The Final Countdown

It wasn't supposed to be like this. I had planned a parade complete with souvenir programme, a payload of digital fireworks and had even hired a few talking heads to digest the year in fact. Instead, the year is drawing to a close and I don't even have time to cast a casual eye over my first full year of fact-finding. Instead, I've been scrabbling for titbits inside crackers and under the tree, as the festive season finally rolled around. My knees are weak, my eyes are heavy - but I'm on the home straight. Here's the final fact burst of 2008:

Barmy health-conscious kids' TV show Lazy Town is made in Iceland.

23% of Hawaiians are vegetarian.

My new boss doesn't believe in the institution of marriage.

Sugar doesn't make children hyperactive (unless it's mixed with amphetamines - just a disclaimer)

Mert O'Donaghue was the first player to record a 147 break in a competitive snooker game. He is also famous for nothing else.

Breathing from your diaphragm helps you to project your VOICE.

Andy-Scott Lee, who I had previously thought famous only for losing on Pop Idol and being Lisa "Number 23? That's shit!" Scott-Lee's brother, was in forgotten boyband 3SL.

This bizarre selection took me to Christmas Eve, where the facts inevitably got briefly festive:

"All I Want For Christmas Is You" is Mariah Carey's biggest-selling single ever.

Conkers are horse chestnuts, rather than regular chestnuts.

That pretty much wraps up the festive section. Hardly 'A Christmas Carol', was it?

Cheesecake is a term for an attractive woman.

Rose wine is made by peeling the skin from red grapes (and then, y'know, mashing it up and that)

Armadillos (including the Holiday Armadillo) are the only animal other than humans to suffer from leprosy.

Menthe pastille is the same thing as Creme de Menthe (by this point, the drinks cabinet was emptying nicely)

Nestle is based in Croydon (they're welcome to each other).

And so to my final fact of this tumultuous year, which started with Geraint Jones waxing lyrical about time zones and has featured a mixed race man winning a U.S. election, the death of Woolworths, a prank phonecall suffering a ludicrously disproportionate backlash, and of course, the occasional mention of the total economic annihilation of the world as we know it.

The clothes shop Morgan, currently teetering on the brink of administration, is based in France.

See you in 2009.

Four Festive Facts

As my first year of learning draws to a close, Christmas is drawing into view - and I'm experiencing the driest days of the whole experience. If I'm not on ten-hour Christmas lunches, I'm in Woolworths, meandering through the post-apocalyptic chaos in search of cheap tinsel; if I'm not there, I'm wrapping presents with all the panache and dexterity of a panda in boxing gloves. There's barely time for breathing, let alone fact-finding. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the nuggets I've found have had a festive feel, just like bloody everything at this time of year. (My worst experience this holiday season has been buying a 'festive' Krispy Kreme doughnut, whose sprinkles were red and green, instead of multi-coloured, and considerably fewer than average. Merry Christmas.)

We start with the festive singalong. Listening to the radio at Christmas feels a bit like being in the Soviet Union, hearing the same dozen broadly enthusiastic songs over and over again. Each of them has a different effect on the listener; Mariah Carey's works at first, but starts to grate before you've bought the turkey - Wizzard works the other way round. Slade is just plain annoying, whilst Wham is probably the most inoffensive. Fairytale of New York is an opinion-splitter (certainly in Knowledge Towers) but was always my family's favourite, particularly the line about "the boys from the NYPD choir... singing Galway Bay". Well, at the risk of breaking my dad's heart, I regret to inform you that there's no such thing as the NYPD choir. They made it up. Also, Dad, I've heard Shane McGowan likes a drink.

On to presents. Perhaps the most famous of all the rubbish gifts is the chunky, ill-fitting sweater. If you should be fortunate to receive one, preferably adorned with snowflakes and/or reindeer, find out if it was made from Merino wool. I'd always thought Merino was a place, possibly in Italy; it is in fact a breed of sheep. Does that make you feel better? I didn't think so.

Next up, it's Christmas past. Everyone knows that pagans held a midwinter festival that resembles Christmas, but something I didn't know before was that the Romans had their own version, the simply titled Saturnalia. Gifts were exchanged and no doubt all sorts of debauchery took place with Frankie Howerd looking on sheepishly. One of the key themes of Saturnalia was that slaves became masters for the festivities, and probably took liberties they would come to deeply regret in the ensuing 12 months. This tradition is still going strong today, when your office boss offers to buy the drinks at the team do, and then pretends they've left their wallet at home, and you all have to split it, which is really a piss-take when they earn 10 grand more than you and the entire bill is £30. Ahem.

And finally, after Christmas is all over (I'm aware this was hardly a comprehensive guide to Christmas, but I can only work with what I've got) you have January, with it's sleet, dark and credit card bills. Fear not, however, for Santa has had a word with the banks, and interest rates have been slashed - even going as low as "between 0 and 0.25%" in America. Which demonstrates that, when you're in a hole as big as they are, you can actually set interest rates at a variable rate. So spend away - it's like free money*

*Quest For Knowledge does not accept responsibility for debts incurred over the festive period. QFK would like to state that low interest rates are in no way like free money.

Quick Quiz

In the last three days I've learnt about where things come from - not babies, which everyone knows comes from birds, when bees try to have sex with them (as is my understanding), but - well, why should I have to spell it out for you? This blog is a two-way street you know. I'll give you the three things, and the three places they call home - and then you can work it out for yourselves, while I have a nicecuppatea.

A. 10% of the world's freshwater.
B. Minder's George Cole.
C. Sour-faced yet consistently accurate Strictly judge, Craig Revel-Horwood.

And the places:

1. Australia
2. Greenland
3. Tooting, South-West London


The answers are as follows:

A-2: The Greenland ice sheet contains 10% of the world's fresh water (i.e. not sea water). The day it melts away and you can walk across Greenland, you'll also be able to swim from London to Paris - its disappearance would raise worldwide sea levels by 7 metres.

B-3: George Cole comes from Tooting, joining other T-Town alumni Darren Bent, Matt Willis, the singer from Then Jericho, and of course my good (if not very famous) self.

C-1: Craig Revel-Horwood grew up in Australia. He gives his time there a 6/10.

Digging For Gold

One thing I have definitely learnt (the rest is becoming a blur) is that I get most of my facts from a variety of places - but not that big a variety. The source of the last fortnight's worth of gold demonstrates this aptly, squashed as it is into one blog entry, as life has unexpectedly and obtrusively called me repeatedly away from my computer - to the extent where I'm typing this up at work between tedious and awkward social engagements. I'm spending so much time having to talk to other people that I'm actually learning things from conversations - of the 13 facts I've picked up, an unprecedented 4 come from real, human conversations. They are:

Hull has it's own internet service provider - Karoo, who sponsor Hull City's home shirts.

Sprouts are sweeter if they were picked after the first frost of winter.

Epistaxis is the medical term for a nosebleed.

Doobies are spliffs made entirely from weed. And paper, obviously.


Returning to more familiar ground, I have purloined a steady four facts from my source of preference, the great global web of unimportant information that is the Internet. The internet is in fact a hive of credible and worthy information if you're prepared to dig deep enough. It will therefore not surprise you to learn that I obtained all of the facts below from either Wikipedia or BBC News.

The Care Bears were created for a range of greetings cards.

Milan and Boca Juniors have won more international club trophies than any other teams.

The first mention of a red carpet being rolled out for a VIP is in the Ancient Greek tale of Agamemnon. The motif was then revived in the early twentieth century.

111 was the original emergency number, but it was changed to 999 as 111 calls can be made accidentally - by telegraph wires knocking together.

When I'm not fact-checking or asleep, you'll usually find me searching desparately for something worth watching on TV. Occasionally (usually during QI) I may even learn something. When all else fails, I turn to the red button, the fat key to a world of trivia. In a nicely symmetrical way, these four facts have all entered my consciousness, in one way or another, via the goggle-box:

Michael McIntyre lives in Muswell Hill (may this fact also serve as a lesson to myself and others to write down all interesting facts you discover, lest you forget them and have to crib a barely notable piece of information from a repeat of Live at the Apollo).

The parliament on the Isle of Man is the oldest in the world.

Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote 'Itsy Witsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini' for Timmy Mallett. O yeah!

'Chocolate leg' is the Dutch expression for a footballer's weaker foot (in my case the right. And the left)

So of the last 13 facts, only 1 has not come from the worlds of cyberspace, television, and talking. I'd love to say I found it carved in an Egyptian cave, or found and decoded an old WW2 code message, but the truth is, it was in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, a film too depressing to be watched at any time but which had to be returned to the DVD rental service:

W is the least used letter in the French alphabet.

In English, the least used is Z - with X and J just behind. I will now close this latest entry by attempting to redress this imbalance. Zjxzxjxjxjjjjjzzzzxxjjjxzzzzjjxjzzjxxjzjjjxjzjzjzjzjzzjzjzjzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzjjjjjjjjjjjzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzjjjjjjjjxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

That ought to do it...

One Thing, Leading To Another

Clement Freud is Sigmund Freud's nephew. Freud (Sigmund, that is) wrote a paper on Paranoia and Obsessive Neuroses. Paranoid by Black Sabbath is so popular in Finland it is requested at gigs no matter who's playing - in the same way 'Freebird' is called out at U.S. concerts. Finland are a nation which enjoys a friendly rivalry with its neighbour, Sweden, primarily driven by people confusing Finnish traditions with Swedish ones (e.g. the sauna). This is a problem also experienced by New Zealanders, who everyone thinks are Australian, despite the 2 nations being thousands of miles apart. Any event involving Australia and New Zealand is known as Trans-Tasman. This derives from the countries' location on either side of the Tasman sea, which like Tasmania is named after explorer Abel Tasman. Enfield in North London (bear with me) is also named after an individual - its name means 'Eana's land'. The first ATM cash dispenser in the world was installed in Enfield. Germany currently has more ATMs than any other country in Europe, but Spain has the most per habitant. Spain also has the best football league in Europe, whatever Sky bloody Sports says. League chiefs are doing their best to put the kibosh on this, however, by forcing all teams to play the 'Big Four' (in a league where the Big Four does change occasionally) in a row. The run of fixtures, nicknamed the Tourmalet after a mountain in the Pyrenees, requires each team to play Real Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla and Villarreal in a row twice a year. Only Valladolid, a team I have actually seen play in the flesh, have even won a game in their 4-game stint. The game before the Tourmalet might be seen as an hors d'oeuvre - except in Spain it would be called a Picadita, or perhaps more recognisably, tapas. In Hawaii, hors d'oeuvres are known as puu-puu. Hawaii is 2000 miles away from the U.S. mainland, but became a state in 1959, mainly to prevent exploitation of labour by granting Hawaiian citizens full voting rights. Another equally distant colony, Greenland, which lies 2200 miles from Denmark, has recently voted for greater autonomy from its rulers. Greenland is the most sparsely populated territory on Earth, with a population of 57,564 people spread over an area of 2,166,086 square kilometres. That's roughly equivalent to the population of Tooting being given the entirety of Mexico to set up home in. It's pretty roomy up there.

Bohemian Like You

Prague is the most bohemian city in the world. Before e-mails start flooding in from rival toursit centres (I'm sure they will), this is on a technicality. The region of Bohemia makes up the western half of the Czech Republic, and Prague is it's largest city. London, meanwhile, has more Facebook users than any other city on Earth - which surely makes it the least bohemian city in the world. Possibly behind Swindon.

To be fair, there are things less bohemian than Facebook, which does at least encourage social interaction, even if it doesn't involve actual human contact, and demands you to give out your personal details without conditions attached (not cool, man). Tax returns, for instance. Jeremy Clarkson. Owning shares. Nazi Germany. To be fair, I think Nazi Germany is pretty much the pinnacle of anti-bohemianism (although this is perhaps not its greatest crime). To name but one thing, scientists in Nazi Germany developed methadone to control the spread of opium around Europe. Anyone who's seen the inside of an opiate user's flat is aware that it don't get much more bohemian than that (if you can call spartan, grimy and unrelentingly grim bohemian in essence). The prescription of methadone, designed to ease heroin users into a drug-free lifestyle, can instead maintain their existence without the bohemian edge of intravenous drug-taking. For shame. It would never happen in Prague.

Sunday Supplement

<< By this point, Janet was convinced that there was no TV guide in there to begin with


Today being the Lord's day, you'll most likely have followed one of only a few possible paths for a Sunday. You have either (a) attended church, washed the car and built a conservatory; (b) woken at 4pm with your head full of molten lead and staggered to the bathroom, where you have remained ever since; (c) trudged aimlessly around Sainsbury's wondering how you can get out of work tomorrow, or (d) woken up at 10am full of vigour, strolled to the shop to purchase a Sunday paper, returned home for a roast dinner, and promptly fallen asleep at 1pm full of gravy, only a vast diaspora of uninteresting supplements covering your indignity.



By the way, I chose (c), but I've been known to dabble in (b) and (d) as well. Sunday papers are a curious thing - for me, they symbolise the huge promise and intense disappointment that Sunday brings. Collecting the bursting bundle of knowledge from the corner shop is the highlight of the whole Sunday broadsheet experience. By the time you've disassembled the thing, you realise that the sport magazine is entirely about the Madagascan basketball league, the business section appears 3 separate times, and the fucking TV guide is missing. You will also discover that to read the entire tome will take at least 4 years, and to read any articles you can actually understand will take 15 seconds. And so you shuffle the whole sorry mess into a makeshift duvet and kiss another Sunday goodbye.



Anyway, if you haven't had the privilege of a Sunday broadsheet experience today, allow me to oblige, as I convert 11 pieces of information into a sweltering column of news before your very eyes.



In the Politics Section:
Barack Obama is the first president to take over during wartime since World War 2. Turn to Fashion Supplement B, p. 337 to learn how to get his look for just £10,000. Obama has also been given the code name Renegade by security services in America. What's your code name? Have a look at our CIA Code Names book, featuring the code names of every human being alive, free next Sunday.


Cornwall is effectively recognised as an independent nation by the EU. To celebrate, get your free pasty by taking this voucher to any branch of Greggs.



In Sport:
Non-UK nationals are eligible for the Sports Personality of the Year prize, with Irish boxer Barry McGuigan the only non-UK winner to date. Turn to the solar plexus of the supplement to find our Sports Personality pull-out, which will give you the tantalising yet doomed hope that Lewis Hamilton might not win.


F.C. Sevilla have the largest network of football scouts in the world. In second place - the makers of Football Manager. This fact is revealed in a piece on Football Manager in which the writer will pretend to be above ever playing it, yet repeatedly betray an unhealthy obsession with the game.


Finally, Barack Obama supports West Ham. Check out our Obama wallchart, which contains all 9,000 articles about the president-elect from today's paper in a handy 8-yard wallchart. It's Obamalicious.



In Fear:
Germany is the world's largest exporter - but is now in recession. As we soon will be. And then you will have nothing, my friend, and will be forced to root through the bins behind Asda for your fix of Sunday news, plus a torn, sauce-stained pictorial selection of extortionate furniture you could barely afford in the first place.





In Cocktails (that weird section that seems oddly specific and is alternated on a weekly basis):
Martini is a type of glass as well as a drink; Margaritas contain demi-sec and tequila. Fancy mixing your own cocktails to jazz up your suffocating middle-class existence? Well work it out yourself. We can't help you to do absolutely everything.



In Things You Are Ashamed Not To Have Known:
There is a London Bridge in London - next to London Bridge tube station. Want to know where to get the best bagels if you're in the area? Pick up your free Bagels supplement, which replaces Cocktails, next week.



On The Cover of the Magazine: Do Nosebleeds Give You Psychic Abilities?
The Actual Gist of the Article: Nosebleeds are used in science-fiction to indicate that a person has psychic abilities.





Please recycle this article, once you've scraped it off your saliva-coated chin, having been woken by the Antiques Roadshow music.

It's All About... You Know, That Guy

<< "Who's the Prez?"

Hello and welcome to the History of the World, Part 2. A man of mixed race with the name Barack Hussein Obama will take the keys to the White House from George W. Bush in two months' time. I have for you today a bevy from facts from a time long ago, that scarcely seem relevant now - except that they can all be linked back to yesterday's seismic events across the Pond, in highly tenuous fashion in some instances, but let's be honest, today it's all about Obama. I, like many around the world, never seriously believed that America would elect a non-white candidate to the Oval Office until last night. I'm still in shock and thoroughly delighted with the removal of the Republicans and the installation of a guy without privilege who seems genuinely interested in restoring the fortunes of his citizens.

I am slightly concerned about a possible Tony Blair factor, in that voters have found the candidate to fit the change they desired like the UK did in 1997. We thought we were getting a fresh-faced, motivated, left-leaning PM - instead we got the most amoral, despicable person imaginable. One thing that Blair was, of course, that Obama is not, is a white guy from a well-off background. Whatever lies ahead, and President Obama faces some huge challenges in making his presidency the success we're all hoping for, it's hard not to get misty-eyed listening to elderly African-Americans recall not being allowed to use drinking water fountains, and sitting at the back of buses just 40 years ago, now seeing an African-American become their President. Even Sarah Palin may have felt the odd sensation of human empathy coursing through her last night. Anyway, here's some facts from the before time, the long long ago, that are really all about the new Prez who will save us all by not being George W. Bush...

Manchester City are the seventh most successful football club in England. Both City and Obama, though ostensibly not at all similar in any way, have become contenders through a windfall of cash. Barack earned his by asking millions of hard-working voters to dig out $5 a time to build a better America. City just went cap in hand to an oil trillionaire. Bet Obama wishes he'd thought of that.

Graham Fellows, the man behind comic character John Shuttleworth, is the brother-in-law of Ainsley Harriott. Ainsley recently found out in an episode of Who Do You Think You Are? (which really should have been renamed What Are You Like? on this occasion) that he is descended from slaves and slave-owners, as is Michelle Obama - a fact revealed during one of her husband's key speeches in turning the election in his favour. Going well so far.

The sun comprises 99% of the mass in our solar system. In other unfeasibly high percentage based news, 97% of African-Americans who voted in the U.S. election voted for Obama. Obama also pulled in young and female voters, whilst older males were for some reason drawn to calcified Action Man, John McCain.

The 'devilhorns' hand gesture means 'I love you' in American sign language. Just don't tell Metallica, for god's sake. Barack and Michelle preferred an affectionate and admirable contemporary 'fist bump' gesture, which Fox News, apropos of absolutely fuck-all, tried to insinuate was a 'terrorist fist jab'. The right-wing media somehow managed to insult the intelligence of working-class Americans during this election with all manner of craziness like this - in the end, they went so far they forgot to remember even basic policies, like rich people get even more money and more guns and things like that.

The Tussauds Group own Thorpe Park, Alton Towers and Chessington World of Adventures. They do also own the disappointing central London attraction that is Madame Tussaud's, which features waxworks of the rich and famous, including from today, Barack Obama. Models of both candidates were made, and John McCain will now be melted down (the model not the man) possibly still humming "Bomb Iran" as the ovens are fired up. Why don't they just buy the guy himself? He's not the most flexible of men, and it's not like he's gonna be busy.

I guess the most amazing thing about Obama's rise to power is that he started from nothing, and was a massive outsider just a year ago. He has clearly always been ambitious, having already been a lawyer and senator, and also published two memoirs, before his bid for the presidency. The fact remains, however, that he is an inexperienced politician from a demographic not exactly used to strutting down the halls of power, and he has been elected on nothing more than his own charisma, idealism and incredible skill at uniting the electorate. I cannot recall a president being elected in any nation who symbolised such an incredible sea-change in the hearts and minds of their citizens - the fact that it has happened in America just makes it all the more incredible.

It seems that, where others have used family connections and personal wealth to gain power, Obama really has achieved the American Dream. Maybe he reached out to the electorate in a way no others have considered - the guy wrote on his blog in between accepting McCain's concession and walking out to an adoring crowd in Chicago. Maybe, as The Onion suggests, there is a simpler explanation for America finally electing an African-American president. Or perhaps the $900 bill he ran up with his local Domino's Pizza branch has helped cement his acceptance amongst the American people. Whatever the reasons, politics will surely never be the same again. Here's today's fact: Barack Obama is the 44th president of the U.S.A. I literally can't believe it, and for the first time since I was about 10 years old, I actually wish I was American.

Money's Too Tight To Mention

Whilst enjoying a cut-price sub at lunchtime, I heard mention over the radio that Gordon Brown is effectively soliciting the world's better-off nations to pour more money into the IMF, to help out countries affected by the credit crunch. It's the international equivalent of a bleary-eyed student gadabout calling their dad at 7am for a fat sympathy loan, having blown all their dough on, I dunno, joss sticks and cans of 20/20. The most remarkable thing, of course, is that the West is asking the rest of the world to help them out. China and the oil-rich Gulf states are richer than us. A lot richer. This surely marks the beginnings of a new economic age for the world we live in.

But wait a minute - who cares about that nonsense? After all, it's only been dominating the news for 18 months. Who can even think about the turning of the global economy when a quite funny comedian and a quite unfunny chat show host have been insulting Manuel's granddaughter on a late-night radio show? The monumental storm in a tiny, plastic play teacup that Brand and Ross have created is like complaining to your landlord about an ants' nest whilst an elephant lurks furtively in the middle of your lounge. I admit that I wouldn't particularly relish finding the 4 messages in question on my voicemail, but the fact that Sachs' sainted granddaughter currently earns a living in a performance ensemble known as the Satanic Sluts might suggest that allegations of sexual activity may not have been the libellous sucker punch we're led to believe.

If we're all trying to ignore the clouds of doom circling just behind a certain prank-calling fop, what chance of the little people affected by the credit crunch getting their turn in the spotlight? Well, the BBC are trying to address this imbalance by listing a few quirky professions either benefitting or suffering as a result. One profession I'm particularly pleased to see doing well is the humble art of cobbling. This is because on Sunday, I saw our local cobbler shutting up shop at midday and wondered to myself how on Earth a South London shoemaker could weather the financial storm when airlines and multinational banks are going under. Thankfully, people are now getting old shoes repaired rather than buying new ones, so I can stop considering taking my weather-beaten old Converse shoes in for a patch-up.

As the West looks to the East for guidance and the odd sly tenner, one idea being put forward is that Islamic financial systems could be used as a model to rebuild Western economies. While Russell Brand at least will be delighted, as it might mean he finally gets a break from being on the cover of the Daily Mail, it does make financial sense - many Islamic financial systems forbid the paying and charging of interest, as well as speculation (that's when some cocky City boy tosses your savings around the stock market like a 3-year-old playing Monopoly). It could be the way forward, and is something that a lot of financial folk must be considering, while Andrew Sachs considers changing his phone number, and seeing if his granddaughter needs financial assistance to facilitate a change of lifestyle.

Across The Pond

<< U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A!

With the U.S. elections fast approaching (well, not that fast - can you believe they've only been in an official race for about 6 weeks?) and the NFL entertaining 83,000 slightly confused and fidgety punters at Wembley Stadium yesterday, this post looks at our neighbours over the water, with a series of half-truths that will shed little to no light on their situation.

For starters, he may be the owner of a traditional American occupation, but bad actor Keanu Reeves isn't American - he grew up in Toronto. This may finally explain his jerky movements and wooden demeanour after all these years. From non-Americans pretending to be American, to Americans pretending to be French - McDonalds, an institution so American the golden arches should be on the flag (incidentally - golden arches? It's a yellow M, surely) is the fat, greasy face behind extortionate cosmopolitan eaterie Pret A Manger. The fact that Pret A Manger is French for 'ready to eat' was a bit of a giveaway really.

On Friday I consulted Empire's 500 Greatest Movies, a list likely to infuriate and inspire in equal measure (The Matrix above Vertigo? Fuck off) and discovered that in the U.S. Army, toilet paper is known as John Wayne paper - because it's 'rough, tough and don't take shit off nobody'. Say what you like about the American Empire's amoral foot soldiers - they know how to craft an amusing film reference. These witty bastards have been pivotal in U.S. elections in previous years, namely the great election swindle of 2000.

It feels a bit embarrassing to start braying about the rigged election like a shop steward in the corner of a dusty pub, but come on, it was, and nothing was ever done about it, which is just insane. I guess it's easy for me to say - like Keanu, I'm non-American, so I can't be accused of being un-American. It seems unlikely that their postal votes will count for much this time, as forecasts predict a clear victory for Obama. All I'm saying is with the neo-cons around, it had better be beyond any doubt. One swing state where Obama is focussing his efforts is Ohio, the 11th most-populated state in America, and a place described as a microcosm of the country as a whole. This is apparently due to its mix of rural and urban, blue-collar and white-collar, and a dose of Springsteen-soundtracked 80s prosperity slowly stagnating as the 21st century dawned. Another way of looking at this is that, hell, if Barack can win here, he can win the whole election.

That fifth fact came from today's Evening Standard, so I'm on fresh, and slightly, shaky ground in that I'm taking my learning out of chronological order. The two things I learnt this weekend sadly didn't fit the theme, so they're left out in the cold, like Keanu Reeves at a 4th July street party. Firstly, stars make noise - clearly, not a noise that is especially audible to you or I, but it's been picked up on, y'know, that thing. Secondly, you have sinuses under your eyes as well as above them. Nothing to do with America - except of course, that the Stars and Sinuses was the original name for the U.S. flag. I know it wasn't really - but I'm claiming it. I own this blog - what are you gonna do about it. It's the American way.

Encore

<< Elvis Presley & Sarah Silverman: One of these performers can get away with not doing a proper encore

At the weekend, I went to see Sarah Silverman play at the Apollo in Hammersmith. If you've picked up the review section of a broadsheet in the last couple of days (nobody, then) you'll know that it didn't go all that well. There has been a bit of journalistic licence applied to the night's events, so here's how it seemed from my rather sweaty seat at the top of the arena. First of all, the build-up was a shambles - two men who I believe earn livings as comedians, namely Matt Berry & Rich Fulcher, came on to announce that Silverman's support act couldn't make it, but had recorded a video message. Who cares? He's the support act. I say, there's two comedians on the stage, there's your support act. Instead they just sauntered off, we saw a weird, disconnected webcam video diary on two tiny screens, and then a collection of clips from Sarah Silverman's U.S. TV show. It's tacky enough to show bits from your sitcom at a live show, but why didn't they just show a whole episode? The £45 entrance fee was starting to play on my mind at this point.

Sarah herself then came on, and contrary to some press opinions, was pretty funny throughout her set, and had the crowd on her side. She did seem a bit apprehensive, however, and made an odd remark about not "crashing and burning" just before her set came to a close. Little did we know that there was still time. She left the stage after 45 minutes, and the audience response was not, at least from where I was sat, completely aggressive - not yet, anyway. A lot of people starting heading for the exits - I didn't really think anything of it as I'd assumed there would be an encore. I had forgotten the golden rule that separates music from comedy - bands play encores even when no-one cares, and comedians don't, even when it's painfully obvious that it'll be expected. She really wasn't planning on coming back out, and in the end, had to shuffle back on in post-show slippers, blinking at the audience, illuminated by the house lights. At least, we thought, she came back out. That's better than just walking off and not coming back. How wrong we were.

To be honest, she seemed a bit pissed off that the audience expected more for forty-odd quid, launching into an awkward Q & A session which featured hecklers, and Silverman responding to them, by repeating what they said, but in a silly voice. Oh dear. I had witnessed this kind of encore meltdown before, at Portsmouth Guildhall last year, when Russell Brand, having been consistently hysterical for a full 90 minutes, decided to unmask his creepy alter-ego in the denouement, propositioning 18-year-old girls, his libido nearly bursting from within himself as the rest of us reached for our coats and made noises about having an early start the next day. The final disaster was a YouTube moron hollering for a song she performed on her TV show, then having to tell her all the words, with the audience laughing at him like he came up with it himself. Perhaps if she had remembered her own song, this whole embarrassing scenario would never have occurred - and perhaps, with maybe 15 minutes of new material, she could have delivered a brief but entertaining show, rather than a performance so truncated that the audience assumed an encore. In total, the whole thing was an hour, but with a final quarter I would have paid £45 not to have seen.

Silverman's slightly arrogant, yet ultimately unfortunate, mistake was to misjudge the audience she was playing to. A 45-minute set at a small comedy club would've been fine - but this was a 3000-seater venue. The whole confusion that exists around the encore issue doesn't help, either - there's been many a time I've looked at my watch as a band have 'finished' playing and calculated that the set is too short without an encore, but will be too long with it. Then there's the interminable 'newie', sandwiched in at the start of the encore, always slow, always sketchy, forced upon paying punters as they wait, knees aching, to hear the one song they came for. Playing your best song in the encore is a moot point too - Radiohead finishing with Paranoid Android at their gig this year was exactly what I had hoped for, but didn't fit at all with the mood of the rest of the performance - from being completely, obtusely Radiohead, it was like they were attempting to transform into Bruce Springsteen belting out 'Born To Run'. On the other hand, I remember seeing Pulp knock out 'Common People' a third of the way through their festival set, and being wracked by confusion - did the band hate the song, or was it not their 'best' song (they played 'Babies' to close the set)? Either way, I felt my love of the song slightly diminished. I have only ever seen one act, musical or otherwise, not play an encore at all. It was The Strokes, and they claimed it was because false encores are 'bullshit'. While this stance is admirable, their 11-song back catalogue probably had more to do with it.

I think the rules around encores need to be changed. The tradition began because an audience requested more material from a performer, so why not go back to this? Bands shouldn't save their best two songs for the encore, assuming that the audience would rather watch them than catch the end of Match of the Day - but all performers should have something in their locker for audiences that want something extra. Sarah Silverman really ought to have been able to give a crowd that she had impressed to the extent that they asked her back something better than fart noises and disintegrating songs. She could have done 'Born To Run', for god's sake. Or, if nothing else, she could have brought out a big suitcase stuffed with cash, and let everyone have half their money back. Of course, the other option, one which would have at least spared Silverman the derision of angry punters, would be to abolish the art of encores altogether. One performer is noted for never playing an encore, and as performers go, he was pretty successful - for he was the King himself, Elvis Presley. Elvis' manager encouraged him to never play an encore, to keep the crowd wantin' more (there were no Gs on the ends of words in the rock 'n' roll era). Hence the phrase 'Elvis has left the building' - this was announced over the PA to inform the crowd that the King was solid gone, paving the way for whichever poor sap was on next, clumsily trying to remember the chords to 'Jailhouse Rock' in the dressing room.

Anyway, if you started reading this post while Sarah Silverman took to the stage on Sunday night (impossible, but just go with it) she'd already be on the plane back to America by now, so that's all from me, thanks, you've been a terrific audience.

(Hurries back onto stage as the crowd shrug and head for the exits)

OK, I've got one more for you crazy kids - the phrase 'whistlestop tour' comes from the U.S., where politicians, most famously Harry S. Truman, would board a train and deliver a speech from their carriage at several rural stations, without getting off the train. It was seen as the most effective way to reach key voters quickly, and it won Truman the 1948 election when he had looked to be well out of the running. Please, nobody let John McCain get on that Greyhound bus, we're so close now. Yeah, that's right, a bit of politics thrown into the mix. Edgy material now i've won the crowd over. To close, I'd like to point out that Sarah Silverman may have screwed up her encore, but she's a master of the whistlestop tour - her entire European tour lasted just 45 minutes. Ifangyoo. I've been questing for knowledge, you've been fantastic, cheers, goodnight.

(Boos ring out across the venue - security step in to restrain feral punters)

Do My Job For Me

OK, here's how it is: It's been a week since I posted anything, but I've got sniffles and I need to sit through Talladega Nights so I can send it back to the rental people. So here's five facts, which I'll invite you, the readers, to arrange into a barely coherent, fleetingly amusing article. The best entry wins nothing. For there will be no entries.

Wednesday: Yosemite National Park is only 125 miles from San Francisco.

Thursday: Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman and Robert Duvall all shared an apartment whilst trying to break Hollywood.

Friday: Spaniels are prone to hallitosis.

Saturday: Those executive toys where there are five silver balls, and you clack the end one onto the next one and the one at the other end moves, is known as Newton's Cradle.

Sunday: The bridge in Battersea that is permanently lit up like a Christmas tree is Prince Albert Bridge, and not Battersea bridge.

Over to you - I'm going back under the duvet.

Light & Shade

<< Chris 'The Miss' Iwelumo was meditating on the pillaging of Mother Earth at precisely the wrong moment

Up and down. Yin and Yang. Little and Large. This crazy world is all about opposites; polarised forces working against each other to create harmony from chaos. As Darwin put it - two steps forward, three steps back; we come together 'cos opposites attract. The world feels like a pretty shady place at the minute, and the latest crop of facts aren't going to help matters, so I've taken into my own hands to shine a little light onto each day's findings.

We begin on Saturday, when I learnt that deforestation is costing the Earth more financially than the banking crisis - that's not to mention the not exactly inconsiderable environmental consequences. On the light/shade spectrum, this news is darker than Clapham Common at 2 in the morning. I don't even want to think about it - so I won't. The nation's papers certainly aren't - this story has earnt barely a whisper, whilst the misery of Chris Iwelumo is lighting up back pages everywhere. Admittedly, Chris' tale isn't funny for everyone (namely himself) - a 30-year-old lower league football, given a once-in-a-lifetime chance to represent his country in a crucial game, our Chris came on for Scotland against Norway in the second half, and just minutes later, found himself with an open goal to aim at. This is what happened next. I'd like to thank Chris, who has probably scored the goal 3000 times in his mind since, for making me forget about the forests, if only for a few hilarious seconds. (NB In the video, have a look at the linesman on the far side, who runs off having assumed the ball had gone in. It hadn't. Also, look at the picture above. Just look at the poor guy's face).

Moving on, Sunday brought the revelation that Nelson Mandela, one of the world's greatest living politicians, spent his sentence on Robben Island being forced to wear shoes that were too small for him. Thankfully, this news was packaged in a Peter Kay medley with segues so clunky they eased the pain of the great man's suffering to the extent that I was singing "Free Nelson Mandela-ela-ela, eh, eh" for several hours afterwards.

Before it was ingeniously connected to Rihanna's summertime smash, "Free Nelson Mandela" by the Specials was a protest song against, well, I think you can guess. On a Specials compilation my Dad had, it had been changed to "Nelson Mandela" because he had already been freed, which always seemed a touch pedantic to me. The protest song is part of a fine British tradition of free speech and nonviolent action in the support of a better, fairer world. Thank goodness that such principles hold firm, even in such certain times. Except, well, I think you see where I'm going with this.

The right to demonstrate has been taken for granted in the UK for several years, but is now under serious threat. It's already a bit of an issue demonstrating within a mile of Parliament Square (presumably as this would be a fairly effective place to protest), and now even regular events such as the Critical Mass bike ride in La'hn Tahn are being clamped down upon. Critical Mass has been going for 15 years without any problems, but participants have recently been subject to a much-increased police presence, in an attempt to force them to pre-arrange demonstration routes and times. The key loophole for the rebel riders is that as the event takes place regularly, it cannot technically be called a demonstration. That may well change in the near future, unfortunately, but for now if you've got a bone to pick with The Man, you'd better pick it on a weekly basis. London is a city with its mardy face on at the minute, and restrictions on demonstrations are hardly going to help it recapture its freewheeling, bohemian vibe. One brave citizen is doing her bit, however, spreading a few rays of light amongst the smoggy gloaming. Amy Winehouse has been holding 'Coke Candy' parties at her house, where she gives out cocaine and candyfloss to residents. If there's a more tangible example of light and shade than being given free cocaine and candyfloss, I've yet to hear about it.

And so to today. Following a classic good-and-evil England performance on Saturday, Fabio's boys have flown out to Belarus for a game that will no doubt be described as a 'potential banana skin' by some arse at some point. It either is or isn't a banana skin - the potential is whether England fall upon their arses as a result of its presence. A bit metaphorical for football punditry, but there you go. Belarus has been described as Europe's last dictatorship, a troubled outpost where tyranny reigns supreme. It is also the only nation in Europe to still uphold the death penalty (I bet their left backs are a bit more careful with backpasses than ours). As I've reiterated ad nauseum throughout this post, it is all about light and shade today, so I don't want to give the Belarussian nation a wholly negative write-up. I will therefore include that the manager of the national side has assured the world's press that Minsk, epicentre of the tyrannical executive superstate, is very clean. Hurrah!

Popular Misconceptions

<< He may have only been 12, but by God, Kowalski had earned that damned cigarette

Three more facts for the file - all loosely connected by the fact that they overturned some kind of misconception in my mind. The first, revealed whilst staring at a sign during what felt like an eternity at a kiosk queue, was that it is now illegal to sell tobacco to under-18s. I don't remember that age being bumped up; the situation now is that you can get married, have a kid, join the army, get shipped out to a war zone, come back with half your original legs intact and still have to wait a year before you can have a cigarette.

At least being in the army pays well - even if you're one of the specially selected few who are deemed just too valuable to send into the proper army, and who spend their weekends running through derelict council estates on 'drills' - that's right, you even get paid to be in the Territorial Army. No wonder we're running out of money...

Speaking of which, the banking crisis continues apace, with the U.S. markets falling by 12 gazillion points, before rallying by 3.8, only to plunge a further 900 trillion in the next 5 minutes. It's something like that. It also now appears that keeping your money in a shiny multinational bank might soon be as safe as withdrawing it all, stitching it together to make a money suit and strolling around a town centre in it all night. The UK banking system used to be the safest in the world, but it's now about the 45th safest, about level with the U.S. and Germany. The banking crisis is affecting pretty much every Western country - except Canada. It still has the safest banking system in the world, probably because it only has about 13 citizens, but still, good effort...

Eight Days of Woe

<< A stock trader checks the chart - it's not exactly good news

It's been a long eight days - at the start the UK was part of a super-rich, glittering and fully developed world, imperialist privileges well and truly intact. Now we're locking ourselves in our offices to stop getting the sack, money is literally disintegrating in our hands and the entire City of London is worth roughly 17 Ugandan dollars. Sadly, as I've discovered, there are plenty more reasons to not be cheerful...

First up, way back last Monday, whilst lying in a bath full of money, I watched a horrible film called Jesus Camp, where a group of evangelists in North Dakota managed to convince a group of kids that they could speak in tongues and that God was moving through them. It's hard to believe it's a trick, what with under-10s being so wary of new ideas and wholly not gullible. The film revealed that there are 80 million people in the U.S. who consider themselves to be evangelists. Now I appreciate that the people in the film are about as close to Christianity as fundamentalist Muslims are to the heart of their own religion, but the fact that there are even 3 people prepared to exploit children in this way is miserable enough.

If you're feeling sorry for the suggestible kids of middle America, spare a thought for the sizeable Korean population of New Malden. New Malden is the most densely populated South Korean area outside of South Korea itself. Having been through New Malden on the train, I can only imagine that the residents of this enclave must be wondering when they can come out of the bunker and get on with their lives. No offence...

Moving a few miles down the road, we head into leafy Surrey, where you'll find considerably less enthusiasm for ethnic diversity, and the epicentre of the most recent foot-and-mouth outbreak. Foot-and-mouth was, of course, one of the first nails in Gordon Brown's leadership coffin, which now resembles something a circus performer would attempt to lie down on. Perhaps the signs that we were all heading back to the Dark Ages came with this latest outbreak of a bizarre agricultural plague - admittedly one that hasn't affected humans since 1966. Although knowing Gordon's luck at the minute, you wouldn't rule it out.

America are also facing the inevitability of a new guy in charge (though thankly not a greenwashing moon-faced prick) - either Barack Obama or John McCain. Hopefully and probably it will be the former, unless they ditch the votes and go for a 'Nam style endurance test where both are locked in a cell deep in a rainforest until one of them cracks. It's really quite galling that America, who have frankly not been the best at picking presidents, seem to be on the verge of electing a guy who appears to be a half-decent politician and person. Fast forward eight years, however, and once that tricky loophole has been taken care of, it could well be Arnie's turn. America love actors in charge, and Arnie is technically just that - even if he did only have 17 lines in The Terminator, and was generally cast as a giant slab of Teutonic smoked beef rather than a solid character actor.

From a guy who can't act who could one day run the world, to a woman who can't write a half-decent book who earns £5 a second - need I tell you it's JK Rowling. Before you all write in, I know there's a lot of Potter fans out there, but I've got four words for you. I. Don't. Get. It. Incidentally, the K in her pen name is made up - she doesn't have a middle name. So by the time the working week was done, I'd already learnt about bovine disease, overrated artists, trapped Koreans and an awful lot of evangelists. Surely it couldn't get any worse. Then came the news that Rizla papers have more harmful chemicals in than tobacco. This one bothers me primarily because I am virtually certain it is untrue; however when you forget to learn anything until 5 to midnight, this is what happens.

Clearly by this stage, I was losing the will to learn even the most trivial of truth. Luckily on Sunday, whilst watching the end of The Goblet of Fire and thinking about that £5 per second whilst grinding my teeth down to a series of smooth yellowed domes, I learnt that Alnwick Castle, the setting for Hogwarts (such a stupid name - god don't get me started, I beg you) is the second largest inhabited castle in the U.K. The largest is Windsor Castle - which is owned by the Royal Family. It looks like imperial privilege is still alive and well. Finally, to round off a truly joyous week of learning, I discovered that 30% burns is enough to finish you off - even though you'll feel fine for a couple of weeks, before the scorched skin uses up your body's water reserves. Delightful. Thankfully I didn't learn this from personal experience, but from a bizarre work conversation which reminded me why I don't usually look up from my computer when colleagues are in the office.

This brings us to today, where the papers piled up at Earlsfield station greeted me with a rapidly descending line and the words "how low can it go?", as if global share prices were some kind of giant financial limbo dancing contest. They could be, to be honest, for all I know. Inside the previous day's trading had been labelled as Meltdown Monday, in the billionth attempt thus far to come up with the next Black Monday. I didn't know Black Monday happened in 1987 - the one that happened in the early 90s must have been a similar desperate attempt at spinning a nifty soundbite from a desolate landscape of financial misery. In an attempt to get in on the act, I'd like right now to patent Manic Monday, Fucked Up Friday, Worldwide Weeping Wednesday, and Third World Thursday. More later in the week, when I at least don't have to go to work - so there is one positive guaranteed...

The Name Game

On Wednesday we took a trip out from Knowledge Towers and went to the new Ripley's Believe It Or Not! exhibition, which I assumed would give me facts by the handful. Regrettably, though it was very entertaining, and built nicely from rooms full of tat to a magic walkway at the end, I learnt only one thing - that Yankee, a term meaning American, basically, actually meant English originally. It was a mispronounciation of 'English', courtesy of Native Americans. They got Yankee from English - no wonder they never broke through the language barrier. That and all the killing. Anyway, an interesting place, but the biggest shock of the evening was at the till - £20 each. Sticking with our original theme of names, and our additional one of rip-offs, we move on to cornershops. Martin's and McColl's, famous overpriced newsagents, always appeared to be owned by the same company, with their alluring blue and white signs, but little did I know that they're in fact owned by the same man - who else but Martin McColl.

Moving on to an ever so slightly more famous name, I decided to look into the meaning behind the very name of our capital city, London. While most places in the city have a clear history of where their name comes from, the amazing thing is that nobody knows where London got its name from. Various people who know about this sort of thing have suggested that the word has its roots in a dizzying range of languages, including Welsh, Belgian, Indo-European and Italian. It appears the most likely options are that it means 'fort on the river' or 'wide river' - both of which are fairly accurate, if slightly underwhelming depictions of the capital.

Of course, London is a word which conjures a variety of images - not all of them favourable, but it's not often associated with boredom. Belgium, on the other hand, is practically a byword for long, yawning spells of tedium, as it is seen by the wider world as not that interesting, to put it mildly. Try telling that to the residents of Brussels, who are burgled more frequently (and by that, I mean their houses are broken into it, not their bodies) than any other capital city in Europe - just pipping London to the post.

To conclude this name-based riff, we revert to the common denominator of nominal facts - the real names of celebrities. Everyone knows that Harry Webb and Reg Dwight are known by slightly more glamorous names nowadays, but a repeat of Who Do You Think You Are? (my new favourite show, having stumbled upon Ainsley Harriott having his soul torn in half by the revelation that his great-grandpa was a slave trader) let me know that cockney sparrah Babs Windsor was born Barbara Ann Deeks. It also informed her, and the audience, that her great-grandparents hailed from Ireland (which she was excited about) and Suffolk (which was met with a look bordering on disgust). As empty-handed backpackers in Belgium will tell you, never judge a place on preconceptions...

Johnsons

<< Guy Fawkes: "Hello officer... oh, this? It's strictly for personal use"

A friend of Knowledge Towers informed us on Sunday that you can lose about a pound in weight when you go for a wee. Anyone who's spent several hours in a pub will tell you that this is quite plausible, given that a pound weighs about the same as a pint of liquid, and that the ratio whilst drinking lager is 1 pint in, 5 pints out. By the way, our friend satisfies and indeed develops her fascination with bodily fluids by working as a nurse.

While we're on the subject of johnsons, here's the world's worst ever false name - when Guy Fawkes was caught with a stick of dynamite and a Che Guevara T-shirt in the cellars of Parliament in 1605, he pretended that his name was John Johnson, which surely could only have been worse if he had gone for Bonfire McFireworks. I'd like to think that he put a large 'uhh' between his assumed first and surnames, accompanied with a scratch of the chin, in the vein of Alan Partridge when posing as Bill Car.

I'd like to finish this loosely cohesive, wholly juvenile article with a fact about Littlehampton, but instead we're heading 30 miles east on the A27, over the South Downs and along the interminable Brighton by-pass, all the way back to bloody Lewes. I learnt from ever-flowing fountain of knowledge Sky Sports News that Lewes is not pronounced Lewis, but is instead pronounced Loos - which brings us back to where we started...

Mad Skills

<< Napoleon Dynamite: Possesses a range of skills

Everyone has a skill, whether it's cryptic crossword solving, large hadron colliding, or getting keys off keyrings really quickly (I thank you). For example, if you're really struggling, there's a 50% chance you can at least roll your tongue - for half the population can do it, and half cannot. As a matter of fact, I can't (to witness me trying is to gaze upon hilarity) so that means your odds are slightly better than evens. Give it a whirl.

If you hone your skills, and put in the 90% perspiration to back it up over several years, you could reach the apex of your craft - being wheeled out as an expert assistant on a reality TV show. You know who I mean - Nick & Margaret (the middle-aged Jordan and Peter) on the Apprentice, loveable leprachaun Louis Walsh on the X-Factor, and on Raymond Blanc's The Res'ron, sour-faced snoot Sarah Willingham. She likes to do a drawn-out, heavily critical number to camera about the potential res'ronteurs' cooking skills - heavily laced with unsavoury double entendres such as "I've got to swallow this now". She's entitled to, of course, 'cos she's an expert. That's why they get her clopping through the res'rons, and regularly film her getting out of a mid-range sports car. Except she's not an expert on cookery - she's an expert on retail. This is fine for the show - as Raymond will tell you, running a res'ron is as much about business as cooking, but maybe Willingham should be going through the books instead of scoffing over a lukewarm plate of coq au vin next week.

Of course, there once was a simpler time when being skilled didn't involve ability in a grown-up, probably hard subject like business or haute cuisine - back in the schoolyard, if you could do a Rubik's Cube in under ten minutes, you were the king of the county. Regrettably, I could only complete the cube with the use of a screwdriver, but The Netherlands' Erik Akkersdijk must be signing autographs in his playground - he's the Rubik's Cube world record holder, completing the cube in 7.08 seconds this year. I'll bet he can curl his tongue and whip up a mean lobster bisque as well.

Sadly, some of us are blessed with no skill whatsoever. What becomes of those with no abilities to share with the rest of humanity (I'd like to remind everyone that I can get keys off keyrings really fast - faster than 7.08 seconds on a good day)? Well, they could nab a hosting job on an unwatchable daytime quiz show, then start pretending they don't pay a TV Licence. If that doesn't work, there's always charitable organisations offering work placements for the talentless. That said, when I popped in there earlier tonight, the beef slinger (sorry, sales assistant) did demonstrate one skill. First offering to 'mix my McFlurry', before I could hit her with an umbrella in a fit of disgust, she proceeded to do just that, demonstrating that a McFlurry is so called because it is whisked up by a machine. Sarah Willingham would be rendered speechless.

All Nightmare Long

<< The Winstanley Estate: Average length of time between muggings - 21 seconds

I learnt on Saturday, courtesy of some frantic last minute searching, that women are on average more prone to nightmares than men. The worst nightmare I ever had was that I got suspended for doing something I'd been told to do, forced to take a month off work, given a harsh punishment, and then spent a whole week several months later waiting to see if my new employers are going to find out and call off the whole deal. Oh no, wait a minute, that's my actual life - worse than a nightmare.

Another individual seen living a real-life nightmare this week was Brian Kuh, a guy who pretty much organised a Donkey Kong world-record attempt, only to see a guy who wasn't even that into computer games obliterate his score. That's right, this was The King of Kong, which saw Steve Wiebe, a regular John with a solid practice ethic, pitched against Billy Mitchell, the previous record holder, hot sauce merchant and pretty much the strangest man alive. I won't spoil it for you - suffice to say it's like Federer v Nadal with bent umpires and nobody else watching. Incidentally, the name Donkey Kong was intended to translate as 'stubborn ape' by its Japanese creator. Damn you, Babelfish...

Another group of people having a week from hell were the hotshot bankers at Lehman Brothers, America's fourth-largest bank until it collapsed in frankly unfathomable circumstances. It was a tragic sight watching honest, hard-working investors schlepping out of the head office with their worldly possessions esconced in boxes, when just months previously, they had been having fights with piles of ordinary people's money, before building forts from said money and lighting cigars inside with $1000 bills, cackling deliriously throughout the whole experience. Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of guys.

This nightmare theme is getting a bit thin now, but I can't conclude this theme until I've expounded on my (possible) future workplace - I went and had a look the other day, and found that it sits snugly on the edge of Battersea's Winstanley Estate - an area that did indeed resemble the waking nightmare of a drug-addled 1960s town planner. Feeling slightly uneasy about my new environs, I decided to look it up on Google. Here's a tip - never look anything up on Google; it paints the area as a sort of Thunderdome for South London - drug dealers literally selling lorryloads of crack in front of police stations, then building forts out of said crack and cackling deliriously etc. I'm sure it has a reputation, but I have a feeling that these articles were written by people who consider any town without a Waitrose to be ghettoised beyond repair. The most troubling news about Winstanley is that So Solid Crew used to live there - believe me, I've been waking up sweating every night since I heard.

Three Handy Facts For a Night Out in Lewes

1. Lewes (pictured left), a small town in Sussex, has introduced its own currency - the Lewes pound. It's the same as a normal pound.

2. Syphilis can infest your brain.

3. The word 'boredom' was invented by Charles Dickens.

Wake Me Up When September Ends

I don't know if this was quite what Billie Joe was getting at when he first sung this line through his nose, but autumnal misery hangs heavily in the air. Another non-existent summer has been and gone, and the rain is falling so relentlessly our first-floor flat is in danger of becoming a canal barge (it's about the right dimensions to start with). To me, a year without a proper summer is like getting a job without having an interview - I may not like summer, in fact it's normally quite an ordeal, but to not have one at all just feels weird, and I feel like I'm rolling into the drizzly comfort of Autumn a little too easily. I also find myself feeling depressed when the seasons start changing, which is pretty much 50% of the year, and I'm looking forward to the onset of bitter winter more than I'm enjoying the present climate.

British weather fascinates me - it's perhaps the world's most inconsistent, yet the highs and lows are remarkably similar. The best we can hope for is warm and slightly muggy, with the occasional shower. The worst we ever get is a couple of hours of solid rain, followed by a bit of sun, and yes, it's slightly muggy all year round. Is Britain in a bio-dome or something? It's crazy. We have virtually no weather of interest, yet also never have any guarantees on what tomorrow will bring, as anyone who has ever sat in a field huddled round a hamper while freezing rain lashes at you from every direction will testify. There is of course also the British obsession with weather, particularly the apparently universal belief that sun is good news. If, like me, you can acquire a sunburn by sitting by a closed window on a cloudy July day, you'll know that the mention of a week-long heatwave is enough to bring on another bout of hives. But you wouldn't care about that, as long as you get a good tan, eh Kettley? Selfish bastard.

Anyway, it's dark and cold, but not cold enough to put the heating on, nor cold enough to wear a jacket to work, oh no, that would be too easy, so here's a list of stuff I've learnt recently, that along with the rest of the month thus far, I would rather forget:

The phrase 'hoods', as in a deprived area of housing, comes from the word 'neighbourhoods'. I swear down.

Chillies are farmed in the UK. No reason why they shouldn't be, but surprising given that most British people are sent running for the cold tap by a prawn korma.

A CRB check will take your family's history into account, so if you've always wondered whether Uncle Terry has previous, now may be the time to find out.

You can get a stroke from having sex. If you are unfortunate enough to suffer this problem, at least when the doctor asked what triggered it, you can stick your chest out and say "I was up all night shagging". Whether you'd be capable of such braggadocio at this stage is up for debate.

Lima beans are the American term given to butter beans. A butter bean in America is, of course, a fat kid (preferably ginger).

I'm now departing the world of fact and moving into an arena of unparallelled subjectivity - that's right, the Mercury Music Prize is back, and after the whole Klaxons farce last year (it had three good songs on it! At best!) let's hope for a better outcome (and for the winner to be subsequently cursed with stifled creativity, over-exposure - and the odd Number 1 smash hit single) this time round - go Burial! His album, with it's eerie noises and disjointed wailing is the perfect soundtrack to the phrase 'look at that - it's getting dark already... University Challenge hasn't even finished'...

Cultural Misconceptions of an Ignorant Buffoon

<< Mark Rothko and France: Both admirable, yet hard to relate to

I went to the Tate Modern recently, and along with spotting some very good stuff, and some stuff that made me want to read the Daily Express, I noticed that a Mark Rothko exhibition is coming to the gallery this Autumn. Despite Rothko perhaps representing the nadir of modern painting with his series of red, formless works, I quite like him, perhaps due to a desire to look cool that's so subconscious I'm not actually aware of it. Anyway, I saw some Rothko paintings at a gallery in, I dunno, somewhere or other, and consider him to be one of my preferred rubbish modern artists. In fact, I'm such a Rothko aficionado that I didn't know that he's dead. That desire to look cool is looking like a bit of a long shot.

Is there's one thing I know less about than art, it's other cultures. However, regarding Tuesday's fact, I feel I am not alone. The word 'hijab' does not refer to a head covering, as worn by Muslim women - it is in fact a word which originally meant something close to modesty. The ideology is the same, but the word has come to mean a specific item, where it once was a broader adjective. Very interesting, even if I've done my best to make it seem otherwise.

Of course, we all know it's fine and dandy to be hopelessly ignorant of life in other countries, as long as said country isn't America. The upcoming presidential elections have received so much UK press attention, you'd be forgiven for thinking the winner will collect the souls of every British citizen as his bounty. Despite this, there's not much substance to the coverage, and we still know little about the candidates, except that Obama must, and should, win, but is primed to be levelled by a late October media shitstorm and overtaken, particularly now John McCain is pretending that he's not the actual Republican candidate. Here's something you may not have known - this is the first presidential election where neither candidate was born on the U.S. mainland. Obama was born in Hawaii, while McCain came into this world down in Panama. Surely this technicality is clearing the way for Arnie to make a bid in 2012? Don't talk crazy.

Back on British soil, and if there's one thing I am certain about, it's that I work way too many hours. Recent research has backed my bitter rants up at long last, showing us that the U.K. works 41.4 hours per week on average - outworked only by Romania and Bulgaria. As for the shortest hours - it may not surprise you to learn that France only manage to loaf their way through 37.7 hours each week before sauntering off to the boulangerie. Having worked for an Anglo-French company, I'm familiar with the French way of working - apparently starting at 11 and knocking off at 4, with a 3-hour break in the middle. Throw in 38 bank holidays and you have yourself a satisfied workforce. I'm not being critical - I applaud nations who allow their people some time off, and feel pity and shame for my overtime-working, hotdesking, two-hour-commuting colleagues who feel pangs of intense guilt for checking their personal e-mails at 4.55 on a Friday. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go - got to type up some minutes over the weekend, then book a cheap flight to Toulouse...

Cruel Britannia

The last four days have seen a slew of facts about this very sceptred isle, starting back on Thursday (as this seems to always be the day that the learning tails off) when Powys, a county in mid-Wales, was named as the happiest place in the country. I recently went camping in Powys, and have to say I'm not surprised - it's all rolling hills and stony streams, plus in Builth Wells there's a Burger King where they've employed a teenager with an especially dramatic voice to call out the orders. It's a laugh a minute out there. Edinburgh came bottom, whilst the only London borough to score highly was Sutton. I don't know exactly what the science behind this study is, but may I suggest it has something to do with lots of place names on bits of paper and an upturned hat.

Knowledge Towers' home borough, Wandsworth, may not be all that happy, but it's got a lot going for it - a disused power station, an outdoor swimming pool and a labyrinthine railway junction, to name but all. It's also fairly star-studded - Wandsworth residents include the intentionally hilarious Harry Hill, the unintentionally hilarious Ainsley Harriott, tennis gobshite Andy Murray and World's Biggest Badass, Lost's Sayid Jarrah. OK, the actor who plays him - who lives in LA now. Naveen Andrews was born in Wandsworth. That's literally the best thing that's ever happened here.

Heading onto the South Circular and out into the regions, past the residents of Powys, delirious with jubilation, on past the city of Edinburgh, literally collapsing under the weight of its own misery, we arrive at the shores of Loch Ness, a massive body of water famous for its mythical Jurassic inhabitant. If you look at a map of the UK, Loch Ness cuts in a straight line right across the northwest corner of Scotland - I learnt from a repeat of Britain From Above that this is because it follows a faultline, a feature that an expert claimed "without wanting to sound too dramatic" was the UK's equivalent of the San Andreas Fault. Which is pretty dramatic. He also mentioned that Loch Ness holds more water than all the lakes in England and Wales put together - a statement that needs no extra gravitas.

For Sunday's slice o' learning, we're moving even further North, to the very edge of the land, the Shetland Islands, nestled somewhere between Iceland, Scotland, Venezuela, Beirut and Switzerland. It's the northernmost part of the UK, and it is also the fattest - although this comes from another less than scientific study which has been rebuked by Shetland MSP Tavish Scott (yes, it's his real name) and the area's health improvement officer (who may have had a couple of sleepless nights recently) who added that the islands have "fantastic" leisure centres, but admitted with a weary shrug that they are slightly under-used. She then returned to her car and sat, gently weeping, munching through a carrier bag full of pork pies.

Flippin' The Kurd

<< Kurdistan's premier comedy double act in action

I'm trying to push up the post count for August by squeezing in a few daily doses before the month closes - I don't have any money, so need to pass the time somehow. Unfortunately, today's subject area is not one that lends itself to my breezy, trivial style. The region of Kurdistan has a history littered with oppression, genocide and misery - I'm throwing out the weak pun of a title as a gesture, but other than that, it's a proud, troubled region that offers little in the way of observational comedy.

Kurdistan is spread across the borders of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria.

The region is roughly the same size as France, and is only recognised as an autonomous province in Iraq (although right now I imagine you could declare a hotel an autonomous province - there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of stability going on for some reason). The chief language is Kurdish (but is possibly not called this in Kurdistan) - split into two dialects: Sorani and Kumanji. Again, interesting, but not something you can see Seinfeld ripping on ("What's the deal with Kumanji?"). Kurds have suffered widespread laugh-free oppression, most notably in Iraq (although that's all better now) and in Turkey, where several rebellions were put down and the region as a whole was declared a closed military zone for forty years, up until 1965.

I know it's been a bit of a struggle today, but the people of Kurdistan have suffered enough, so let's draw it to a close with some more simple, ungilded truths - here are Kurdistan's largest cities: In Iran - Kermansah and Mahabad; in Iraq, Mosul and Arbil; and in Turkey, Diyarbakir, Bitlis and Batman. That's right - Batman. I knew those crazy Kurds had it in them - dig through enough oppression and misery and you'll always find a vaguely topical film reference eventually. Now you just have to get yourself out of the hole you've dug for yourself...

Bank Holiday Bonanza: 11 Tiny People & Trillions of Stars

<< A West Brom/Sheff Weds/Brighton Subbuteo figure, complete with trademark enlarged ball

The final Bank Holiday before Christmas has been and gone (now there's a thought to make you want to boil your own head) but we kick off the learning recall back on Thursday, when I discovered that you can't a gas emergency callout until your meter runs out entirely. I imagine if the house was slowly filling with gas and your twitchy cousin was coming round to play with lighters, they might pop round, but otherwise, they will actually advise you to waste natural resources until you are left without heating and hot water, at which point they will come out immediately (between 8 and 1, anyway). It's quite a society we live in - but what does that matter when we've got Olympic heroes? They're plastered all over the papers lately, looking every inch a group of people that are unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the notion of celebrity, and the BBC even published a hugely tedious list of details about the medallists - the most surprising piece of information therein was that Herne Hill in South London has a velodrome.

From track cycling to a less confusing and more commercial sport - Subbuteo. I can remember when the flick-to-kick game was at the cutting edge of kids' entertainment (OK, that may be pushing it a bit, but it was popular) and I was building quite a good collection, pitching Wolves/Blackpool against QPR/Reading on my bedroom floor in front of a shiny new plastic Main Stand. Then, from nowhere, it disappeared - I feel it is long overdue a retro revival, mainly because I've still got that Main Stand in my attic somewhere. The name Subbuteo is Latin for 'hobby', and was another reason I liked it - they could have called it Kick, or Offside!, or Goalaroo, but they gave it a non-footballing name under the brilliant pretense that it wasn't actually a football game. Bring it back, toymakers of the land. The comeback starts here.

Sunday's discovery really speaks for itself - there are more air molecules in a balloon than there are stars in our galaxy. By the way, the figure is several trillion - a statistic so mind-blowing and wondrous it makes me want to stick my fingers deep into my ears and repeat pointless facts to myself until the giddy feeling subsides.

Back to the comfortably trivial, if you thought a football-based game that didn't allow you to just play football reached surprisingly dizzy heights, you may also be shocked to discover that Oxo, purveyors of garden variety stock cubes, were at one stage successful enough to build a ruddy great tower on the South Bank, complete with their name emblazoned on the side - except it isn't really. The OXO tower simply features a series of windows arranged to spell OXO - apparently this didn't contravene advertising laws at the time, whereas having an Oxo sign would have done. The Oxo windows represent perhaps the most fragrant flouting of advertising laws of all time - until McDonalds started sponsoring the Olympics. Wherever the book on appropriate advertising is kept, it seems it can be held there with a fat enough cheque.

And finally, today's bit of tat... the theme music from Tetris is taken from a Russian folk song. I know how the first 10 seconds go, before the screen begins to fill with a central pile of descending shapes, and the giddy feeling returns.

The Week That Wasn't

<< Could Kojak crack the case before Bolt finished the 200m? In a word, no.

Home-grown Olympians have been tearing up the record books over in Beijing, so I've been going for a bit of history myself - yes, I've gone a whole week without updating a daily blog, obliterating my previous record of, I dunno, a couple of days less. To get us started, we're travelling back through the mists of time to last Thursday, a halcyon evening which reached it's blissful peak at 9pm, when we watched Traffic Cops and ate a jacket potato. I learnt that skewering a baked potato all the way through makes it cook quicker, which was handy, as otherwise I would have missed the fallout from a crash between "a car... and a house", which physically COULD NOT BE RECREATED. It's not that they couldn't afford it, of course - it just couldn't be done.

Further record-breaking behaviour on Friday night - I found out that Hailie McDaniel was the first African-American actress to win an Oscar. I read this in the back of a quiz book, for there was nobody around to ask me the questions. I did a quiz with myself on a Friday night, which may give me some kind of unwanted title - World's Saddest Twat, perhaps. At least I'm not the only one who's bitter. Forgotten director George Lucas attempted to buy the rights to make Flash Gordon into a film, but was beaten to it. Flash Gordon was made in all it's Blessed-heavy glory, and Lucas skulked off to make something called Star Wars. That was Saturday, the day Usain Bolt jogged to a world record, while I laboured up a canal towpath on a short walk.

As Saturday night turned into Sunday morning, my brother pointed out to me that Dmitri, the keytar player from Flight of the Conchords, is in fact the rather droll stand-up comedian Dmitri Martin, who you can see (well, hear) here. On Monday I redirected my gaze towards the Olympics once again - I know it's been an overused feature in recent days, but when I'm sat at home on the sick, in front of the TV, and no matter how hard I press the remote my senses are continually bombarded with cycling, sailing and all manner of prestigious yet entirely unwatchable events, it's pretty much inevitable. If you're not wilting at the sheer scale of this post already, I'll invite you to second guess this fact in advance - what do you think is the most dangerous sport in the world?

If you said crocodile goading, alpine aviation or the motorway 100m, you'd be wrong - it's the pole vault. This is generally due to the poles breaking and competitors being thrust to the asphalt below - like you couldn't have guessed that. I've always been slightly confused by pole vaulters, in so much as I don't understand how you find out you're good at it. Perhaps the great Sergey Bubka was once a painter/decorator back in Donetsk, fell backwards on his ladder in classic Frank Spencer style, and accidentally catapulted himself over an entire row of houses. Perhaps not. Of course, those flash fuckers over in China weren't the only ones bringing home the gold this week - hell no. I'm currently engaged in an epic Scrabulous clash, and am winning a best-of-5 contest 2-1, though frankly it should be all over by now. When you log in to Scrabulous (as I have done approximately 1000 times this week) it gives you a greeting in a random language. Imagine my surprise yesterday when I was greeted with the phrase 'Kia ora' - last heard describing a delicious brand of squash and immediately followed by the words 'oogy boogy boogy boogy' (in an ad that's a lot more racist than I remembered). Kia ora is in fact a traditional Maori greeting - it loosely translates as 'too orangey for crows'.

And so to tonight, 6 days on from the glory of Traffic Cops, and my new hero Usain Bolt has managed to break two world records in the time it took me to post one entry. Bet he's shit at Scrabulous though - no, actually, I imagine he's brilliant at that too. Tonight we watched a very odd 70s film called Lisa and the Devil, starring Telly 'Kojak' Savalas as Leandro, a butler who may or may not be the devil (hint: they superimposed a drawing of the devil over his face to show the incredible likeness). Telly Savalas is of course famous for a. being bald b. "who loves ya, baby?" and c. sucking on a lollipop (this is not a euphemism). Well, tonight I learned that Telly Savalas first sucked on a lollipop in Lisa and the Devil, as he was trying to give up smoking whilst making the film. Later the same year, and still struggling to stay off the tabs, Tel landed the plum role of Kojak, kept with the lollies, and a legend was born.

At Least You're Not A Lobster

<< Get in the pot, Grandpa

This summer, whether you've been schmoozing in a Cannes seafood eaterie, or sweltering on Blackpool beach amongst the sunburnt locals, lobsters may well have been on your mind. It's often a strain even for the most carnivorous amongst us to select a live lobster to be boiled alive for our delectation - it certainly weighs more heavily on the conscience than a munch on a Ginsters pasty. Today's fact may or may not make this gruesome task more palatable for you:

Lobsters can live to 100 years old - but their average lifespan is only 15 years.

On the one hand, you may feel that a century is a solid innings, and that at least Mr. Lobster isn't heading for a bisquey demise while still in their prime. On the other, if said crustacean has battled to over 6 times the average lifespan (imagine if some humans lived to be 500 - the Post Office queues don't bear thinking about) it seems churlish to end their mighty struggle because the salmon's off. Pity the poor lobster - contemplating their own mortality at 14 (possibly whilst listening to My Chemical Romance on miniature iPods), battling gamely on for another 85 years, only to be par-boiled and seasoned into an undignified grave. Our underwater friends truly are tragic figures - tragically delicious, that is.