In Praise of Charlie Brooker

Regular blog readers will know that I am an admirer of The Guardian and many of its writers. As an aspiring writer myself I am an avid reader of regular columnists in the hope that a little of their magic may, one day, rub off. As a big fan of X Factor I have to share with you Charlie Brooker's take on X Factor contestant Eggnog or Eoghan Quigg

"Tiny little eyes and a ruby-red mouth. He's like a cross between the Test Card clown and a crayon portrait of Jamie Oliver. Weird. Eerie. Like the spectral figure of an infant chimney sweep that suddenly appears in an upstairs window, gazing sadly at your back as you walk the grounds of a remote country mansion on a silent Christmas afternoon; alerted by an indefinable chill, you turn and, for the briefest moment, his wet, sorry eyes meet yours... and then he's gone.

That's Eoghan, the ghost of X Factor present. Even if he gets voted out, I'm frightened I'll still spot him intermittently in the dead of night, popping up on screen during old black-and-white films, pleading through the glass like a kitten in a microwave. Swear to God, if he's not gone by New Year's Eve I'm having my television exorcised by a priest."

I am longing for the day when I can write like that.

I am in work today even though we are officially on holiday. This spoiling of our break is the result of the almost £12,000 bounced cheque that we received on Friday morning. We went to St Andrews on Friday to visit our daughter Sarah but the bounced cheque was looming over us like a black cloud and, although we did our best to have a good time, it was hard to get it out of our minds. Consequently my blood pressure is now running at 168 over 104 and I have got an appointment with the doctor. I am sure that this is going to be a holiday to remember. The debtors still have a £2 million credit limit although I think this will be plummeting when the county court judgement that we just issued arrives in the public domain. One good thing is that we managed to recover 20 boilers that were on the way so we stand to lose about £18,000 in total and not an even bigger sum.

I managed to watch quite a lot of TV at the weekend as Sarah was poorly. I was delighted to see that Daniel was kicked off X Factor but mystified by the allure of John Sergeant to the Strictly Come Dancing Voters.



Yes it might have been a bit of a joke for a week but I thought it was quite sad to see Cheri Lunghi who had obviously made a huge effort competing in the competition and looking very glam for someone almost exactly the same age as me, go out to someone who has less dancing ability than Nellie the Elephant.



Finally there was IACGMOOH. Hope to have a couple of bets on this but can't bring myself round to watching people eating and abusing living creatures even if they are only grubs and rats.