It's a Funny Old Week

A bad week for Blue Peter, with the news that the long running show - once essential family viewing - is being relegated from BBC1 to a digital channel, along with all other children's programmes.

While a majority of about 55% of respondents accepted, "Yes - there's nothing wrong with popping kids' shows on a children's channel," some 45% still felt, "No - Blue Peter is an iconic programme that deserves to be on a major channel."

"It is not being axed," said a spokesman. "It is being moved to CBBC where it already premiers. The version on BBC One is a repeat. Or as they say - "one I prepared earlier"!

There's some strange stuff in the USA! Texans who feel the need to vent their rage are being invited to take it out on specially designed "anger rooms". For $25, they can spend 5 minutes tearing apart a room furnished with old TV sets, sofas, and other furniture otherwise destined for landfill. For legal reasons, only one angry person is allowed in each room at a time, and pregnant women are banned.

I've been reading some wonderful competition pieces in the New Statesmen where readers have to write in with something appropriate to the theme, and try to win first prize. The competition is set by Leonora Casement.

One was to come up with Clerihews, the short whimsical, four-line biographical poem invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley [1875-1956], one of G.K. Chesterton's friends. Probably the best known of Bentley's is:

Sir Christopher Wren
Said, "I am going to dine with some men.
If anyone calls
Say I am designing St. Paul's."

One readers of the New Statesman came up with:

Vladimir Putin
Enjoys putting the boot in,
A habitual caprice
Of the secret police.

and another

Nick Clegg
Recalled the words curate and egg.
When asked how his manifesto promises could be credible
He replied: "Parts of them are edible!"

Meanwhile, limerick's brought forth the following gems:

From the farm they banished the people.
"Hurrah!" cried the beasts. "We're all equal!"
But superior plotters
With trotters, the rotters,
Took over.
The End. (There's no sequel.)

and

While waiting for Godot, two bums
Play word games and twiddle their thumbs;
It's doubtless symbolic
And dead allegoric
That Godot, alas, never comes.

And finally, there was one competition to come up with new illnesses, which had these wonderful ones:

Amazon compulsive disorder--the inability to stop buying books, DVDs and US pharmaceutical goods online. Begins with wishful thinking and leads, if untreated, to severe conditions such as listmania. In extreme conditions, sufferers can end up a basket case. Cure: postal strike.

Organic chicken pox--like the Black Death, but with a conscience. Cure: The arrest and incarceration of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

Lib-dementia--amnesia triggered by sudden unexpected exposure to chauffeured limos, fawning officials and photo ops with once-despised opponents. Deeply held principles are erased from memory. Cure: regular doses of Vince's emulsion, but don't discard the bottle before treatment is complete.

Summer affective disorder--increasingly prevalent in Britain, it's a depressive state caused by irrational belief that summer must involve sunshine.