Whilst we were in Boston, staying at Itamar's, crw and I watched a few episodes of a series called Keen Eddie, a show about an American detective on secondment to the Metropolitan Police. Now, whilst I have to admit that any show that can crowbar in repeated references to Duran Duran has my vote, enjoying Keen Eddie seemed like a guilty pleasure to me.

It wasn't that the acting was particularly bad, or that the script was dreadfully flawed, or that the plots were horrendously jaded, but it just sort of felt odd. It was like an interpretation of British rozzers as seen through the filter of American culture - lots of tiny cultural inaccuracies slowly built up to create the impression that this was a chocolate-box cop show.

For example, the series, which is only a couple of years old at most, sites the Met in a period building called 'Scotland Yard' when in actual fact it has been resident at the unmistakably modern New Scotland Yard on Broadway, Westminster SW1 since 1967. Locations are littered with old-fashioned red telephone boxes, despite the fact that most of these have now been replaced by fugly modern ones. Every London bus was an old Routemaster bus - the sort with the back plate and pole that you can just hop on and off. In reality, these have been decreasing in number over the years and soon will be wiped from the face of the earth despite the fact that they are a quintessential symbol of London transport.

And the guns. There were guns everywhere. That's just really alien to me - the fuzz aren't normally armed here, and I don't remember seeing the characters in The Bill waving pistols about with gay abandon. It's not that no policemen carry firearms, it's just that they don't flash 'em around the way that Keen Eddie would have you believe.

Some of the dialogue was also a bit strange, with British characters talking about 'fixing' dinner. No one fixes dinner here - you might cook dinner or make dinner, but hearing someone with a British accent 'fix' dinner just seemed surreal. The accents themselves were odd too - obviously some of the actors were Brits, but there seemed to be only two sorts of accent on display: posh or mockney (like Cockney but fake). In the scenes where five Duran Duran-masked robbers revealed themselves to be well-dressed posh gits the programme slipped into a strange sort of pseudo-English territory where everything seemed to have been twisted through half a degree so that it was just... not. quite. right.

I can't work out whether this oddness was because the series was written by an American and just shot in London with British actors, or whether the city and its denizens were being deliberately Americanised in order to make them more palatable and familiar to an American audience. Either way, it made for strangely compelling viewing.

When I was 18, I totalled my Mum's car. Three months after passing my test on the second attempt, (I failed the first one due to a handbrake turn), I spun my Mum's car, putting it up a bank and into the back of a 'give way' sign. By the time I had finished with it, the front wheels weren't touching the ground. If I remember correctly, the back wheels weren't either.

My parents forced me to drive after the accident, but sitting in a (new) car with my Mum's hand hovering permanently over the handbrake didn't do my confidence much good. Not that my confidence had ever been that great as I'd always been secretly terrified of cars. I now haven't driven for about 15 years.

Let me just give you a bit of background. I come from a very car-oriented family. My brother used to build replica 1920s Fords and works now in the motor trade. My Dad used to be a rally driver and navigator, and regularly went karting and hill climbing. (He also used to go handgliding, using a handglider that he made himself from a photo in a magazine. You get the picture.) Various cousins, uncles and grandparents have raced. My great-grandparents owned a garage. Cars are in the blood.

Except, it all sort of skipped a generation with me. Cars have always scared the living crap out of me, even before I totalled my Mum's. I mean... you're getting into a machine... you're sitting in a machine that moves at high speed. People die in cars. Frequently. Painfully.

Anyway, I stopped having the nightmares about driving a few years ago, which is good. I've even had some dreams where I was quite happily driving. But I still get jumpy in a car, and I still don't think that me, driving, is a good idea. Not for me, not for my passengers, not for anyone.

But... just recently... I've really been enjoying watching Top Gear. I don't know what they are talking about half the time, but Richard Hammond is cute and Jeremy Clarkson is funny. The other dude is, well, whatever. I can't believe this. I am actually enjoying a programme about cars. They make driving look like fun. They make cars look interesting. And you know what? It's starting to make me want one.

But don't worry. For the sake of public safety, I shan't be getting one. I'm still too lily-livered to actually want to drive again.

Best ad on TV since the Honda Cog is the Citroen C4 Transformer ad, where a Citroen C4 turns into a Transformer robot and grooves on down to Jacques Your Body by Les Rhythmes Digitales. From news.com.au:

The commercial is part of a new European promotion campaign for the C4 small car and features a coupe model that, sensing it is alone in a car park, transforms itself into a towering robot that dances to a popular dance club single.

As its unsuspecting owner approaches the robot turns back into a car.

Wonder what this will do for downloads of Jacques Your Body...

I really can't quite believe it, but John Peel has died, aged only 65, of a heart attack. (Shit! He was 65? I wouldn't have put him a day over 40.) He was in Peru on a working holiday with his wife.



To call John Peel 'influential' is a bit like calling the sun 'hot'. In particular, I always admired Peel for his happiness to champion Welsh music, even when he had no understanding of the language at all. He always tried to learn how to pronounce Welsh band's names and song titles and, in stark contrast to most of the rest of British radio, he never let a thing like language get in the way of playing a good song.

Both John Peel himself and the Peel Sessions were an institution - he was far more than a DJ, he was a wayfinder for so many people, seeking out new music that wasn't getting a play anywhere else. Countless bands have Peel to thank for their career - the support he gave them when no one else was taking any notice provided so many musicians with the break they needed.

I always loved listening to Peel's voice - the most mellifluous tones you've ever heard. Like Sean Connery, Peel just got sexier and sexier as he got older. He always retained his enthusiasm for music, in particular the sort of stuff that your dad would hate, which was I think a huge part of his charm and appeal.

To say that John Peel was beloved by many would be a huge understatement. To say he will be sorely missed doesn't really grasp the truth.

We're crap at judging risks. People are terrified of flying despite the fact that we're far more likely to get hit by a car than involved in an air crash. More people die each week of cancer than were killed in September 11, yet still the fear of terrorism pervades our society.

From salmon scares to mobile phones to child abduction to terrorism, the media manage to scare the living crap out of most people most of the time for no good reason (other than that it sells papers).

Humans are, perversely, rather attracted to risk. In Canada, there was a serious issue with cars being hit by trains on level-crossings which, in the wilds of the open north, don't have barriers. The authorities thought, rather logically, that the problem was the trees. When the railway crossing was obscured by trees the drivers couldn't see if there was a train coming and so couldn't stop in time. Seems reasonable.

The solution? Cut down the trees in a Y shape so that the drivers can see the trains. The result? Drivers spotted the trains sooner, decided to 'race' them, and the number of fatalities increased.

See. We are built for risk. We're just very bad at judging what is a risk (smoking) and what isn't a risk (eating salmon).

The putting of risk into perspective has been something rather close to my heart for a while, so I was delighted that the BBC had commissioned a series called Should I Worry About...? which explores the facts behind tabloid scare stories.

In Should I Worry About...?, Richard Hammond, the face of the great Brainiac: Science Abuse on Sky One, takes a deeper look at common scare stories and debunks the headlines. I'm not a huge fan of investigative journalism because usually it delves into issues that, awful though they are, don't affect the majority of people. This series, however, looks at stories that affect all of us and takes a balanced look at the evidence (or, frequently, complete lack of).

Richard Hammond is a really good presenter, discussing the issues in a way that is understandable without being patronising. I'm hyper-sensitive to patronising wankers in TV, primarily because I have a science degree myself and I hate people talking down to either me or anyone else. Science isn't, er, rocket science. It just requires a clarity of communication in order to get the points across, something that many TV companies just don't realise.

We need more programmes like Should I Worry About...?, and more presenters like Richard Hammond. We also need to hold the tabloids accountable for the crap they print, although I can't see that happening any time soon.

Just watching the lunchtime news on the BBC who are reporting Tony Blair's heart op today. The report used a graphic explaining how the surgeons are going to stuff a pipecleaner in his thigh which they will then guide carefully up to his heart in order to then remove the small defect that's causing the trouble. Sadly for Tony, it appears from this graphic that he's got no genitals. Don't know when our PM suffered this indignity, but he must be quite distraught about it. Not sure how Cherie feels. Relieved, maybe.

What I don't understand is why the BBC need to pretend that men don't have genitals. They could have put pants on the graphic if they were feeling a bit prudish, but giving him that Ken-esque lump is just way too grotesque.

BREAKING NEWS: Surgeons have had to call in the country's top physicists to advise them on how deal with the black hole discovered where Tony's heart should be.

Three DVDs.
Out-takes.
Extended scenes.
Extra footage.
Stuff.

Bliss.

Bliss on toast.

Stating the obvious was always my strong point.

See, Joey might well pretend to be some cute Tucows 'Technical Community Development Coordinator', but I know the truth:


The real Accordion Guy

Yes, that's right. It's Eurovision night. Currently some Spanish-sounding chap is wailing like a banshee with a red hot poker up the jacksie. Sadly, I don't have control over the remote so I fear I am destined to suffer until... oh no... it doesn't finish until gone 11pm.

*kills self*

Please, gods, someone put them out of my misery, for the sake of all that's aural. Otherwise I will have to go and lie in the bath with my ears under the water 'til it's all over, and you wouldn't want my delicate skin to prune, would you now?