John Simm

And a big hello to you all.

I was stood reading the magazines in WHSmiths today, and picked up Empire. It seems a lot of bad films are heading our way - Basic Instinct 2 and Failure To Launch are already with us, but more's to come. Marvellously, one is a film called Snakes On A Plane. The story is that the Mafia are after a grass, and have decided to have him rubbed out. So, rather than concrete shoes, concrete overcoat or concrete, I dunno, gloves or something, they decide to... put him on a plane and release 10,000 poisous snakes in mid air, killing everyone and handily incinerating the evidence in the resulting crash. It saves having to explain 10,000 dead snakes, for a start. Those would be some awkward questions. This is the best comedy idea I've heard in ages. I would think that snakes are a bit inefficient, perhaps lions would do a better job. But what's best is that Samuel L Jackson insisted on keeping the working title of the film, lest he walk off the set. Hence Snakes On A Plane. Star power.

My own life continues in a much more ordinary vein. Today for work I took the bus to Ratby, one of Leicester's fine suburbs. And it was there, amongst the bungalows and double garages (it's that kind of suburb) I saw, in someone's front garden, a lovingly restored Gilbert Scott red phone box. This is a very English thing to do. This was bourne out by the experience of my friends James and Louise who live in Streatham Hll, South London. When the last of the London Routemaster buses was taken out of regular service on their local route 159 from Streatham Hill to Marble Arch , South London was full of misty-eyed types waxing nostalgic about lost days and the soullessness of now. So full, in fact, that the people who actually had to use the bloody things every day (who were overjoyed to be rid of them in favour of buses with enough room that were warm, didn't leak and didn't shake fillings from their sockets) couldn't get on them and so were late for work. The big banner on the front of the Lambeth Disabled Action Group building saying "Good Riddance Routemaster" was apparently missing the point, being not a statement regret and sadness at the passing of one of Lodon's icons, but of the joy the disabled have at finally seeing the back of buses they couldn't get on at all. We can now travel from Streatham Hill to Marble Arch in comfort and even some style (save for the ever present man having an argument with himself or girl having a loud mobile phone argument with her boyfriend). I admit, the Routemasters had charm, and jumping on or off one that was moving always felt very cool. But charming means decrepit in estate agent speak. Telling.

Ths may matter if we are still alive tomorrow. The BBC have announced that there is H5N1 bird flu in one dead swan in a village miles from anywhere, in the north of Scotland. So we should all be toes up by teatime Friday. It must be true, the BBC said so. This is annoying, partly because I am moving on the 28th, but also just because it is. One dead bird does not an epidemic make. And hearing that bird flu is endemic in China does not fill us with confidence, because endemic sounds like epidemic. Does that mean epidemic? It means endemic. But does that mean epidemic? Well, that's what it sounds like it means. Plus you can't use the words "bird flu" without using the word "deadly" in front of them. That means that it's invarably fatal and you can catch it from looking at a picture of a chicken. There was a piece on East midlands Today about how this may afftec Lincolnshire's poultry farmers. The last time I looked, Lincolnshire was 500 miles from Loch Fyne, so better stay indoors and try not to breathe too much. Mind that duck.

One day we will have context on the news, and so between stories about England and Wales having the highest rate of people in prison in Western Europe and current rates of taxation being the highest since World War Two we will hear that the rate in the US is four times higher than ours, and at 39 percent of GDP our overall rate of tax is in fact lower than everywhere in the EU except Ireland, Cyprus and Malta. We might also hear that out of 100 people who got H5N1 in China, seventy survived and those who did sadly die lived in mud huts in the middle of nowhere with chickens in their beds, unlike the entire poluation of Europe, say. I didn't hear this on the news, though. I had to look. I am very dull when the moment takes me.

I am, then, an informed person. Konwledge is power. I am as a God these days, thanks to Google and Wikipedia. Just one thing eludes me I need to know is the identity of the woman in the new Nivea ads, exhorting us to "Accessorise your Underarms". Who is she? How must it feel to know that a fair percentagre of everyone has seen your armipts? Do her friends now call her "The armpit lady"? We must be told.

Good night, and good luck
Doug