Just when you thought it was safe to scratch your XXXX in public - I'm back! And what a notable time you've had whilst I've been away, haven't you?



I see Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett was named as Britain's most powerful woman, and the 29th most powerful woman in the world by the business magazine Forbes in its third annual list. Cherie Blair seems to have dropped right out of the running.

In a mouth to mouth contest Margaret was always expected to beat Cherie, wasn't she? Although Cherie may know how to lay down the law, Margaret is really the one who knows how to get her teeth into an argument, isn't she? And I'm betting she comes far cheaper too!

And during my absence Pop star Boy George has enjoyed cleaning the streets of Manhattan as his five-day community service punishment for wasting police time over there. I'm wondering: did he find an irony in every coke can he had to pick up?

George, who is reported as saying, "I think people didn't expect me to actually work, but that's what I came here for. And it's turned into a good experience," has also been attributed with telling us: ""The media has this image of me as this big faggot sitting on cushions all day eating grapes." - No! Really? Surely not? - and for also going on to say: "But I'm a real person - I have a Hoover, I don't have a cleaner. So the idea that I can't pick up a broom and shovel is ridiculous."

Well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see if Hoover bother to make anything out of that last statement. Not a cleaner, indeed! Poor George - he does seem to like putting a foot in his mouth, doesn't he? Whoops! There go those innuendos again! Never mind, we still loves you, darling!

Talking of things in mouths: what fell out of another person's mouth live on air is an entirely different matter. In a faux pas far greater than what any mention of the combined weights of the Weather Girls might produce, during an outside broadcast for ITV's Central News at Stoke's Trentham Gardens, Joanne Malin informed her television audience that it was "p***ing it down".

Apologising for her first serious gaffe in more than eight years, Joanne, who had meant to say: "tipping it down", is reported as saying, "To be on the safe side, next time it rains I am going to call it precipitation."

Careful now, sweetie pie! In your neck of the woods everybody understands exactly what "p***ing it down" means - start firing "precipitation" at them and they may think you're being rude!

Perhaps a precipitation was responsible for what recently washed up around the shores of Rhos on Sea and Shell Island - ambergris! Now, if you haven't met this before, it is quite simply: whale vomit - the puke of a mammal! And, as if to prove how stupid humankind can be, it has started a bit of a gold rush. Ambergris is used in the production of perfume. With this waxy substance secreted by the sperm whale fetching more than £10 a gram, a find can be worth as much as £2,000.

Never mind the thought of it, we splash it all over us to become attractive to (most often) the opposite sex. Oh, Yuk! Knowing this, perfumes and after-shaves will never be the same for some of us - we shall hereafter be looking out for the lumps. If I should see so much as one piece of a carrot . . . ! I have never completely gotten over discovering red food colouring, cochineal, is made from Mexican insects. Oh dear! I wonder how much human puke is worth? I seem to have found some!

There must be a fascination with animal excretions in Wales. Creative Paper Wales, a company in Snowdonia, has won a £20,000 Millennium Award for making greetings cards and gifts out of sheep droppings. As a sheep only digests 50% of what it eats, Welshmen are now running around the mountains with pooper scoopers collecting the animals' excrement. This is then sterilised in pressure cookers, washed, and the undigested fibres reclaimed. We're told the company's plant at Aberllefenni, near Machynlleth, will be able to produce one to two tonnes of paper a year - and that this will be used in a range of stationery and gift products.

What? Dearest, I love you so much I bought you some crap? No! Am I missing something here? They are actually washing sheep sh*t to reclaim some vegetable fibre? So why don't they just harvest some of the vegetation the sheep eat? It would grow back again; it's eco-friendly to do that. I guess sheep and the Welsh go back a long, long way. Ours is not to reason why . . .

And, if we're getting stereotypical, I guess I must mention how amused I was to notice the Irish Times reporting on the world mobile phone throwing championships in Savonlinna, Finland. The winner, of course, received a new phone. How apt!

Do you think humankind will ever see the twenty-second century? Or will we all be totally insane by then?

In an "Insanity rules - okay?" exercise, and as further proof that legal restraint is needed over our councils, Alan Joyce, from Poole in Dorset, was sent a fixed penalty notice telling him to pay a fine of £75.00 within 14 days or else face court action. His offence? A council officer had reason to believe he was "dripping his cigarette" whilst driving his car. In other words: a council officer thought he was littering the town by flicking his cigarette ash out of his car window.

We are talking a small amount of cigarette ash here - something which within seconds would require a team of forensic scientists to find it. More bird feathers and - let's face it again! - crap would litter those streets in a day than cigarette ash would in a month of Sundays! I have to ask: what about the thousands of people suffering from androgenetic alopecia - a common cause of hair loss - and of whom some must undoubtedly visit Poole every year? Are they forever to live in fear of being prosecuted should they choose to visit Poole? Do they need to wear a head covering in the town to avoid prosecution? Whilst cigarette ash will disappear within seconds, hair can survive intact for centuries! Poole council - get a life!

Another council battling it out to be known as the most stupid can be found in Bristol. Health and safety officials at Bristol City Council say mats outside doors could hamper escape routes and so they have sent each one of their 32,000 tenants a letter demanding that they remove any outside mats. They claim outside doormats pose a "tripping risk". I'm beginning to wonder who might be doing the tripping here!

There are few councils, and especially their Health and Safety Departments, that could ever be attributed with having an abundance of common sense. On leaving most buildings one would invariably have to step down onto any outside mat - a deliberate procedure and one not normally in accordance with tripping up. If one were prone to tripping up on a mat, it would more likely be within the home. So what next? No bath mats, rugs or unfitted floor coverings allowed inside people's homes?

And how are we supposed to view those red mats and runners thrown down for dignitaries outside our public buildings - places where by law nothing must be allowed to hamper a mass exit in an emergency? They must be equally as dangerous - perhaps even more so, as they often cover steps unsecured. Under this ruling, they too must be banned. So, should she in some moment of mad abandon decide on visiting Bristol, I don't envy any council official having to tell the Queen: "There's no red carpet for you, M'am. We consider you might be stupid enough to fall over it!"

Annus horribilis she has had. Anus horribilis could yet be to come - for like many, the Queen knows how to kick butt when she has to!

I suspect the cost of producing and posting those 32,000 letters would have been better spent on maintaining even footpaths in Bristol. People are likely to be tripping up and injuring themselves on uneven walkways on an almost daily basis, not just "perhaps" if there is an emergency! Like most towns and cities Bristol will have some serious issues that need addressing - a few outside doormats is not one of them, or something on which to fritter the local taxpayers' money.

Finally, I see a controversial new play about Princess Diana, and one in which the Queen is shown giving a Nazi salute, has opened in Germany and it has been a sell-out success. The German artist responsible, Christoph Schlingensief, is now planning to bring the play, Kaprow City, to the London Fart Fair - sorry, the London Frieze Art Fair - in October. We're told a film version is already being made, with the London filming being done in secret in case the British people should over react.

Princes William and Harry are said to be "distraught" at the thought of a new play being based around the tragic death of their mother, and I'm guessing the Queen being shown giving a Nazi salute won't go down too well with the royals either, or with many British people!

Don't let anyone ever try to tell me again that the 1975 Fawlty Towers episode, The Germans, is politically incorrect!

John Cleese, as Basil Fawlty after a knock on the head, takes the German guests' orders as: “two egg mayonnaise, a prawn Goebbels, a Hermann Goering and four Colditz salads."

Basil Fawlty: Is something wrong?

German Guest: Will you please stop talking about the war?

Basil Fawlty: Me? You started it.

German Guest: We did not!

Basil Fawlty: Yes, you did, you invaded Poland.

John Cleese, co-writer with fellow star Connie Booth, has always maintained this episode ridiculed a certain type of Briton’s refusal to forget the Second World War, and did not actually poke fun at the Germans - it was a generalisation. However I'm wondering what Christoph Schlingensief's efforts are all about when he tells us, "Diana is considered a saint in England and everyone turns into a nervous wreck as soon as you mention her name. I am very interested in what happened in the hour of her death, it fills me with artistic inspiration."

The film seems as if it will be so much more personal. I do hope Christoph's "artistic inspiration" doesn't translate into "artistic license" on such a delicate subject matter!

See you next week . . .

"The Bitch!" 15/09/06.