many voodoo crows. If only they'd fuck off to America and get killed by alligators I could relax into the Christmas spirit.

That MP and his Cheeky Girl
First of all, of course, is Lembit Opik's spectacular relationship with one half of the Cheeky Girls, my absolute favourite news story of the week. I was living abroad when their "fame" hit the UK and so was thankfully spared the initial onslaught of their adorable songs and surprisingly-old-for-23 looks. On the flipside, this meant that when I came back I hadn't had the jabs and got very sick, very quickly.

RBT pointed out that The Cheeky Girls had four top-10 singles, and that that was four more than AC/DC, Super Furry Animals, Cypress Hill, and Rage Against the Machine combined. That was admittedly was a rather tortuous way of being snobby about the lack of mainstream recognition for said bands from the single-buying public, even though the single-buying public is by and large populated by the tone deaf and My Chemical Romance fans. Poor, dumped Sian Lloyd has obviously done something to piss off the subs at the BBC website because instead of the usual incredibly glamorous shot afforded to the dumped and pitiful, they've used a photo that makes her look like a drag queen on a hen night.

The follow-up article rates as one of the funniest things I've read this week, along with the Evening Standard tornado "I was there" piece, if only for the interviews with Gabriela and her family:

- "Our relationship is really genuine and it's not out of a pantomime or anything like that."

- The sisters' mother and manager, Margit, said Mr Opik had been a "little bit shy" when he first visited the family home but he had got on well with their Irish wolfhound dog, Rocky.

- Mrs Irimia promised they would bounce back with a new cheeky girl, the twins' six-year-old niece Lory, singing a new version of the Hokey Cokey. The trio released a download album in November titled In My Mind (Is A Different World - A Cheeky One). --> --> --> E BO -->

God helps us.

According to Rupert Murdoch, MySpazz turns you into a serial-killing mental
The purported prostitute killer of Ipswich (needs catchier serial killer name – suggestions please) is on MySpazz. The London Lite immediately took the opportunity of calling him an "internet loner" which spells out great things for the rest of us. I've been on MySpazz for well over a year now and there are people I only talk to via the medium of comments – does this mean I'm going to throw a wobbler up in Bethnal Green and start killing hookers? Anyway, his page has now been taken down, suggesting that Rupert Murdoch and his henchmen don't put much faith in the adage innocent until proven guilty.

Andrew Lloyd Webber has No Shame
Following the "success" of How Do you Solve A Problem Like Maria (I love musicals and it made me feel cheap and used), Andrew Lloyd Webber is launching another reality music show to find a cheap way of promoting a musical into heart failure. Again taken from the title of one of his songs, (this man is PRESCIENT, surely. He and Tim Rice/Charles Hart etc must have had this all planned for years) Any Dream Will Do is going to look for some muggins to perform in a revival of perma-kiddie favourite Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. Apparently Maria was very popular with schoolkids, so lowering the bar further should make them epileptic with joy or something. Anyway, it sounds horrid. Bring on Prima Donna, where they shoot the entire cast of Phantom and admit they hired a bunch of Butlins red coats instead of actual performers.

Factory Girl needs to re-read its McNae
Factory Girl's lawyers are living in cloud cuckoo land. Having a film where every character goes under their real name bar "Danny Quinn", a musician with a mouth organ and a natty line in poetry and scarves, and then crying "But it's NOT DYLAN" when he threatens to sue you for demation caused by overt insinuations that he drove Edie Sedgewick to suicide is not a good plan. Ever. Click here to admire Guy Pearce's brilliant Warhol and go "meh, bothered" over their fluffy depictions of everything else. Sienna Miller looks alright. I've never seen her films because she's always been in crap that I've had no desire to see, but she was absolutely enchanting in As You Like It last summer.

Next year you will be forced into liking a band called Ghosts.
Ghosts are Atlantic Records latest big signing and fall neatly into that "some boys with guitars, a keyboard and totally blank expressions" category occupied by The Kooks, this year. Atlantic hosted a showcase for them at Ronnie Scott's yesterday lunchtime. You could tell they were throwing the big bucks after them because we had two different types of meal-inna-bucket, as well as canapés, and wine waiters to top up our glasses for us with three different kinds of wine.

They'd also inexplicably forked out for Stephen K Amos – who I absolutely adore – to do a short bit of stand up beforehand. This was, of course, an absolute disaster. Industry liggers can't be arsed to laugh before 7pm, they'd much rather stand around and plump up each other's egos and feel Important about seeing next year's Big Thing before anyone else. Amos didn't help himself at all trying to appeal to the blatantly racist in the room with his pigeon-holding routines rather than just being funny. Worse, he fell into the schoolboy error trap of continually saying "Well, I've had better gigs than this," and "God, is anyone else dying? Or is it just me?" Don't draw attention to it Amos! You're better than that. Although clearly not at 1pm on a Tuesday afternoon.

Ghosts eventually came on, and their wanker singer smugly slagged off Amos in the manner of one who's heard what a sense of humour and wit entails but has never really managed to pull it off. "This one's called Ghosts, as are we. But then, I guess you already knew that," he said later, even more smugly. I don't like the c-word but my god that cunt has got cunt written all over his cunting cunt's face. Anyway, their music sounds like a whole load of Asda mums banging their pockets in unison, bog-standard boy indie topped off with Captain crossed with Delays only without the charm or any of the decent tunes. They'll be massive, and it's all The Kooks fault for proving that the British public will still buy shit as long as people are playing it themselves so they can kid themselves it's "valid" and "important." Cunts.

Apparently while I was drinking tequila and thinking that was actually a good idea at Thursday's office party, Zane Lowe was busy playing the new Arcade Fire track, ‘Interruption’. Happy Monday, it's now been streamed. (Do you remember when, if you missed something and forgot to tape it, that was it? I love the internet with its myriad of people to do it for me…)

Third listen now and I’m still waiting to get excited. It’s actually quite boring, which is shocking considering a lot of Arcade Fire is up there with Bat For Lashes in the soaring heartbreak emotions stakes. Interruption’s rhythm is the sound of your maiden aunt dancing lumpenly around a village hall. Worse – and horribly, unnecessarily, dreadfully – they’ve totally raped the Belle and Sebastian angle. The organs, the twinkly da – da-daa –da-daa background, the sound of small children echoing in the background (for god’s sake…) although given Joanna Newsom’s precedent, it could just be the band. Typically frenzied lyrics and the odd Hallelujah, but it’s so well-produced you half expect Trevor Horn to turn up on the credits. Oh please, don’t let this be another Dear Catastrophe Waitress. Fourth listen now. Mind, it’s not miserable enough to alienate the mainstream (the sheer power of Rebellion (Lies) did for ears what Garden State soundtrack tried and mostly failed.) so this could be the year they take over the world in the sense of appealing to people other than indie/folk children and those poor cripples who need to have music in order to synthesise actual emotions.

“If that doesn’t get you somewhere special I feel sorry for you,” said Zane Lowe showing half an eyelid of emotion. Shut up Zane Lowe, you deadpan audio nuisance, the only special place that song’s taking me is back to iTunes and ‘Funeral’ on repeat.

Arcade Fire - Intervention @ Hype Machine

Things tend to fall out of my head after a while. I've lost a lot of French and Italian, and last night I had a conversation about sharks where I drew a total blank on the smallest shark in the world which is jawdroppingly sad. I used to know lots of poems off by heart. When I was small and read everything and anything I could get my hands on, by torchlight under my duvet, on the stairs, I would get the odd 50p off my grandma by reciting poetry to her when I visited. I liked the sounds of the words, the mystical pull on people when you did it well, the deserved praise for something I was good at. Acting for me was never really about showing off, but about wrapping myself up so entirely in words that I forgot about me and everyone else. All that mattered was giving the words to someone else and making them REALISE and, reading that sentence over, I just want to shoot myself in the head.

This is the first poem I ever learned.

Tarantella by Hilaire Belloc

Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?
And the tedding and the bedding
Of the straw for a bedding,
And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees,
And the wine that tasted of tar?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
(Under the vine of the dark veranda)?
Do you remember an Inn, Miranda,
Do you remember an Inn?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
Who hadn't got a penny,
And who weren't paying any,
And the hammer at the doors and the din?
And the hip! hop! hap!
Of the clap
Of the hands to the swirl and the twirl
Of the girl gone chancing,
Glancing,
Dancing,
Backing and advancing,
Snapping of the clapper to the spin
Out and in--
And the ting, tong, tang of the guitar!
Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?

Never more;
Miranda,
Never more.
Only the high peaks hoar;
And Aragon a torrent at the door.
No sound
In the walls of the halls where falls
The tread
Of the feet of the dead to the ground,
No sound:
But the boom
Of the far waterfall like doom.

We’re always supposed to pay more attention to what people who come in inverted commas say (and mark your fingers in the air accordingly). The elderly, children, the poor, the sick, everything they say is tinged with some significance that is supposed to be syruped and souped up by our impressions, their impressiveness. This is unfair and cuckoo-ish and, quite frankly, a load of bollocks.

In Oxfam adverts, or the usual hand-holding drumroll of interviews with African people, their richly accented voices rolling words around, letting us go into admiring orgasm about their dignity in the face of such oppression and deprivation. It makes us feel better about having more, because we’re spiritually deprived and obsessed with material goods and isn’t it good that they’ve got inner peace and we’d absolutely go for inner peace, but we just don’t have the time or the willpower or the BEING ARSED and if only we could do it through the medium of Ashram yoga or whatever that shit that isn’t pilates is. Who reads books by African writers? Start doing that instead. It won’t make your mind peaceful, but you’ll stop putting this pressure on people to fit into your well-established boxes.

The “out of the mouth of babes” is always a popular one. I went to see The Holiday last week, and apart from the fact it was terrible and I didn’t have my housemate to blissfully lap up that fact with, the two little girls in it reminded me of me c 1988, all adorable moppets of precociousness being sly and silly and so terribly, terribly clever. They showed off less than I did though, and their fort was like some kind of princess castle, which just goes to show they probably didn’t appreciate what a table, a rug and a cavernous imagination can do for you. I wonder if my life would have been different if my dad had been Jude Law and he’d built me a castle. My dad built me a beautiful dolls house which, stupidly, in that hulking way you have when you’re 14 and in denial of ever having been a child, I got him to sell because I didn’t use it (as if that is ever the point).

Kids Say The Funniest Things – do they? Or aren’t they just pointing them out because they don’t have the social skills to use white lies. Kids are considered to be cleverer, more astute, wiser, wittier than grown-ups because they haven’t got a clue about what’s going on yet, and any time we use that old head on young shoulders schtick it’s depriving children of their right to be children, however clever they are.

The elderly – well, I just don’t have the sort of relationships with my elders that engenders great conversations about the meaning of the world. I very much doubt I will ever have a conversation with my grandma that unleashes great insights into her life or mine, simply because our family isn’t like that, we’re very cagey and closed, dancing this great private dance around each other that frequently ends in farce and occasionally in tragedy.

My great aunt makes me birthday cards on the computer, with daisies and fine script. They make me cry because alongside her cheroot smoking, her determination to keep up and learn, is the fact she can’t leave her house and I haven’t seen her really since 2002 because she lives miles outside Norwich. That’s not the only reason of course, if I’d actually wanted to go, I would have, but I don’t, so I haven’t. I don’t know this person and if I go it’s not necessarily going to start some comedy duo because it’s sad, bitter, flailing towards the end. Oh yes, she came to stay at my parents’ house a year or so ago and tripped heavily over one of the carpeted steps on the landing upstairs which gave everyone the mixed sense of annoyance and pity. That’s pretty awful. Not even pretty, just awful. It will happen to me in years to come. The last time I went home I talked to my mother about euthanasia – my mother is vehemently in favour and says if she shows the slightest signs of dementia she’s getting her passport out. You’re supposed to listen to the elderly to garner wisdom about life, the importance of this that and the other. That doesn’t mean you necessarily get it, although you can come away with some good stories.

And the sick. Specifically those who are facing death with good humour, good Oscar-winning humour, grace, acceptance. I say fuck that. I’m a dying of the light person and I’ve felt far too terrifyingly miserable and overwhelmed by living in the past ever to let that happen again. My palms tell me I will be dead before 40, rich and widowed (this by people reading them for me, I’m not hearing my hands…although that would be a rather fantastic eccentricity). I can almost accept that, but I am not going to die before I’ve winkled out as much as I can get, observations, conversations, people, the simple act of being alone and not having your mind go wild all the time.
One person who managed to write reams about dying, about cancer, about raging against the dying of the light (and how we love those words because again it gives us the image of a much-loved film character who’s lusty and vigorous and stubborn, so brave poor lamb but he’ll be dead in one act’s time) was the journalist and broadcaster John Diamond. He wrote about being diagnosed with throat cancer in his 40s for the Sunday Times, and then about the ongoing fight, and then when his tongue was removed and he couldn’t talk anymore, to being shut down into a tiny martyred saint through sheer dint of his illness.

When he got to this point, three years after he was diagnosed, people started making asking him about the secrets of life, like he was the suburban Dalai Lama. I came across the end of his response today after getting a fluid rant about memory from RBT. I’d put that up there, but it’s his. This is the end of John Diamond’s reply to all those people, printed in the Observer on 31/12/00 shortly before he died.

"The answer is this:

This is what it's all about. It's about reading a paper on a Sunday morning while you're thinking about whether you can be arsed to go to the neighbours' New Year's Eve party tonight. It's about getting angry with me for having different opinions from yours or not expressing the ones you have as well as you would have expressed them. It's about the breakfast you've just had and the dinner you're going to have. It's about the random acts of kindness which still, magically, preponderate over acts of incivility or nastiness. It's about rereading Great Expectations and about who's going to win the 3.30 at Haydock Park. It's about being able to watch old episodes of Frasier on satellite TV whenever we want, having the choice of three dozen breakfast cereals and seven brands of virgin olive oil at Sainsbury's. It's about loving and being loved, about doing the right thing, about one day being missed when we're gone.

And that's all it's about. It isn't about heaven and hell or the love of Christ or Allah or Yahveh because even if those things do exist, they don't have to exist for us to get on with it.

It is, above all I suppose, about passing time. And the only thing I know that you don't is that time passes at the same rate and in much the same way whether you're going to live to 48 or 148. Why am I happy? Because I'm alive. And the simple answer to the question 'What the hell is the point of it all' is this is the point of it all. You aren't happy? Yes you are: this, here, now, is what happiness is. Enjoy it."

That came from a sick person. Does that validate it? Does it make it sound any less like the reluctant writings of someone who’s been pestered for divine grace responses and finally caved? It’s common sense, it’s been written better, you’ve heard it before, you’ve said it better. You know that life is about passing time, and how you pass it depends on you. But I think the one sentence that rings this around is this:

“It's about getting angry with me for having different opinions from yours or not expressing the ones you have as well as you would have expressed them.”

That fight is what makes us know we’re alive, just as much as kindness.

Keep white in the office, call it Jerry Heller says:
You know Kapranos isn't his real name, I assume

Keep white in the office, call it Jerry Heller says:
It was his mother's maiden name he adopted when trying to "break into showbiz"

Keep white in the office, call it Jerry Heller says:
In this band he was called "Lord Huntley"

Kinky Fantastic says:
oh ha

Kinky Fantastic says:
how disappointing

Kinky Fantastic says:
although quite clearly the man is not greek

Kinky Fantastic says:
what name would you have

Keep white in the office, call it Jerry Heller says:
I've always used Alex Tannin as a fake name

Kinky Fantastic says:
why?

Keep white in the office, call it Jerry Heller says:
I think it was when I needed a fake name quickly, and my dad's cousin has two sons called Alessandro and Tannino

Keep white in the office, call it Jerry Heller says:
So I just anglicized it

Kinky Fantastic says:
Dude, anglicising Italian is like putting Asda ketchup on foie gras.

Keep white in the office, call it Jerry Heller says:
"The Italianated Englishman is the devil incarnate"

Small child: "Where are we going?"
Morrissey: "We're all going mad."
Small child: "Oh, I thought we were going to Kew Gardens."

Excitingness of excitingness, part-mime part-art part-wonderment band The Irrepressibles have got a brand-spanking new 10-piece line-up and PR representation and everything. (Jamie looks like he's goosed Marilyn Manson, it's quite charming.) I know this because the PR company in question are giving the guestlist cocktails, a lure which would bring a glint to my eye even if it didn't involve the most visually inventive band I've seen in years and one who, more importantly, sound AMAZING.

They're playing a massive Shoreditch warehouse (54 Holliwell Lane) on Sunday 17 and have teamed up with a load of sound artists to basically make the place sing. Sounds horrific, actually heartbreaking. They're bloody good. There will also be "progressive performances" from Futureshorts, Strangeworks, Scottee, Hand To Mouth and Victoria and Anna. They'd better be a damn sight more able than the twat in the hat and feather boa who massacred the sound of rock at the Fashion Week gig last year. Words failed me so I just chuckled instead.

If that doesn't sound your cup of tea, you should thence to lastminute.com and buy the discounted tickets to Robin Ince's Christmas Book Club at the Bloomsbury Theatre which I am going to instead to wave flags at Opera Cat who will be singing in it. It is incredibly lovely and brilliant, with lots of excellent comedians and silliness, so come. To either one.

In other news, I've just seen the video to 'Maneater' by Nelly Furtado. It's rubbish. It's like a less clothingly-inventive version of 'Turn Back Time', only with more fire and less sailors. Nelly loses dog, goes and dances badly with some sulky looking teenagers, finds dog. Whoop-de-whoop. The greatest song of the year deserves a much better video and the director should be horse whipped.

Orchestral Blonde works for the press department of HM Customs and Excise, or Exercise or whatever it is they do. Exorcism? She's never explained this to me properly, all I know is her training involved going through sex tourists' luggage and that if you should accidentally swear in emails it gets sent back to you because HM C&E's internet server disapproves of profane language.

Regardless, this is a very proud day for me because she's just written her very first press release all about 20kg of heroin worth £1 million. Who knew that heroin could induce such maternal feelings?

And, um, it's also quite a proud day for me because I'm finally a recognised Rotten Tomatoes critic. Even if they were for two utterly dire films.

MySpazz isn't working. Still. Everyone else's is, apart from mine. It troubles me that I'm actually getting a bit prickly and anxious about it, even though I know that most likely I will eventually sign in and be greeted by "New Event Invitation" to something shit and very little else.

I think I have a problem, in fact, I know I have a problem. A friend of mine who's been holed up in Ipswich for the last month is moving down to work round the corner from me next week, and our main correspondence for the last year has been via MySpace (and email, which makes it somewhat less horrific). I should probably transfer my addiction onto something less awful, like smoking during the day again. Although, seeing as I have to sing quite high and relatively purely next weekend (for reasons to be detailed later and involve bells and Shoreditch), that's probably out as well. Sigh. Am going to go and eat lots of meat at lunchtime with Film Joe. Hopefully that will act as some kind of sedative.

I just went out to buy some Christmas cards. Given that I work on London’s busiest shopping street, you wouldn’t have thought it would be that hard, but then again it probably goes some way towards explaining why all the cards were such crap.

Victorian Christmases make me happy. That means lots of glitter, baubles that have nothing to do with reindeer (humming birds from The Conran Shop, £12, get one). I love the carols, the haunting ones in minor keys that bring to mind the somewhat confusing image of Jesus Christ being born in the Lake District. I love the idea of peace on earth, goodwill to all men. I reviewed a DVD of a film called Joyeux Noel recently, about the Christmas Armistice in 1914. The film was a horrible mess, but the enchantment, the ritualistic certainty of Christmas as a pure thing in the midst of such insanity was perfect. I’m a festive sap, basically.

This is why being confronted with selections of charity Christmas (Christmas! Not fucking Winter Wonderland, not fucking Season’s Greetings) cards was akin to someone taking a paper chain and slicing bits of my skin off. It was painful. Reindeer buckling under sleighs covered in presents – “A Christmas wish”. A lovely tree, the floor in front of it covered in used and abandoned wrapping paper – “A Merry Christmas”. A self-satisfied fash-mag-slag cartoon ice skating smugly – “Have a fabulous Christmas”. What the fuck? Presents? Sure, everyone likes presents. And ice skating. But is that it? Who says you’re going to get that fucking awful Bratz doll when you’re such a ghastly spoiled child? Santa ClasusAt the other end of the scale, you had some terrifyingly grim angels and a Madonna and child you’d cross the street to avoid. Joy to the world indeed.

Yesterday the Little Blonde Snapper and I went to Banksy’s anti-Christmas grotto, perfectly positioned at the can’t-get-any-shitter end of Oxford Street. A confident bouncer greeted us on the door and ticker-taped us off as we entered. The Mona Lisa flashed us at the entrance, while a faceless ASBO kid in a black hoodie stuck his head through the wall, frozen. Modern Toss had a load of pictures about sarcasm. Traffic cones, redecorated ironies, piss-takes, absolutely no subtleties. Good grief, they’ve repackaged Christmas and delivered it.

Next door, a little sparse tree stood dolefully on a chair, while a massive picture of Michael Jackson beckoning Hansel and Gretel into his house hung on the wall, tinsel hanging across the top of its frame. A skull from a Nightmare Before Christmas reindeer sagged next to it, while a cheery man with a beard (not that one) bellowed out information about the hoop-la. A little cinema showed films in a tiny curtained-off room. One of LBS’s friends had done mosaics of film characters.

It was like a funeral to Christmas, but the horrible, glossy, uncaring “I’ve got to get my Christmas shopping done at any cost and you’ll be damned grateful for whatever you get” ethic. Not the slightly eerie atmosphere of waiting, the glorious feeling of hope.

Because that’s what Christmas is about, the season rather than the day. Up until Oliver Cromwell decided to throw a tantrum, it used to be customary for the community to take off the whole 12 days of Christmas and just sing, dance and feast. It’s about hope, excitement, anticipation, the wind changing. Enjoying the Nativity scene doesn’t make you a Christian, just as buying an Easter egg doesn’t fully pay you up to the pagan club, but it’s a lovely story. The birth of a child, goodness to others, the hope of peace finally coming from somewhere. People coming together, being with those whom they love, looking after people, feeling the tingle of something other-worldly. The Christian values that don’t extend to sending gay people to hell or fighting new Crusades.

It’s about kindness, love and looking to the future. So why can’t I find a bloody card that says that?

I was so depressed I went to M&S and bought a load of chocolate biscuits and then, to try and minimise the collateral damage, sent an email around to the office so I wouldn’t eat them all. And look, everyone’s happy because everyone likes biscuits. And I am happy because I am buzzing like a fruit fly, albeit slightly worried that my diabetic boss is going to keel over if he keeps on pouncing on the box.

Oh! Wow! Greed by proxy is obviously a virtue because Swishblog Chris has just made me a Christmas card! (It's the picture, isn't it?) And look, Santa Claus is reacting against all this over-consumer bullshit! (Santa Claus goes to greedy kids, Father Christmas is part of Christmas). Oh my god, I feel like what’shisname and the end of that horrifyingly depressing film, only with an army of biscuit-fed colleagues instead of the town. Am I…oh my, I’m nearly crying. Atta boy Clarence.

EDIT: Oh wait, then this happens: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/07122006/344/son-arrested-presents.html

FESTIVE CHEER DESTROYED.

You can pretty much see where this is going from the last three words in the link. Ho ho ho. As Ashlea says, "What a bitch huh?"

Then again, as DJourno (who somehow managed to get out of work and a copy of london lite) says: "I think it's brilliant and should be encouraged - he's obviously a horrible toe-rag (admittedly with adhd) who could do with a little tough love. only in america/hanging's too good for 'em ectect"

And Orchestral Blonde... "I read about this - brilliant. I bet the kid had been a right s*** and she'd had enough. Jean always said to me that if I was arrested for anything she'd leave me in the cells for the night!! She would've done too...."

Fair enough. The kid is 12 after all.

A game - stop into Clapham High Street’s charity shops and guess which size 12/14 clothes might have belonged to me between 1999 and 2006. I’ve had a righteous clear-out this week. Considering I live in a room roughly the size and shape of a garden shed, you’d think this would be relatively easy, but this is until you consider the twin facts of a) navigating a tall frame in a space without much, er, spacethe quite staggering amount of tat and curios I’ve accumulated over the last 18 months. This included:

- Tickets to things I enjoyed but have nowhere to keep because I distrust memento books.
- CDs of bands I loathed (but, well, someone else might like)
- Odds and sods from festival goodie bags (it was free, it would be bad to throw away)
- A first-class airplane kit thrust on me as unwanted reward for babysitting a fucked D-list sleb on a flight to South Africa
- odd envelopes (I might find the matching card)
- photos ( I NEVER throw away photos, even if half the film was taken by drunken people with lens-obscuring fingers)
- a pile of very old magazines (research, possibly)
- Christmas decorations bought last year as a forgotten Secret Santa present (justified through dint of hanging them up in my room now.)
- ill-fitting tat from film junkets (to sell on eBay when I get time)
- ill-fitting eBay purchases (ditto)
- clothes unworn for years (ditto squared)
- my beloved and be-fucked up shirt that belonged to my beloved Dad (he’s not dead by the way, I just love the shirt)
- postcards, letters, application forms for limboed bank accounts
- countless boxes bought from Emap sales because they were pretty and might be useful (no and no)

If my flat were firebombed tomorrow I probably wouldn’t remember what half of the extra stuff was, but sitting down and getting rid of things is not something I do easily. I’m a “just in case” person (although I don’t really see how 17 half-working pens are useful to anyone other than those cursed with both illiteracy and ADHD). Still, even though my room looks disappointingly unchanged, there is at least less of a sense of being part of a game of domestic sardines.

Of course, the principal realisation is “My God! I should have done this ages ago!”, like all those people who spring clean never really understood the joys of ditched clutter as clearly as I do now. I even replaced the knackered Oyster card holder I’ve been using as a purse for the last seven months. I could, realistically, have just bought myself another wallet – the last having disappeared somewhere between singing ‘She’s Like The Wind’ with Olly Richards at Empire karaoke and waking up at 3am in Crystal Palace – but instead I am now quite unnerved by the fact that my life doesn’t spill over strangers’ feet whenever I clock into Oxford Circus.

The hoarding again, the “just in case”. When I say I hoard things, this extends to people. That wallet had business cards belonging to Birmingham photographers, Welsh comedians, PRs for computer game firms, musical directors, restaurants in places I’d never go again (“might” never go again), tickets, newspaper clippings, scribbled down bits of things I love and very occasionally, money. At the beginning of this year I decided to teach myself to do The Times cryptic crossword by cutting out the crossword and then matching it up with the answers the next day. This worked pretty well until I stopped picking up the paper in the morning, and ended up with 30-odd newspaper clippings that didn’t belong to each other. I didn’t throw them away, because…you know. They might come in handy should I ever come across someone with the same idea but the corresponding days.

My bedroom at my parents house – in name only, I haven’t slept in it since I was 17 because I banished myself to the much larger bedroom hidden away at the other end of the house in the guise of not wanting to wake my parents while I read at 4am – is still filled with old crap from college and school, tickets, photos, books from university, a toy rabbit a friend at school gave me one birthday, old clothes, love letters in boxes and Jiffy bags, compilation tapes, lamps shaped like goldfish that don’t work but that I loved, things that I look at and instead of being covered in dust, have memories stamped all over them.

As my mother is quite rightly getting fed up with this messy shrine to several incarnations-worth of Kats, every time I go home I am marched towards it and given several bin liners and Meaningful Looks. At this point I shrivel. I can’t throw anything away, ANYTHING. I’ve got about 11 Elles in my cupboard and I can’t fucking stand Elle. I’ve got the Doc Martins my parents bought me as a consolation prize after I fell off my bike and broke my teeth aged 10. (They still fit, horrifyingly, but that’s not why I kept them). There’s a load of clothes I never wear or think about, but can’t do anything with because they’re soldered to memories. Same with old toys that old friends who disappeared ages ago gave me. Things I won. Things people gave me. So either I sit on the floor and start looking at everything and getting bittersweet nostalgic, or I do what I did last time which was close my eyes, scrabble everything in bags and run away throwing a childish wobbly.

In the past I have hung on to friends and lovers who were also well past their expiry date. This was either because we had nothing better to do than each other, or because I couldn’t accept the sense of failure I felt from not being the one who worked. It took a while for me to realise that they weren’t the one who worked for me either, and that was just as good a reason for ending it. As you sift through clutter, old tickets, old shirts, old memories, and consign them to the bin, so you do the same for friendships and relationships. People are cut off MSN. Conversations dry up before they’ve started.

Then there are others that you look at and hold on to. There are people I have got out of my life and then there are people who I’ve held on to because they’re worth more, worth now. They haven’t necessarily made you feel good all the time, but that’s not what people do, wha they’re supposed to do. There’s still too much good left to come and pride is too selfish an emotion to make you see that clearly, all the time.

“If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you” is a line that has burned itself into my mind.

If life were so clear-cut we’d be living in Pleasantville, and people aren’t like that, with or without Reese Witherspoon. I’m not like that. I’m a total fucking bitch at times, although I try very hard not to be. We have horrible sides, selfish sides, complications and curiosities that charm some and revolt others but which are unavoidable sometimes.

If you can get through that in the same way they have for you, and know that not everything is made of bread and roses then you can see things more clearly. It makes you look at the person realistically and recognise each other’s fallibilities as well as their glories. Which, in the long run, makes them entirely human, and as far away from the pedestal they always feared because you’re just there – looking at each other, face to face, without the clutter.

When threads go wrong. What with The Kooks (FUCKING KOOKS) currently trying to break it in the States, Stylus magazine decided to write a tongue-in-cheek review, as RBT says, "done in the style of some fake e-mails sent betwixt the Kooks' A&R and PR men. Drownded In Sound and PlayLouder then both reported it as actual real news that Virgin's e-mail account had been compromised. Conclusion: UK online music journalism run by morons"

Now, the DiS thread has "mysteriously" been deleted, but we've still got the Playlouder article, reprinted here in case they delete it too and then I have nothing to chuckle over tomorrow...

HAVE A KOOK AT THIS
Leaked emails reveal foul brains of industry men
30 Nov 2006


Now, everyone suspects that music industry men are bloated beasts in suits and sniffy noses who might as well be flogging marshmallows as rock & roll.

And occasionally, something happens that proves it, like this rather magnificent exchange of emails between various people in the Kooks US operation discussing how they're going to get the band massive over there. Leaked by the excellent Stylus magazine, this makes for illuminating, if highly depressing read. Stylus replaced all specifics, and we use their replacements below:

----- Original Message -----
From: XXXX@[UK Record Label]
To: XXXX@[UK Record Label]
Sent: Thursday, November 23, 2006 4:12 PM
Subject: The Kooks

We finally got the IFPI [International Federation of the Phonographic Industry] certification through—it's all signed off and there's a bit of green tinted plastic you can show the boys when they next stop by here. Of course over one million European sales is good, very good, but I think we have to understand that these sales are nearly all domestic. The album has been on the UK chart almost 40 weeks now but looking at the data available the album has only got to 107 in France and only to 32 in New Zealand. If we are to make this act a workable long term investment I think we have to make international recognition our first priority, then focus on domestic consiladation then and set up the second album as an international breakthrough. It is my firmly held belief that this band have a strong enough brand appeal to our keynote demographics to put them on the A list of priorities for 2007.

----- Original Message -----
From: XXXX@[UK Record Label]
To: XXXX@[UK Record Label]
Sent: Thursday, November 23, 2006 6:03 PM
Subject: Re: The Kooks

That's great. I agree that this lot are really shaping up nicely. I was, I must admit, a little worried before radio got hold of Naive and the album took off. Having a third single peak at 12, with the kind of push we were giving them was disheartening to say the least. Getting them to agree its single release was a nightmare Luke [Pritchard lead singer of The Kooks] was very precious about it but I had to lay down the law with him, I told him that if they didn't have a radio hit they'd be going the way of BRMC [Black Rebel Motorcycle Club US group who parted company with Virgin records in 2004]. That shut him up.

His point that the production made it sound like Athlete before they sounded like Coldplay made me laugh. We made it pretty hot in the mastering so it sounded great on the radio. I agree international success is a priority and now with Inside being out there in the US market place, we can build their profile and maybe come second album time get a 'Chasing Cars' out of them. I think we are going to have to miss the indie appeal in the US and go straight for the 'OC.' In the UK the leather jackets and scruffy hair does half the work, I mean the cred of The Libertines and the all around appeal of Busted is an obvious no brainer domestic but in the US both of those bands did shit.

One plus point: internationally I reckon no one is going to give a toss about them going to stage school or whether one of them shagged Katie Melua. We had to do a little damage control after that Amstell [Simon Amstell, UK Television Personality] prick took the piss on Popworld. I mean no one gives a fuck if spotty [Weekly UK Music Publication] readers think they don't write their own songs but it's important we keep a bit of serious artist credibility round them. That aspirational indie vibe is pretty important when reeling the 25 - 35's in. I gave him [Pritchard] a bit of a hand with that piece in [Monthly UK Music Publication] about Bob Dylan. Anyway nothing to get too hung up about it's just we don't want people damaging the magic of the group, I mean we have done very well, so far all the press have been pretty much onside. I did have a bit of trouble with [UK Newspaper] but we got a decent enough review from them to put a quote on the TV spots. Thanks for your continued support!

----- Original Message -----
From: XXXX@[UK Record Label]
To: XXXX@[UK Record Label]
Sent: Friday, November 24, 2006 2:55 PM
Subject: Re: The Kooks

Someone should get in touch with [Music Industry Figure] at Sony and stop him from letting that pillock from Kasabian calling The Kooks girls music or whatever it was he said. Anyway I saw the TV spot last night, it's now running as part of [UK music retailers]'s Christmas campaign. That black white photography works a treat and those press quotes are all great. I know Ooh La didn't do as well as we hoped but with a decent push I think we'll get a third or even fourth wind out of this one! I had another listen to the album on the way home yesterday there's some catchy songs on there aren't there? That Jackie Big Tits song is a laugh, we wouldn't have been able to get away with something like that 10 years ago with all that PC nonsense. I don't think we need to be quite so defensive on the PR front, the only people likely to give them a bad review are people like [Major Webzine] and the kind of geeks who read that crap don't even buy records anyway.

Good luck keep up the good work.