Jukebox jury

I've just finished watching the final part of the excellent "Story of Musicals" on BBC Four. A three-part documentary, it charted the rise of British musical theatre from its revival in the 1960s with "Oliver!", through the mega-hits from Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh in the 70s, 80s and early 90s, though to the latest hit shows. And popping up very near the end was the "jukebox musical".

The idea of a jukebox musical is very simple: take a selection of existing music, usually tied together with a theme (songs by the same artist/composer, or of the same genre) and fit a plot around them. Traditionally, this would involve the story of the life of the performer/composer in question ("Buddy - The Buddy Holly Story" springs instantly to mind) with their songs incorporated, but all this changed in 1999.

That year brought us the jukebox musical that changed it all - "Mamma Mia!". And it's a musical that I flatly refuse to ever watch. Or even consider to be a "musical" at all. But there was a problem with this opinion of mine; I didn't really know why I held it!

However, after watching the BBC's documentary, I think I now know why - and there are two reasons.

Firstly, the sheer pointlessness of them. The whole idea of a jukebox musical is that you have a pre-existing audience for the show; in the case of "Mamma Mia!", the huge fan base for ABBA's music. "We Will Rock You" followed a couple of years later and, of course, used the popularity of Queen's back catalogue to get bums on seats.

In the documentary, Ben Elton (writer of the book for "We Will Rock You") suggested that it was perfectly logical to take an artist's work and turn it into a musical because people enjoy the music and want to go to a theatre and see it performed live by a high-quality cast. Now, I completely agree with this, and if anyone ever dragged me to see "Mamma Mia!" or "We Will Rock You" I would only entertain the notion because I enjoy the music of ABBA and Queen. But if people are going to see these shows because they enjoy the music, what the heck is the point of thinking up a crummy plot to link them all together?! Why not just get a group of fantastic singers and dancers and simply perform the music as a concert? The effect would be the same.

But as a musician, the main reason I can't connect with these jukebox musicals is not that I don't see the point. It's all about emotion.

When I see "Les Miserablés", and hear Eponine and Marius singing "A Little Fall Of Rain", I am reduced to a soggy, tearful wreck every time. It is, in my very humble opinion, one of the most emotive pieces of music ever written for a musical, and its setting and the back story behind the relationship (or lack thereof) between the characters singing it make it such a powerful piece of music.

Both ABBA and Queen have a piece of music in their repertoire that could perhaps come somewhere near to this level of emotion: "The Winner Takes It All" and "The Show Must Go On" respectively. But I can't emotionally link them to a contrived storyline in a musical because I know that the setting is not what the pieces were originally written for. The emotion is being forced onto the song, rather that being what you experience as a result of how the song was written. "A Little Fall Of Rain" works so well because it was written to underpin the emotive force of the scene in which it appears; it is perfect for the job because it was written for the job.

The current trend in the West End and on Broadway seems to be creating musicals from the plots of popular films. Indeed, I recently saw "Legally Blonde The Musical" at the Alex theatre in Birmingham - and it was great fun. Because, as with "traditional" musicals, the songs within it were written specifically for it. In that respect, it is no different to creating a musical version of a Victor Hugo novel, or the life story of Eva Peron.

Musicals work when the songs work because they are serving the purpose that they were originally written to do, rather than when you stick a greatest hits album on "shuffle" and see what comes out.

Licence to Drivel

Another post, another Farcebook-related rant. Ho hum, you may think.

But this time, the target of my ire is a Farcebook cause entitled "lets get the uk tv licence abolished", and it has annoyed me more than I thought possible. The reason for this is simple - every single person who has posted support to the thread is a complete imbecile. It would take 12 of them to make a halfwit.

Let's take some of the choicest recent comments, shall we?

Ian Morrell writes: "So people like jonathan ross can earn millions to talk utter garbage the BBC are a disgrace"

Jonathan Ross is no longer employed by the BBC. And you're clearly a Daily Wail reader, so you can piss right off anyway.

Alex Glover says: "the price we pay is only for bbc 1 an bbc2, all the ova channels dont cost."

Erm, no. The price you pay is for BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, BBC4, BBC Parliament, BBC News, CBBC, CBeebies, all of the BBC national and local radio stations and all of the content on the BBC website. It also covers the cost of producing content for BBC HD.

Karen Walker (and others) dribbles: "as i am paying to watch tv to sky.. its like i am paying twice!!"

Don't be a tool. Not a penny of the money you pay to Sky (or Virgin, or BT) goes to the BBC. You can receive all of the BBC's channels/radio stations without subscribing to a TV service.

Sarah Page stops scraping her knuckles along the floor for long enough to bash out: "y the fuck do u need to pay to watch 5 channels"

You. Are. An. Idiot. The TV Licence does not pay for the terrestrial TV channels. ITV, Channel 4 and Five are independent (the clue is in the 'I' in 'ITV') and raise their money from advertisements.

Ray Batchelor uses a crayon to scrawl: "i had a count for ch 1,2,3,4,5, and just for one day on 5 chs there were 65 repeats"

Well, you've just wasted your day then, because that fact has absolutely nothing to do with the cost of a TV Licence for the reasons I've just given.

Katiiee Danielle Claire Breen has more vowels in her name than she has IQ, and proves it by hammering at her computer keyboard with her fists until this comes out: "no offence but blind people cant see the tv yet they dont have to pay 4 one and ok i know they can hear it but it still aint the same so wat is good for one is good for us all!!"

I'm sorry, I don't speak chav. Can I just ask, what the fuck are you trying to say?!

Finally, Andy Cornish uses real words and real grammar to write: "its a bbc licence and bbc aint that good anyway, try advertising to your revenue, it works for itv."

That would be the ITV that has been on the verge of bankruptcy for the last two-and-a-half years, and that only makes one good TV programme every 12 months, would it? Yes, I can see how the BBC would want to aspire to that...

...'cause if the BBC went bust, I'd have to resort to reading the rubbish posted on the Interweb by deluded halfwits for my entertainment.

H2OFFS

Vibration hydration.

You've never heard of it, because the marketing department of H2Om water has just made it up. Welcome to the painful world of pseudo-science, or "bollocks" if you prefer.

You see, H2Om is not normal spring water. (Actually, that's exactly what it is. But let's not let facts get in the way at this early stage.) It has "vibration energy" in it. Yes, in it. Have they vibrated the water, I hear you ask. Well, obviously not. Shaking water to get it to vibrate would be far too, erm, logical. No, at H2Om they have better ways.

First of all, they ensure that the bottle labels have the correct vibrational energy. Yes, that's right - the labels. With writing on them and stuff. Special writing, in lots of different languages. And in the correct colour. So it can "vibrate" somehow. And do something. Perhaps.

Then, you have to "think while you drink it". Because most of us completely switch our brains off when drinking water, you know. It's a little known fact that if you drink normal water for more than a minute non-stop, you will pass out because you forget to breathe.

Finally, once they've bottled the water, they play music to it. Sound waves vibrate, you see. Not enough to pass through the plastic bottle and have any effect whatsoever on the contents, of course, but it's the thought that counts. Or rather the lack of thought but the ability to produce marketing blurb based on it. They use "ancient healing scales" to do this. Better that then sticking them near a piano whilst someone practices their grade 3 on it.

Their website says:

we know some people, and politicians, may be skeptical, however we believe that if water is effected by these types of vibrations, then as a bonus, let's provide the water with the purest form of vibration possible

"...And politicians". Because they're not people, and we specifically need to point them out! The swine! And forgive me if I'm wrong, but surely the purest form of vibration is, well, to just vibrate the effing water!

Finally, we come to the names of the waters. Yes, despite every bottle containing exactly the same water as the next bottle, they name each bottle depending on the way they've pretended to vibrate it. So you get such exciting things as Gratitude, Joy, Prosperity, Peace and Love. Yes, "Love water" - who'd not want to drink that?

Sounds suspiciously like a load of wank to me.

Medal-ing with history

Can journalists no longer add up? Could they ever, I hear you ask.

The thought arises after reading this article on Sky News today (click the link while you can - News International want to start charging you for accessing their news online, in what is known as "Operation Send Everyone To The BBC News Website Instead").

The gist of it is that a bloke called Roger Day turned up to the remembrance day ceremony in Bedworth with 17 medals that "military experts" claim it would be impossible to have earned.

Not so, insists Mr Day - who, we are helpfully informed, is 61 years old - they were all earned fair and square.

The most recent medal is from the first Gulf War, at which point he would have been about 40 years old, so no problems there. But the earliest medal was from World War II. Now, even I can perform the sum 2009 minus 61, and discover that Mr Day was born three years after the second world war ended! In fact, he wouldn't have been able to enter military service until 1966.

It's okay though, because Mr Day has the backing of the local vicar. "There are pictures of him in the Armed Forces in his home," he says. Well, that proves it then - he clearly was serving in the army three years before he was born.

After all, you can't fake a photograph...

Computer games in "letting you do stuff you can't normally" shock

I should see about getting some funding for a study. It seems that you can do one on any old crap and someone will pay you for it.

Recently, two Swiss human rights organisations (Trial and Pro Juventute, if you're interested - and yes, they're both charities) have commissioned a study in which they played a load of war games on various consoles. Sounds like piss-easy work to me, but what was truly groundbreaking was their conclusion after this difficult research:

"Certain scenes and acts committed by players would constitute violations of international law if they were real, rather than virtual."

Games let you do stuff that you can't in real life - because it's illegal? Really?! Well bugger me, I had no idea. I was labouring under the impression that not only was it possible to go into outer space and rescue Princess Leia from an asthmatic bloke in a black mask, it was also possible to do so by becoming entirely made of Lego.

Apparently, that's "not possible in real life". I'm truly shocked - and heaven knows how my poor friend Sackboy will take it. He's probably about to find out he's not real either.

Seriously, isn't this the point of computer games? I mean, let's take a look at the child-friendly things you can do in the Grand Theft Auto series:

• hire a prostitute, take her somewhere secluded in your car, engage in a sex act, then blow her brains out with a shotgun and get your money back
• steal a fully-laden school bus and drive it full pelt into the front of a police station
• climb to the top of a high building and take pot shots at passers-by with a sniper rifle
• steal a bike by kneecapping its owner as he rides past you, then use it to chase an ambulance whilst seeing how many paramedics you can shoot without dismounting
• buy a nice outfit from one of the upmarket boutiques

Now, we're all well aware that none of the above (well, most of it) is far from legal. But in a computer game, that fair enough. It's escapism - and as far as GTA is concerned, there's a cartoon-y feel to it that somehow removes most of the horror of what you're being asked to do. Think of it as an interactive movie and it makes more sense. I mean, there was some damn gruesome stuff in "Seven", but that still got released.

However, our friends in Switzerland think that games should only allow you to do stuff that you can do in real life. So, get ready for their first fully-approved releases, coming to XBox360, PS3 and Amstrad CPC664 this Christmas:

• SimDusting
• Pro Evolution Tax Return
• Call Of Nature
• Tom Clancy's Doorbell Needs Cell AA
  
• Extreme Bed Maker

It's almost as if they think we can't tell what's real and what's a game any more. And I know that PacMan would agree with me.

It starts at the top, but comes out of the bottom

Many people complain that they have been crapped on by their boss. But they put up with this because their boss is also the person who pays them. Which is fair enough.

How should you respond when you're shat upon by your boss when you're a charity volunteer? That is something I didn't think I'd ever need to contemplate. Surely volunteers are utterly vital to the work of all charities, and when you have a regular group of excellent, hard-working and reliable volunteers, shouldn't you go out of your way to keep them on-board and happy - especially if you're a health charity and some of those volunteers are doctors and nurses?

Soundly pissing them all off via your self-righteous blog is probably not a good idea.

Today, it's a post that confuses "GP" - a doctor trained as a General Practitioner - with "GP practice" - the place where they work, all of the staff within it and all of the services it provides.

If I were to tell you that every GP will get £10.50 for each swine flu jab they give, you would be rightly outraged. If, as is correct, I were to tell you that each GP practice was to be given £10.50 funding for each swine flu vaccination it provides (and the each vaccination consists of two jabs), and that this amount covered all of the administration costs, follow-ups in case of side effects, and actually buying the vaccine in the first place, you'd probably think it was a bit of a bargain.

By taking the completely incorrect first interpretation of this story, quite literally making some other stuff up, and then posting it in his usual "this is gospel" style in his blog, our favourite charity boss has today marked himself out as a Daily Mail-style bullshit peddler of the highest order. He's also massively annoyed his lead volunteer health professional - the person responsible for planning all of the medical training that the charities' team of children's educational holiday volunteers receive. Nice work!

But those volunteers - and especially those at the Edinburgh holiday this year - would expect nothing less. Mr Boss himself volunteered on the Edinburgh holiday, and whist he was there he provided a daily blog so that people could find out what being a volunteer entailed.

So far, so good - it sounds like an excellent plan. Well, here are some snippets from those blog posts:

"We have some excellent volunteer healthcare professionals who will help them keep safe as they enjoy the holiday."

"The fact that asthma nurses are on hand also encourages children otherwise reluctant to try something new."

"The fact we have so many volunteer healthcare professionals here gives real peace of mind."

What's wrong with that, I hear you ask? Well, what about all of the volunteers who aren't health professionals? Don't they deserve a mention? After all, they outnumber the health professional volunteers by a ratio of just over 4:1. It's also worth pointing out that only a small minority of the health professional volunteers are asthma nurses - most are nurses or hospital doctors, although there are some asthma nurses, the odd paramedic and a GP.

But, as shown today, there's no need to let a little thing like facts get in the way of a good soundbite.

Sometimes, I genuinely wonder why we bother.

The Sky is limited

Pop quiz: you need to solve a problem with your Sky TV service. Do you:

a) Call the helpline telephone number that appeared along with the error message on your Sky box

or

b) Google the fault, and solve it yourself with the aid of the first three results it finds?

I, being in a really silly mood, decided to try option "a" - and that's why I'm blogging today.

To all companies that provide "helplines": if no-one on the other end of the phone has even the slightest ability to "help" me, you're on the verge of being reported for false advertising.

Why was I calling Sky in the first place? It's all John Barrowman's fault.

The dates for series three of Torchwood have been announced. The entire series is being stripped across a week of BBC1's schedule - and it's the second week of our Italy holiday next month. The Sky+ planner only lets you programme recordings up to seven days in advance. Seven days before the series starts, we'll also be in Italy. Bugger.

No problem, all I need to do is set my set-top box up to use the "remote recording" application that I have on my mobile phone. Previously this was done by logging into Sky's website, but now it needs to be done using the Sky Active service on my set-top box.

And here was the problem; the set-top box was refusing to connect to Sky Active through the phone line. I was getting the wonderfully-ambiguous "error 106", and given an 0844-number to call for help.

If I'd just dialled "123" and listened to the speaking clock for half an hour, I'd have received just as much assistance.

After giving my details and explaining my problem, the Sky person said that an error 106 means the problem is with the connection between my Sky box and the phone line. Did I have a message waiting on 1571? No. Oh.

Well, maybe I have outgoing number witholding turned on. No, I don't - when I call my mobile, my number comes through. I ask the Sky person if their system shows them the number that I've called them from. "Yes, sir," they reply, and read my phone number out from their display. Well, it's not bloody blocked then, is it?

"Ah, well, some telephone service providers only stop your number being sent to 08- and 09-numbers."

YOU are on the other end of an 08-number, you bloody prat, and you have my number. So let's stop suggesting stuff that you can already see isn't my problem and try something else, eh?

In the end, the best they could suggest was disconnecting all of my other telephone equipment and ADSL filters, connecting my Sky box directly to the phone line and trying that. Well, sod that for a game of soldiers - if I have to essentially rewire my house in order to access Sky Active, then I'll just not bother.

One quick Google search later, and I have a plan of action of my own:

1. Do a random product search using QVC Active on the Sky box, and see if that works. If it does, then there's nothing wrong with the set-top box or phone line.
2. Access the Sky box installer menu, and tell the box to dial using the prefix 1615 - this is Tiscali's "bypass all settings" prefix, and Tiscali are my phone line provider.
3. Try it again.

Guess what? After following those three steps, it all worked perfectly. In case you're wondering, to access the Sky installer menu, press Services, 4, 0, 1, Select on your Sky remote.

The moral of this story is that Google is more helpful than any so-called helpline. But heaven help you if you're not technically minded.

When the analogue TV signal is switched off, the fun will truly begin...

It's not rocket science

There used to be a big deal made about "stupidly easy quizzes". There was at least one children's TV show that gave away huge prizes for being able to answer questions like, "who wrote Beethoven's 5th symphony" or, "what is the name of the suspension bridge in Clifton".

One of the funnier moments came when a teenage girl was asked, "what is the main ingredient in tomato ketchup?". She hesitated for a moment and then said, "pass". At the end, the host was laughing at her inability to give the correct answer of "tomatoes".

The main ingredient by weight in tomato ketchup is sugar.

In a dull moment during GCSE biology (and my God, there were a lot of those), I came up with what I thought was the ultimate version of this: why not treat these questions as if they were being used in Mastermind. It needed a new name; something which starts out seeming clever but gets less and less amusing each time you use it. I settled on Wastermind, and if you pronounce it correctly you see that it fulfils both of my requirements.

I only ever came up with the questions for one specialist subject, so I present them for you now:

Specialist subject - questions which all have "fish" as the answer:

1. What kind of creature is a trout?
2. One of the most popular British takeaways is what and chips?
3. What would you keep in an aquarium?
4. What does footballer Steve Guppy's surname make him sound like?
5. What English word is spelled F-I-S-H?
6. What is the odd one out?
   Norwich
   Liverpool
   Fish
   Smethwick
7. Jesus is said to have fed a large number of people with just two items of food. One was loaves of bread. What was the other?
8. What type of creature can be gold, star or cat?
9. A popular TV weather presenter was Michael who?
10. What do anglers expect to catch?
11. What prefix completes these words?
    -erman
    -ery
    -ing boat
12. What suffix should be added to sel- to give a word meaning the opposite of selfless?

And so on.

Well, (and that was one heck of a preamble) it seems that Farcebook is getting in on the act too. Recently, something not dissimilar to the following appeared in my news feed:

Twatty McMoron has taken the "What's your birthday month?" test, and the result is "April".

How many questions did they have to answer to find that out?

'Kin hell...

Physics and talent

Boyle's Law states the following:

For a fixed amount of an ideal gas kept at a fixed temperature, pressure and volume are inversely proportional (while one increases, the other decreases).

Susan Boyle's Law is slightly different:

For a fixed amount of talent kept at a fixed exposure, pressure and success are inversely proportional (while one increases, the other decreases).

The "celebrity" culture that prevails in the UK's media has been subject to my ire before on this blog. This time, the mechanics are slightly different, but the end result is the same: someone that no-one had ever heard of just a few weeks ago has gone into a very public meltdown.

If you don't know who Susan Boyle is, don't expect me to explain it to you. Even people living under rocks have heard of her. 20 million YouTube viewers can't be wrong. Well, no - clearly any number of YouTube viewers can be completely wrong 100% of the time. Scrap that comparison.

Susan Boyle's fame is based on one thing and one thing only: the fact that we're all meant to be surprised that an unattractive person can be talented. Now, this is a frankly ridiculous concept. I mean, Rodin was an ugly fucker but he couldn't half sculpt.

More to the point, pick an attractive pop star. Can they sing? On the whole - no, they can't. Without studio trickery, Girls Aloud sound like they've entered Stars In Their Eyes with the line, "tonight, Matthew, we're going to be five cats struggling to escape from a sack in a canal". Kate Nash may well be easy on the eye, but putting on a mockney accent and talking over a piano track (whilst sounding like you're holding a punnet of strawberries in your cheeks) does not pleasant music make. The talented one in the Spice Girls was the one that looked most like a boy, and the talented one in Savage Garden was the one that looked most like a girl.

I could go on, but I only have a finite amount of pop-related insults and you never know when I might need to use some in the future.

Susan Boyle's performance of "I Dreamed A Dream" was good, but nothing more - not really. Amanda Holden's reaction (especially the face she pulls when Susan starts singing) just makes me want to beat her with a brick. "Oh my gosh, this frumpy spinster can hold a tune!" Piss off, botox features.

When Susan Boyle returned on the semi-final, her performance of "Memory" was poor. Based on that performance alone (which is how the show should work), she didn't deserve to reach the final. In the final, she performed "I Dreamed A Dream" again. Is that the only tune she can sing well? The only reason she was runner-up was because of the storm generated by her first TV appearance.

But even in the semi-final, some of her mannerisms seemed false. They were not really Susan Boyle, they were "Susan Boyle, celebrity", and they were hard to watch. The whole "Piers-y baby" air-humping thing that she did was downright disturbing. No-one likes to watch their gran being sexually suggestive on live television, but that was what this felt like.

Maybe Susan has now "made it". After all, she's in the Priory - and that's where all celebrities go, isn't it? Maybe now normality can be restored. Maybe the media will forget about her. Unlike Jade, I don't see there being a series of reality TV shows made about her future exploits. Then again, the schedule on LivingTV has been rather bare since Ms Goody departed.

Susan Boyle's lesson is an important one for us all. I was cheering for her as the perfect representation of "normal people", who take their chance to shine and seize it with both hands. The trick is to keep your feet on the ground, and perhaps Susan's sheltered upbringing (if what I've read in the papers is true) might be one of the reasons why she's not coped particularly well with the media attention.

It is possible to go from "nobody" to "world star" without losing the plot. Leona Lewis, for example. Beware the price of fame: the higher you rise, the further you have to fall.

And the quicker the rise and fall happens, the harder your recovery will be.

Five things I concluded this week

In what may or may not become a regular feature of this blog, here are my bite-sized musings on the last seven days.

1. The Speaker of The House of Commons has proven what I already knew, and had known since he was first installed in the post: he's bloody useless.
2. I don't need a Facebook quiz to decide whether or not I'm a potato.
3. The Irish legal system supports paedophilia: the official enquiry into sexual abuse at Irish Catholic institutions was prevented from naming those accused of sexual abuse when the most-alleged-against brotherhood took the enquiry board to court in 2004 and won.
4. If the Formula One Teams Association want to form a break-away series that won't be pissed about with by the FIA, now is the best chance they've ever had to do so. And if the teams got all of the TV revenue money to share between them (rather than just what's left after most has fallen carelessly into Mr B. Ecclestone's pocket), there would be no need for the FIA's proposed budget cap.
   
5. Going with Mrs Steve to see John Barrowman in concert is bloody expensive: aside from the t-shirt and mug she had to buy, we also learned that he's taking over one of the lead roles in La Cage Aux Folles in the West End from September 14th - which means we're now going to see said show on October 2nd. In the most expensive seats, of course.

Unsafe at any speed

Intelligent Speed Adaption. If you've never heard of it, you will do soon. And you'll also have to put up with the high-handed crap that surrounds it. So allow me to fill you in.

ISA (which is surely a tax-free savings account) is a combination of GPS technology and a passenger that keeps telling you you're breaking the speed limit. A system is currently on test by TfL that only works within the boundary of the M25. The system uses GPS to work out which road you are on, and has a built-in database of all of the speed limits for all of the roads in the area it covers. You can either get the device to inform you whether you are going over the limit or not (by means of an in-no-way-patronising smiley or frowny face), or to actively control your vehicle's acceleration and breaking to make sure that it's completely impossible to break the limit.

Chris Lines, head of TfL's road safety unit, said: "This innovative technology could help any driver avoid the unnecessary penalties of creeping over the speed limit and at the same time will save lives."

Chris Lines is a fucking moron.

What the device really will do is stop drivers from thinking. What it will do is enforce the incorrect belief that if you're not breaking the speed limit, you can't cause an accident. But that's okay, because the current government clearly thinks that already. The number of speed cameras that are popping up - despite having no effect on the number of road casualties in the areas they appear - is testiment to that.

So is the fact that Chris Lines himself describes them as "unnecessary penalties". Creeping over the speed limit because you're - for example - driving past a school and paying more attention to whether any children are running out in front of your car then you are to the exact position of the needle on your speedometer should not be penalised by a machine that can't determine context: a speed camera.

What is more dangerous: a car travelling at 85mph on a clear, empty, dry motorway; or a car travelling at 60mph on a wet motorway with virtually no visibility whilst being about 10cm away from the back-end of the car in front of it?

Obviously it is the latter. But speed cameras and the ISA system will only prevent the former.

The government can't ban cars - fuel and road taxes generate too much money - but they clearly want to make them so unusable that we won't bother with them. If public transport in this country wasn't so utterly laughable, they might succeed. Too many people need their cars, because there is no viable alternative.

Except one.

And that presents itself to us at the next general election.

Enquiring runners

This one's only half there.

Muller 10k

Is this Cheap Tina The Cow?

The prancing horse is lame

Ferrari.

What does that name mean to you? If you're an F1 fan who was bought up on the sport in the 80s and 90s - like me - it means "laughable underperformance backed by biggest budget in the sport".

From 1980 through to 1999, Ferrari failed to win anything in F1. It might be hard to remember those times thanks to the work of Schumacher and Brawn (and we'll come back to them in a moment), but they were hopeless in varying degrees.

Sometimes, such as with Alain Prost in 1990, they came mighty close to winning something. Sometimes, such as in 1980 - the year after Jody Scheckter won the world championship for them - they suffered the indignity of undertaking the least-successful ever attempt at defending an F1 title. And other years, such as with Alesi and Berger in 1993, they were just utterly dire.

1980 remains Ferrari's worst ever start to an F1 season, but only as far as points scored are concerned. Because there was a different points system in place then compared to the one in place today, if we look at race results Ferrari's worst ever start to an F1 season took place in 2009. Yep, this year. In 1980, they'd managed a fourth place finish by the fourth race. This year, they only managed a fifth in the same period.

How can this be? Up until the last corner on the last lap of the last race of 2008, they were the champions. In 2007, they were the champions. As they had been every year from 2000 to 2004 inclusive. Where did it all go wrong?

In the past, driver management has been an issue. By failing to deal with Villeneuve and Pironi in 1982, one driver killed himself whilst trying to prove a point in qualifying for the Belgian GP, and the other suffered an almost idential career-ending (but not fatal) accident whilst qualifying in Germany.

Mansell and Prost didn't get on in 1990. By the end of the year, the whining moustache had done enough to unsettle the team at the point when they needed to focus on Prost's title challenge.

In 1997, Schumacher attempted to cheat his way to the drivers' title by ramming Villeneuve, in the same way that he cheated his way to the title in 1994 by ramming Hill. He didn't get the chance to challenge for the title in 1996 because the team suffered three consecutive Grands Prix in the middle of the season where neither of their cars finished. Schumacher was leading races on two of those occasions.

In the early 90s, Ferrari were able to entice designer John Barnard from Benetton, and this looked like a masterstroke. Barnard was responsible for the "flying nose" on the 1992 Benetton which since 1996 has pretty much been the standard front wing configuration used by every team. Although the idea was pioneered by Dr Harvey Postlethwaite at Tyrrell, Barnard had the vision and the funds to perfect it.

Ferrari got their man, but he wouldn't move to Italy! Instead, he worked from his design studio in the UK, with bits of Ferrari moving backwards and forwards between Italy and the home counties throughout the seasons as the cars were designed and improved. His 1994 Ferrari was beautiful to look at and moderately quick. His 1995 car was less attractive but much faster. In 1996 he dropped the flying wing and produced and ugly, dumpy car. Logic dictated that this should be even quicker. It wasn't, and only the brilliance (and luck) of Schumacher got it to perform.

But then Ferrari got Ross Brawn. He did move to Italy. The rest is history.

And then the FIA decide to rewrite the rule book for 2009, which means that all of this year's cars are clean-sheet designs. Everything that went before is thrown out of the window. Suddenly, Ferrari and BMW look like they don't know what they're doing.

Instead, Red Bull and Brawn are the cars to beat. Well, consider the engineering talents of Ross Brawn and Adrian Newey, and it's easy to see why. Between them, they have been responsible for the design of 11 of the last 17 title-winning cars!

Foot-shooting is common at Ferrari, and continues to this day. Had they not opted to use a needlessly-complicated pit exit traffic light thing instead of a bloke holding a stick to signal when Massa could exit the pits last season - a system which inevitably went wrong - then Massa would be champion. This year, they've managed to mess up qualifying on two occasions out of five. That's good going for a team that spends upwards of $300 million a year!!

They don't even appear to have the FIA on their side any more. In the early 2000s, when the teams were threatening to break away from the FIA and start their own series, the FIA made sure that they got Ferrari to agree to stay with them. Without Ferrari, they said, there was no F1.

Last week, when Ferrari threatened to withdraw from the series if the FIA go ahead with their budget-capping plan for 2010, the FIA said that Ferrari could like it or lump it. F1 will continue without Ferrari, they said.

Why the sudden change of heart?

Could it be because Ferrari were the main threat to McLaren, a team owned by Ron Dennis - a man despised by Max Moseley? Probably. Today, of course, neither Ferrari nor McLaren look like winning anything this year, and Dennis is no longer part of McLaren anyway. As far as Moseley is concerned, Ferrari have served their purpose.

And that leaves them up the creek without any means of locomotion. Because, without the FIA to randomly change regulations so that they maintain the upper hand, Ferrari appear to be at a loss as to what to do to improve their car. They look hopeless, a prancing horse fallen lame.

Which is why it's shaping up to be one of the best Formula One seasons in a very, very long time.

Just fan off!

Farcebook. It is the source of constant amusement. It is the place where you learn who has mastered the English language, as opposed to those people who think "aswell" is one word.

Recently, there has been a swell in the number and scope of fan pages on FB. And some of them are, to put it bluntly, staggeringly pathetic.

For example:


Of course, this is just subterfuge. Becoming a fan of "I hate battery low" really means, "I am hopelessly unable to manage the mind-numbingly simple task of making sure my laptop/mobile/mp3 player doesn't run out of power, and want to both announce this fact to all of my friends AND yet hide it behind a veneer of it not being my fault".

But what else are my friends becoming fans of? Let's see...

Jelly Tots !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now, I like jelly tots as much as the next man (unless the next man is diabetic, of course). But I will never become a fan of anything that uses fifteen bloody exclamation marks. For pity's sake...

Cuddling, Partying, Hot Baths, Kissing, Sex, etc...
I mean, honestly, what's the point? Who wouldn't be a fan of these things? What's next... Hey, everyone, I'm a fan of breathing. I'm a fan of oxygen. I'm a fan of using Facebook like a pillock. Pur-leese!

I'm not going to confine this Farcebook rant to just fan pages, though. Oh, no! You see, there is something else troubling me at the moment, something which used to be confined to group emails but is now waved in my face every time I access my Farcebook home page: "What kind of [insert random item here] are you?"

I don't give a rat's arse what element I am; what my completely arbitrary "personality evaluation" is; which character in [insert name of TV show] I am most like; how much knowledge of [insert subject or person] I have; or how runny my last shit was. Seriously - there is a Farcebook Bristol Stool Scale application. That's taking "too much information" into unexplored territory.

I don't want to shout about these things, because you're my friends, and if you wanted to know, you would use your own knowledge or, and this might come as a shock to the application writers on Farcebook, you would ask me. Farcebook doesn't let me ignore just applications on my home feed - I either have to ignore every sodding new test that comes along, or take the easy route of ignoring any friends that inadvertently fill my feed with utter crap. Which means that, should they post something I might want to know about, I don't get to see it, because I've blocked them - because I don't care which sodding Care Bear they are most like.

My main problem here is the fact that all these quizzes are for is to make users grant the people who created the tests access to their profiles. They do that when they click on the "accept" button that appears just before the test application loads. With that click, all of the personal details that are stored in their account are available to the people who made the test application. So, if you've filled in a number of these tests and are suddenly getting a lot more spam than you used to, now you know why.

So, Farcebook - please, please, please make it so that I can block all applications in one go. Please. That way, I will remain sane, despite no longer being privvy to the exact comparison between my friends and boybands.

And please, please, please make "profile harvesting" applications a breach of the T&Cs. In order to fill in a simple quiz, an application does not have a legitimate need to know my email address or my date of birth.

Perhaps I should create a fan page for everyone who agrees with me...?

15 miles

At 12.43pm.

At the 18 mile point

Cathy crossed the start line at 10.01am.

When in London...

...drink a mocha.

A marathon runnist...

...looks like this. Try and spot one on the telly on Sunday.

Just in case you forget...

...they even give you safety pins when you collect your race number! Seven of them, for some reason.