Speling Waz Neva My Strongist Poynt

As the girls in the office exhaustedly finished stuffing 2,000 Dealer Newsletters into envelopes, Jenny coyly asked me who had proof read it. Always a bad sign don't you think? Well, of course it was me who proof read it. Mya cuppa. Or should that be mea culpa? Having then been shown the glaring spelling mistake I gave the instruction to let it go and not to check for any more. (My proof reading skills are notoriously bad). A perfectionist might open 2,000 envelopes and redo the job but we are very green here at Instanta and there's quite a few trees worth of paper here.At least it will give the competitors something to tut about, "Did you see that spelling in the Instanta Dealer News?" Well, if they must know, it was there for a purpose - just to check that everyone reads it properly. Because whenever we do anything in print you can be sure that someone, somewhere (you know who you are M) will be on the phone to point out what we did wrong. Spelling apart it is an excellent newsletter, read it and you will find out how to take advantage of some special offers in June.



Just as I am reading about madman Kim Jong Il's latest nuclear bomb test, another madman Nick Griffin appears on TV in a political broadcast. The BNP broadcast ended with the slogan "Punish The Pigs" which implied that by voting BNP you would be getting one over on those wicked MPs. I think "Cut Off Your Nose" would have been more appropriate Nick as a vote for your dark politics would certainly be spiting our faces. Back with Kim Jong Il, what worries me is that if you dig a very deep hole and drop a nuclear bomb down it that produces a reading like an earthquake on the Richter Scale, isn't there some risk of killing us all? Just imagine. The bomb goes off at a particular weak spot on the earth's crust and it's curtains. Goodnight Vienna.



I said yesterday that "Britain's Got Talent" was ideal betting material and, once again last night, the final two were dead certs although I did expect it to be the other way around thinking that Stavros Flatly (above) would get through on the judges' rather than the public vote. There is certainly something appealing about the flabby duo but I'm not sure that I'd call it talent. I admire Simon Cowell who usually has the knack of getting his comments exactly right and does not shy from the truth. But , for once, I felt that he over stepped the mark with his criticism of the teenage dance duo Ben & Vicky Milan-Vega which, though truthful, was needlessly cruel and reduced the dedicated 16 year old Vicky to tears on the biggest night of her life. OK so truth hurts but is it always necessary? The couple were never going to win but had spent most of their lives practicing and deserved better. I suspect Simon regretted his remarks almost immediately.



Truly back in the old routine tonight with Orange Wednesday and "Drag Me To Hell" which will be like deja vu for Marion having joined me on the Kop for Liverpool's last home game of the season. How did the Hyypia mosaic look? Being part of it we never get the chance to see the effect. We simply turn up and hold aloft the coloured square of paper that's been left on our seats. It would be the perfect opportunity for sabotage. If the message read "We're All Gay" or We Love Sir Alex" we'd be none the wiser. Which reminds me that there is a football match on tonight. Better go to the early showing of "Drag Me To Hell" so I can get home in time to watch....... "The Apprentice". Seriously I wish United' apprentices well in their attempts to catch up with the masters Liverpool's five wins.



I see that Red Bull has been pulled from the shelves in Germany after inspectors found traces of coke in it. Was it Diet , Zero , Cherry or Classic?. I think we should know. I can see this giving all the drug test failing athletes an escape. Bath Rugby star Mat Stevens should lodge an appeal immediately. It was the Red Bull. Honest!



Two lots of charts arrived on my desk this morning. The first from the CBI shows little to enthuse about with the only glimmer of green shoots in the expectations of manufacturers who expect the fall in output to be slower. That's hardly a green shoot, more a seed. The second set of figures were from CESA. These are an industrial trends survey of how the catering industry as a whole is faring and I have to say that our figures are bucking the trend which is showing a pretty hefty downturn for the last three quarters whilst ours remains marginally up. The result? We have increased our (admittedly tiny) share of the catering equipment market by over 60%.

I'll close today with Simon Cowell getting his just deserts.