THE OBESE

The obesity problem is mostly down to boredom, I think. People like to snack when they're bored. It whiles away the hours. Pacman's life is proof of this.

Pacman is living in a maze, he's got nothing to do with himself, nowhere to go, Ms Pacman is rarely coming over. All he really wants to do is eat. Mostly, for Pacman, it's snack food, too. It's those little Ritz crackers that are forming the majority of his diet. Sometimes he takes the healthy option and has a piece of fruit, but I'm not sure if that balances up with the eating of ghosts. In fact, I'm no nutritionist but I'm not sure that anything really makes up for a diet of spectres. Still, for Pacman there's not much incentive to eat healthily. He's not getting out of that maze anytime soon, is he? Even if he uses that gate, he just ends up in the same maze way over on the other side.

And I think that's the lesson that Pacman teaches us. If you lived in a closed maze with no way out, ultimately you'd end up eating junk food and ghosts.

THE VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR

Who are the pop stars trying to kid when they have these videos where they're serving in a diner or working as a garage mechanic or whatever? We all know you're playing in a band. You may be able to fix the exhaust on a Harley Davison, who cares? We're interested because you followed the musical career path.

My dentist isn't playing guitar as he readies the amalgam is he?

THE MAIN POINTS AGAIN

The latest trend in news services is to place increasing emphasis on the human interest story, we're told. Human interest is where the big bucks are, that is, apparently, what the audience wants. This is all considered a pretty new phenomenon.

What were the news people doing before the human interest edict? Surely, "human interest" is all news is? I don't recall any non-human interest stories among the six o'clock headlines. You know - "Cats discover new flavour of mouse", "Chimpanzees not worrying about inventing the combustion engine overmuch", "Bees come up with new dance called the buzz-tuzi", that sort of thing. It seems to me that the whole news agenda has been held together by the simple tenet of "human interest" throughout its life. In fact, the media as a whole is really all about the human interest. There just aren't that many dogs buying newspapers and plasma screen television sets.

If you're a reporter investigating a lot of stories that are of no human interest then, I'm sorry to break it to you, buddy, that ain't news. What you're working on there is the Ten O'clock Stuff.

THE PERCEPTION OF CRIME

It comes as little surprise that the hooded top is now associated with deviant behaviour. The only real surprise is how long it took for this link to be firmly established in people's minds.

Don't get me wrong, I personally like to see the hood on an item of clothing, it adds a certain cosiness to the garment in a way that nothing else can. But, historically, hoods are not the domain of the law-abiding citizen.

Rasputin is commonly portrayed as wearing a hood, and there was a movie about him entitled "The Mad Monk". Not "The Sane, Law-abiding Monk". That film was about a different guy. Rasputin was, among other things, manipulative and very nearly unkillable. I think the Russians tried to kill him in about a dozen different ways before they finally succeeded; you know, poisoning him, shooting him, drowning him. The anti-social behaviour order was not, to the best of my knowledge, tried on the mad monk, but I doubt it would have made much difference.

THE KIPPER CONUNDRUM

What is with the first class/second class distinction in the postal service? How can the second class post be slower?

Do they have, like, 1,000 speedy vans taking the first class post all over the country and then there's a fleet of tired donkeys for the second class stuff? Is this how it works? Because, if I'm sending a letter to the other side of town, they'd have to go out of their way to actually make the second class letter arrive a day later. Come on, guys - the speedy van's going there anyway, my letter weighs 30 grams. Just put it in with all the others. Why are you using the donkey? Don’t use the donkey, come on. He's not eaten, his straw hat has a hole in it - let the guy rest, use the speedy van. It's not so urgent that I'm choosing first class, okay, but I still took the time to write the letter. Doesn't that tell you something? If it was unimportant I wouldn't have bothered. Really, they were repeating Columbo on TV - my writing a letter could easily have been skipped in favour of that.

The names they give these services aren't very well thought out anyway. I mean, first class? That's the class where you meet your fellow students, get introduced to the teacher, you leave with a copy of the syllabus and a reading list. It's the second class where you start actually learning stuff. Second class is where the value is, people. First class, that's just finding the room and getting a seat - what kind of perverted world are you living in where you think that that is superior to the second class?

This is the reason I don't use Special Delivery. We had special classes in my school - they weren't significantly faster than the other classes, let me assure you. In fact, they were quite a ways behind the other classes, if I'm honest. If you're using Special Delivery there's a good likelihood that just figuring out how to get the stamps to stay on the envelope is taking up most of your morning.

THE WINTER OLYMPICS

What kind of a name is Luge for a sport? Really? Who's naming these sports? Luge sounds like something you'd need ointment for. "I've had a nasty case of luge lately."

And yet I don't think there's an event in the Winter Olympics called Tray Sledding. That's the kind of sport you try when it snows. In fact, I think that's pretty much all the luge is. The competitors are going round an ice-covered track at 200 miles an hour sitting on a plastic tea tray.

I think I'd have a lot more respect for the Winter Olympics if they renamed the whole thing as the Wintry Olympics. It just sounds more festive. If the competitors dressed up as Victorian children, that would really add something. The Wintry Olympics full of people in Victorian dress rushing around in the show - that's what I call a sports event.

MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY

For most people, their first experience with controlling a motorised vehicle is the bumper car. Up to then it's all scooters and push bikes, but as soon as you get an engine behind you, you're instructed to aim your car full throttle at the other vehicles around you. Welcome to the dizzying scientific world of nature versus nurture, my friends.

Here we all are, being programmed from a very young age to drive like maniacs, knock everyone else out of the way and keep moving until we run out of fuel. You have to wonder if this doesn't help explain why there are so many car crashes on our roads.

I'm not sure of my facts here, but I wouldn't be surprised if the insurance companies have major shares in the funfairs.

THE ANNA-LANA-FONTANA

I like the Valentine's card, always have. It's the one time of the year where you can say whatever you want and you don't have to put your name to it. In fact, it's actively encouraged that you not sign your name; that is the preferred option.

It's like being a witness at a Mob trial. You're on the video link, they've disguised your voice, you're only seen in silhouette. Whether they get a conviction or not, you're out of the woods, you're Scot free. Nobody can trace anything back to you.

Basically, Valentine's cards are a huge witness protection program run by Hallmark.

Of course, sometimes the whole thing backfires, someone snitches on you and suddenly your Valentine's father is chasing after you with a shotgun. I guess it's true what they say - nobody messes with the family.

THE OPPOSITE END OF THE SPECTRUM

Is there a hierarchy within the highlighter colours or is this just me?

I'm a big admirer of the yellow highlighter pen, can't get enough of his work - he highlights a passage and I'm reading it, I tell you. I scan the page, see the yellow highlighter's work and I know there's stuff there that's worth knowing. If you got all the knowledge in the world in one big vault, yellow highlighter could cut that down to the important, bite-sized chunks in less than a minute.

"Einstein's work? Sure, I can give you the relative information on that."

"Opera, yeah, fat chicks singing - got it?"

With yellow highlighter, you can know enough about every subject to hold your own in any conversation.

By contrast, what is the blue highlighter supposed to be? He marks up a page, it's gloomy. It's like reading crib notes in the cellar with this guy. Why is he even a highlighter? Sometimes, that blue ink is so dark you have to hold the page under a spotlight just to make out the point he's trying to draw your attention to. He's like an anti-highlighter. If I never want to read a passage again, I'm using blue all over it. It's like getting the most important information you'll ever need but being told it with a thick foreign accent. You're trying to deliver a baby in the cockpit while the plane's heading over the Amazon on its one remaining jet and blue highlighter's there going "Virst yuh needa boilen water." You're, like, "What? What is he saying? I can’t make him out. Pleeeeeease help!"

The pink, the orange - they're much of a muchness. They don't really worry anyone too much. They're not yellow. He's our guy. Yellow can be trusted. But orange will do in a pinch, pink can take the page and make it look attractive. They're substitutes to our guy, the yellow, the captain of the team. If he's on the bench with a tip injury, pink or orange can step in, no big deal.

But blue and yellow - these are the yin and the yang of highlighter pens. The great highlighter war will be fought between these two guys.

THE PUT DOWN

Is it really necessary for Superman to say "Up, up and away" when he's taking off? He flies, I get it. But do we really need the two "ups" there? The first "up" - sure, he's taking off, up is the direction. In some ways it's like using the indicators on a car. If you're passing via a catwalk or a cliff top, that initial "up" lets you know to put on the brakes, take a bit more care, keep your eyes open because Superman is changing lanes.

But with the second "up" Superman is really just making a performance of the whole thing there. Isn't he just rubbing it in for we non-kryptonians? You know, the normal people who can't fly. Hasn't Superman made his point with just one "up"? Wouldn't "Up and away" cover him for most eventualities?

To me, it's like Superman is really saying...

Up "You can't fly? Me - oh, surrrrre, I can fly. I can go up..."

up and away "... and then I can do some more up, before finally heading for away. You can't even do up, huh? Boy, sucks to be you, huh?"

If I ever bump into Superman I'm heading in the opposite direction. They'll be some "Walk, walk and away" going on that day, my friend.

THE HORROR SHOW

Have you noticed how well dressed the movie maniacs are?

Dracula turns up at your house, he's got the puffy shirt, the formal jacket, his shoes have clearly been polished before he left the castle - he's very debonair. Frankenstein's Monster has the dark jacket and matching trousers. He's eight feet tall, ugly as sin, and yet he's gone to a lot of effort to buy a nice suit that fits well across the shoulders. Sure, his hands don't match each other, but so long as the jacket matches the trousers he can pull off that look.

The rest of the world could be going to Hell in a hand basket - and, in these films, it frequently is - these monsters would still be dressed to the nines. Even the brain-eating zombies are wearing suits and ties, despite them often being covered in the blood of the family pet they just chowed down on. They're all making a genuine effort with their appearance here.

Then you look at the typical victim in these films, it's some girl wearing a negligee that's too tight, she's got heavy make-up on to sleep in. Dracula appears at her door with his hair slicked down with brylcreme and he's wearing the cape he just got back from the dry-cleaners and his date thinks that this is an appropriate way for her to dress?! It's no wonder he getting so angry with these women.

Even the modern monsters are trying their darnedest. Freddy Krueger may be a psychopathic child killer, he still wears a hat when he's on the street. You just can't beat old-fashioned values like that.

THE INNOCENT MAN

I figure the only thing worse than going to prison for a crime you didn't commit is going to prison when there wasn't even a crime to begin with. What about the maintenance guys, the prison plumbers, the cleaners - what's their incentive not to commit crime? They're spending eight hours a day in prison anyway. And they're actually in prison cleaning up the mess made by the other prisoners - they have it worse than the convicts.

Did you ever think about how they get the glass in the visiting room clean? You know, there's the pane of glass that separates the felon from their loved one - there's a lot of hands-touching-the-same-spot action in legal dramas featuring scenes in this room. Is it one guy that cleans those fingerprints off or do the cleaners work in crews? I like to think there are two of them, working opposite sides. Now and then their squeegees meet, it's kind of bittersweet.

If a prison cleaner doesn't want to go to work, can they get one of those electronic tags? That way they can clean their home, just so long as they phone in every four hours. If they miss one of those calls - that's it, straight back to cleaning the blood from the communal showers.

THE PARENTAL LOVE

In today's news, diabetic six year old Rupert Knell was asked to withdraw from Sunninghill Preparatory School in Dorchester after staff felt they couldn't take care of his condition without additional help. Rupert's parents, Peter and Kai proceeded to sue the school claiming it has breached the Disability Discrimination Act.

Now, I've got to hand it to Rupert - those are some tough parents you've got there. I mean, diabetes, left untreated, can leave a person chronically tired, blind or, in the worst cases, dead. Really, at six years old, you'd probably appreciate someone keeping an eye on you. But not Rupert's parents. "The Hell with the boy's safety," they've said, "he's going to the school and that's that."

What is Christmas like in the Knell household?

"Gee, Dad - you got me a fish tank full of fish."

"Not just any fish, son - those are man-eating piranhas. They can strip a cow down to the bones in three minutes flat."

"Kewl! How do I feed them, Dad?

"With your hands, son."

"Blu-blu-blu... You said they were man-eating..."

"Just put your hand in the tank, Rupert. We paid for them, damnit. They don't eat you if you paid for them. That's how the system works."