The world according to Wig

Ok Ok Ok H, I know, I'm a pretty slack blogger and I apologise. Been watching too much Space Cadets. What the HELL is with that show? I reckon, as the Guardian said, that they are ALL actors and we are the ones being taken for a ride. Us and bloody Johnny Vaughan. That man has the facial expressions of a chimp.

Frank, thanks for your cannablog link although I'm a little unnerved at how you knew I would be interested in that, and whether or not you are aware of just how important this new and OUTRAGEOUS Dutch legislation is to me in the near future........ do I know you FRank? Well thanks anyway, I'm going to go email some of my fave coffee shops now in Dam and check the situation. THat article, and the others I've read on the subject, say the pilot scheme in January will be in Masstricht to stop the bloody Germans from being "weed tourists", need to check if the Amsterdammers are going to follow suit. Maybe I could con the paper into sending me over there to do an investigative piece on the situation... hmmm.... excellent idea....... Bloody Germans they ruin everything for everyone: wearing swastikas, smuggling drugs, sunbathing. Ask Prince Harry - he knows. Honestly, you can't even say something anti-semitic these days without getting harsh stares from your peers. I'm JOKING. Obviously.

Jim did you know that VJ DAVIM is whats called a spoonerism where you swap the accented consonants of a word round like in the sentence "she will leave the university by the town drain" which I think is supposed to be "down train" but that doesn't make much sense either....... anyway John Walsh, estimed Independent columnist great collleague and literary genius just told me that so it must be right. A spoonerism, one must note, must not be confused with a Malapropism which is named after a women callled Edna Malaprop who was in some show once (!) and who used to say cleverly daft things like "she was as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile" which I think is really really funny. ANyway I just like the word spoonerism and I think if you are to be VJ DAVIM the fact that you will also be a spoonerism is uncannily apt so I wanted to tell you that. Also it makes me sound clever.

NOw that I have answered the calls of my commentators - my audience, if you will - I will proceed to once again bore you with the events of the last few weeks:

1) went to see Ian Brown at the biggest gig he's ever played at the MEN arena in Manchester with best good friend and similar Roses fanatic Wilks and we both totally lost our voices and our minds at how great he was. AND, the paper ran my review of it! YOu can check it out here:

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/music/reviews/article333131.ece

How exciting! It really was a monumental gig.

2) went ice skating and possibly to the best place in the capital I've been yet - a wicked kick ass Karaoke bar in Soho where you rent a room for two hours, get given a radio mike, a full sound system and a touch screen computer with alphabetical access to about a squillion crooners aaaaaaaaand you're off! NOte to self though: next time Karaoke is on the menu DO NOT let Carla take her video camera as there are no two things more shameful than firstly, watching, sober, oneself do a genuinely heartfelt rendition of Take That's "It only takes a minute", and secondly, watching the footage of yourself shouting frustratedly at your friends when they dare to enter the song at a non-designated point (song in question: "The Time of my Life" from Dirty Dancing - O DEAR.)

3) spent much time considering just how fast this year has gone and just how much has happened, which is mind boggling, so I have to stop after a while and turn up the volume on Holby City, which, as many of my friends will attest, is the best legal version of crack cocaine for the dulling of the senses available anywhere. Ah come on Helen, you know it is.

4) interviewed chauvanistic swinging 60s photographer David Bailey (also in the paper, http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article333338.ece) who was less interesting than I would have liked, and a hell of a lot less intruiging than his book of photos of butt-naked people, including a guy with literally an entire ironmongers shop in his scrotum and face, is covered in really badly done tattoos of Marylin Monroe, whose name is Prince Albert "John" and who is listed as "retired". Retired from what, may I ask? The circus? The civil service? The primary education sector? Goodness only knows. In fact, not even Bailey knew because I asked him. I mean, what kind of person does not ask that question when there's a dude with a ballsack 20cms in circumference and full of metal stood naked in front of you? Only one who is distracted by the enormous camera-come-penis under his control I think. Yak. Most of rest of people are beautiful skinny models and book is called "Bailey's Democracy" which is living proof that that man has, for at least the last 40 years, lived in a way way more gorgeous country than most of us. Certainly those of us from Rochdale or Hull. Not a hooped gold earing in sight. Democracy. Tsk.

5) put up £9.99 Woolies fibre optic Xmas tree and its actually very sweet! So far we have, as a house, got two Xmas cards: one from Australia, which I think it mightily impressive, and one from some of Nic's friends which is sweet but the message reads: "hope you manage to have a good Christmas" which I thought was a rather strange way to impart Yuletide greetings since I would consider getting encrusted egg off a pan and carrying three weeks worth of shopping home through Brixton's busy streets in the category of 'manageable', rather than celebrating a global festival of compassion and humanity and buying loads of stuff. Just my thoughts, anyway.......

And, once again, I have gone on too long. Must try to keep these things more regular and shorter. Off to post similarly rambling, but MUCH shorter, comments on my audience's blogs and then back to work. Got to get Les Dennis for the page as my editor had an epiphany yesterday when I asked him what he thought about Neil Sedaka and he made the "our survey says EH EH" noise off Family Fortunes and then a light descended from the polystyrene ceiling and the order came forth for me to find Les Dennis, by God, and ask him some questions. And so I shall. Until then earthlings, nanoo nanoo. K8 ;)

A friggin lot is the answer to that! I really shouldn't use this space as a glorified diary coz it will just get SOOOOO DULL, more boring than it already even is. So I'll just list the things I've done - or, more accuratly, that I can remember I've done, since I last wrote:

1) interviewed Annie Lennox, obviously. She was cool, very focused but quite melancholy, passionate about music though which was nice. Even better, my editors loved it and ran the piece the same week, which almost never happens.

2) finished watching LOST. Bugger me its good. Am crap at keeping secrets so not saying any more. Watch it. WATCH IT.

3) booked a surprise thingymibob for my friend for his birthday which I can't actually write about in case he looks at this site, though I've already come close to blowing it loads of times and I doubt I'lll be able to hold off til Xmas, but Im trying....... I mention it here because it was a rather split decision, and I spent quite a while afterwards thinking "shit, I can't believe you just did that." Spontaneity is good for the soul. If not for the wallet.

4) ate millions and trillions of mince pies for my 10 Best MInce Pies thing I'm writing. Betty's from Yorkshire are DEFINITELY hands down by miles the best. My colleagues reckon its a northern bias. But then they're all southerners so they would.

5) taped up our cat-flap that only gets used by our drunk friends to stick their heads through and make silly noises and never actually by cats at all. This is important. I learned this was important after visiting a total-hippy-environment-guilt-riddling-type 'learning centre' in Hebden Bridge near my folk's place and reading that something stupid like 70% of your heating bill goes out of doors and unsealed, non-double glazed, windows. We have not got double-glazed windows, nor can we afford them. Our doors are shaped like parallelograms and require a generous amount of patience and wiggling to get them closed. We don't own a plane. So I thought I'd begin my heating conservation by taping up the cat flap, that was always happily flapping and never enticing any feline attention. I now laugh at the thought of a cat -or one of my drunk friends, for that matter - trying to get through the taped up flap to no avail. Haha. O how interesting my life is.

Perhaps not that much happens in 10 days at all........ Damn my over-excitement! But I did leave the best til last, which is that last Friday - November 25th - I went back up north to go to my boy's brilliant marvelous hiphop/live music clubnight and bloody Roots Manuva showed up!!! We had invited him, coz the twat always plays Manchester when we're across town trying to get people into our gig, so we made this point to his peeps and they concurred that sucked and said they'd try to get down. Not only did they get down AND DISCO they also did "Witness" and "Too Cold" and the new tune and bloody loads of other bloody amazing stuff and we all laughed/cried/shat ourselves and it was brill. So I guess thats why I think I've done loads of stuff because that night was like the culmination of a year's work and was just like, totally dude. I go all American at moments like this. Its annoying, but all I can think of to say is dude. Like, dude. I may have had a similar conversation with Rodney. O good. Ah well, thats only after he fell asleep in the chair in the back room! Bless.

So, if somebody doesn't have something to say about then you're all rubbish. And you have to be somebody other than Jima, who I love dearly, but who clearly has WAAAAY too much time on his hands and has probably spent literally half of the last three years on his Mac. If there was a slightly-less evolved version of the Borg, that would be JIm. But if there is a technical apocalypse, and the machines take over, he would be a front line soldier, which would be bad coz he's pretty lazy......

Argh! Editor. Must go search some crap about Donny Osmond for an interview I did months ago. Bloody deadlines. Laters aligators.

Interviewing Annie Lennox today - finally - hope she won't notice that I keep spazzing out in pain because I've pulled something by sleeping funny. Had a rough night because watched too many episodes of LOST on DVD before going to sleep and awoke, middle of the night, seriously thinking scary immortal John Locke was in my room and I was on some kind of mission for him to save everybody else on the island at the expense of ourselves. I've only got two episodes to go now - and they are called Exodus 1 and Exodus 2. I'm very very excited indeed. Love American pointless drama. And Dominic Monhagan. And that gorgeous dude from Bradford who plays Sahid. And Hurley. Dude.

Just came in to this email from my best good friend in Seattle - or, more accurately, Bremerton - and it made me laugh:

Ms. Wiggins-

Nice website. I'm fascinated by the fact that some of your relatives believe you of all people rise and shine before 1PM.

Love ya all the way to the sky,

Senator Silva.

Wise words spoken by somebody with vast experience of trying to get me out of bed during my university days. It's still no joke Angelina - ask my current housemates - they tip-toe in, put the brew down by my bed, tip-toe back to the door making sure all exit routes are clear, and then say, softly, "Wigs, its 2.30 in the afternoon, perhaps you should get up now...." before swiftly buggering off. A sensible approach that only sometimes works, depending on whether there is any smell of bacon eminating from the kitchen. Must dash - what shall I ask Annie? Questions in before 12 noon please.

Doctor says to patient: "I have some bad news about
the bird flu you have caught."

Patient: "Oh, not. What is it doc?"

Doc says: "It's unTweetable.

heh heh heh

like bloomin James Green who has posted an entire friggin PHd's worth of media analysis stuff up under my innane and brainless comments about market-sourced footwear, and my sister, who honestly thought I was even conscious at 7am, let alone eagerly typing away at this nonsense, are just silly! Jim - I may or may not read all that stuff, one day, but thanks for thinking of me anyway. ?!%! Ruthie, no I wasn't up at 7 am, there's something really wrong with the timing on this site - maybe its set to EST or something, I dunno, - but I assure you that of the many things this city is 'doing to me' encouraging me to get up early is not one of them. Ever. Rest assured.

But thanks for your thoughts. You mentalists. Hey Jim - I posted some rubbish on your site too to get you back - haha! You should get one ROot, then I can do the same for you.

all you gots to do is click the 'blog this' icon at the top of the page! Good little story tho Wilks, we are now well on our way to Carrie-esque stardom and all the Milonos (or whatever the bloody hell them shoes are) that we can store in our shared moth-eaten cupboard in Brixton with the broken vac. Hurrah! However, not sure how much I will actually enjoy breaking in said new Milonos as the boots I bought off Islington market for 20 squid on Saturday are already hurting my feet too much and threatening to break at the seems - why o why do I insist on always buying market shoes! I'll put a tenner on them lasting two weeks. Anyone want to take that bet? Wigs xxxxx

I hate to be all band-wagony but Holy Moly really is the shit - take a look!

www.holymoly.co.uk

So funny. Especially the bit about Jodie Marsh being just like a poo with lip gloss on.

I keep seeing that bird from Hollyoaks - the big ginger oafish one thats not in it any more - on the way to work in Canary Wharf every day and its freaking me out. She's like a big giant ginger mirage - I keep thinking its not really her but Im sure it is. Weird.

so I've decided to join the rest of all you happy bloggers in the hope that, like our balding yellow friend, I too will be able to charm the cyber community into thinking I know anything at all about, well, anything at all. Actually, I do usually know some stuff but today I am rather excrutiatingly hungover so my brain is doing that stuttering thing where even the simplest of tasks - like typing - become a struggle.And also my propensity to waffle on at length about rubbish is much more acute. So apologies, and here's what knowledge I can salvage from my booze-riddled brain this Friday evening:

1) that Hotpoint advert where the record spins round and it makes washing look really easy is CRAP and REALLY ANNOYING because quite clearly, the tribulations of washing are not to be found in pressing the bloody 'on'button but in sorting through the dirty stuff first and then finding somewhere to hang the clean stuff in your small, clothes horse-less house in Brixton. Anybody who falls for that advert is a fool. Like my housemate, who thought it was an advert for a washing machine with a record player in it.

2) putting toothpaste on spots makes you look stupid but really works - especially on the really greasy ones.

3) drinking copious amounts of champagne makes you very drunk.

4) Forders makes a cracking red thai duck curry.

5) Hannah Martin from Neighbours - the world's most irritating soap character, daughter of Julie, grandaughter of Helen the dinosaur Martin - works in a restaurant in Crouch End.(I have not yet established the credibility of this but fully intend to do so, if anyone out there can back up this claim, please let me know so I can go there and throw a massive paddy like she used to do every day, disturbing an otherwise peaceful tea time chez Wig)

There. Consider my wisdom officially imparted. I feel better. Marginally. Pint anyone?