I think Jeffman lied when he said he’d be back on Monday, but then Jeffman, like a politician, has a long history of – how shall we say? – frugality with the truth. Just ask his good mother!

So what has spurred Jeffman into this unscheduled appearance?

Nothing really. Just a desire to get some random idiocy out of his system, and the fact that I can barely believe that giving Maggie Thatcher a state funeral has become an issue.

It has provoked our deputy leader, Harriet Harman, into releasing a statement upon this fine Saturday, saying that there has been no discussions whatsoever over granting the ex-Prime Minister that holiest of holes, the state funeral; should the hag do us all a favour and pop her evil, corruption-ridden clogs, anytime soon.

Tickled your fancy? Read on…

Ye Gads. What on Earth are they thinking?

Firstly, don’t get me wrong. I love the Rolling Stones. In fact I’m a huge fan, and by that I’m not just referring to my expanding waistline. I have all 12 studio albums from1966’s Aftermath to 1978’s Some Girls, and it’s with the latter where the problem lies.

If there was a ‘Hanging Judge Roy Bean’ of the music world he’d have passed sentence on the Stones at this particular juncture and ensured they never recorded or toured together again. Some Girls should, by all rights, have been their final album. A half-decent final crack of the whip before they retired gracefully and left those who’d been there with their memories; and the ones like me who hadn’t, with a stunning body of work to look back on and enjoy, unsullied by anything that’s come since.

Tickled your fancy? Read on…

Yes, Royal Ascot, the dowager of the flat racing calendar kicks off tomorrow, and one has to ask the question, why?

Why does this joke of a five day event command so much airtime on a publicly owned television channel?

I say joke, because that’s all it is to me or any outsider to the obscenely wealthy racing fraternity. It’s not what it used to be? To me it’s never been anything other than a cattle-market of the grotesquely rich and the fortunately famous.

Tickled your fancy? Read on…

Yesterday I had the pleasure of searching through the spare cupboard, amongst the toolboxes and assorted knick-knacks that see fit to gather there as though awaiting the second coming of the toolshed messiah; looking for a Phillips screwdriver with which to perform one of the mundane tasks that crop up every so often and make this life so rewarding, when I came across something that A) I hadn’t expected to find; and B) hadn’t seen such a sterling example of in a good long while.

Tickled your fancy? Read on…