Special guest has turned up at the football (Redbridge v Walthamstow)

Remembered one of the best Tom Jones versions youtube.com/watch?v=khgd...

What I don't get about this Mandelson stuff is, if there's one thing anybody knows about him it's that you wouldn't trust him. Like this man is famous for being slime. It can't be a surprise to anybody?

Bit of snobbery in some of the Starmer "British values" dunks, isn't there?

I saw Bill Oddie on Hampstead Heath. He was at a pond so might have been looking at birds

Frying the life out of a cod fillet until it tastes of even less than it already did, and loving it

Disco cold has eased enough to let me go and wander around Paris, albeit for half the time I was supposed to have. Good place, haven't seen any posh cats or cats playing jazz yet but maybe I haven't been down the right street

Least favourite is difficult, but Chubby Sexy by Robbie Tripp, AKA the Curvy Wife Guy, is the worst. Don't look it up, it's somehow worse than it sounds

Anybody else got a virus that's like, partly ordinary cold symptoms but with Covid-like waves of feeling generally unwell (tested negative), dodgy stomach, not the snottiest one you've had but really sore and watery eyes? Weird one

My dad often talks about people, usually men, being "too old" for things. I realised it was because he worries about getting to the stage where he is "too old" and so he sees other guys that way. That's what Trump does with Biden, I think

Advertising works: I'm basically experiencing the full list of symptoms on the Pepto-Bismol advert and it was the first thing I thought of when it started happening

Zack Polanski not drinking or taking drugs isn't that big or weird? Lots of people don't drink for one reason or another, including a load of young people, and the "everybody is on drugs" thing you hear a lot these days is such a bubble opinion - no they aren't

Chocolate! Like don't hit me with "but have you tried this incredible chocolate", I'm talking about your standard normal bar of milk chocolate. Just OK

Bad luck, "Fife Flyers"

It's because with the traditional system there's always the possibility of unfairness innit. Some bloke muscling in or similar. And bars aren't all small counters - some of them are long, some are horseshoe shaped or L-shaped, some have multiple windows... www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

This doesn't matter at all, but Liam Rosenior's glasses don't sit well on his face. They look like an accessory

Today's football was a proper old sticky pitch January battle of a game. I missed the goal because I was still in the pub tbh

Belated TOTP thought: We Like To Party! (The Vengabus) actually sounds great, it's so crunchy

There's a load of Port Vale fans in the pub and goodness me their home shirt is pretty

Thinking this is partly why the fella bought Twitter? When shit like this comes out, make sure it isn't all over Twitter. Have it be somewhere not as big

Urge to listen to the Dismemberment Plan this evening. You could guess at a reason but the actual reason is that I suddenly had Back and Forth in my head earlier

I've been doing French on Duolingo lately and I was having so much fun getting to say bébé earlier

Really love this record, you know. Never quite managed to explain why but I do. Also I really like the thing that the Southern Freeez was a dance that was big at the time in the Royalty in Southgate

What's your Guardian "the hill I will die on" opinion? The one where there is no way that is the hill you will choose to die on www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

They try so hard to get you to care about this Champions League big group format, pretending it adds a bit of jeopardy, but for me the way to do that is to make it "you either qualify or you don't", none of this playoff stuff. Makes me think the real reason is to fit in as many games as possible

The thing that gets me the most with AI generated stuff at work is the "well, it looks about right" approach to it. Earlier we had some AI feedback on our response to a really vague commission. It read fine to the people in charge but it took twenty seconds of attention to realise it was bollocks

Music would be more fun if we took band names literally and then held them to account. Easy if you're the Men, harder if you're Ultimate Kaos

Remember those internet jukeboxes in pubs where you could get any song for a quid? This was always a good option

Oh man, these were the days, right? It seemed like a great idea up until the age you figured out you could just buy normal beer like an adult instead (16?) I remember the hangovers from this stuff involving a lot of pounding

Arsenal really need to calm down huh. Looked so anxious today, players scared to try things, fans in the crowd driving themselves mad. Long way to go, Man City are fallible, Villa haven't won it before either, please relax guys

"A dream is a wish your heart makes" update: a concert was taking place to celebrate the opening of a new country, basically an extra British isle, and the group Idles were headlining. It was my job to book the rest of the event

You know when something bad is happening and it's like you're going to keep thinking about it until you've worked yourself up into feeling appropriately sad/angry/scared? As if you won't drop it in your head until you're feeling the right emotion in the right amount? Really unhelpful innit

Have had this in my head for some time. It's the way it's mostly Scandinavian cool to the point of barely trying, but with a song that sounds like something two kids could have made up youtube.com/watch?v=LzEz...

This whole "London has fallen" thing right, I'll tell you the one thing that has, the standard of fancy cans you can pick up when you're out and about. That thing in Tesco where you could get three Dale's Pale Ale for a fiver might as well be a fever dream

Genuinely though, the reason I haven't been watching Traitors is that so many people on here as well as in real life have started off saying "might put on Traitors, it's January, let's watch some telly" and ended up being more into it than I get into anything

The only way this could be worse is if he'd put the glasses back on the shelf too, and the premium ready meal for one back in the fridge, and the cutlery back on the hanger thing

Harry styles (big white collar, black rimmed glasses, bald head)

Pitchfork making their review scores paid-for feels a bit optimistic in 2026. There was probably a point in the 00s where somebody would have been keen to know what they made of the new Dirty Projectors album or something, but even then I don't know if they would have paid money for that

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I want a whole season about goalkeepers after Schmeichel. Massimo Taibi episode

I heard Craig David is making an album with AI lyrics. He's done it using Bopilot

When I was a little kid I swallowed a 2p and my dad kept going through my turds to make sure it had come out, and that's what I imagine it must be like for journalists listening to Trump speeches. There's a 2p in there, you just have to dig through it

Had a dream where there was a TV drama called Dr Bald about a doctor who was bald. I don't think the idea was that the two things were linked though, he just happened to be called that

Useless David Beckham thought: you heard at the time about his constant practice of shooting from distance, free kicks and long shots, was that just because it's what looks impressive to people? It was a him thing

I often read those train station shop politics books with names like Right Turn: Inside the Conservative Government Between 2022 and 2022, despite them being 800 pages of gossip, and I'm really looking forward to reading what some hack makes of what's going on inside the current administration

Don't think I've come across anybody today talking about Blue Monday like it's real. Maybe it's over, maybe we said "actually that's not real" so often that they got tired of it (they still think it's real)

Being kind to Brahim Diaz and calling that penalty some kind of terrible brain fart rather than an attempted panenka, because I can't imagine how in those circumstances you'd attempt that

Anybody else notice that the more middle class a corner of town is, the more dead it is in January? Maybe these guys' lives are going well enough for them to be able to bear being sober for an entire month

I was just listening to This Train by Sister Rosetta Tharpe and thought I'd look up what she's actually singing when it sounds like she's singing "This train don't pull no wankers". The answer surprised me.

Piss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally. www.theguardian.com/music/2026/j...