When I was at college, in amongst the hormones, alcohol and downright fun there were genuine good eggs – people who no-one had a bad word to say about, who got on with life in the happiest way possible. One of these was Jack Perschke, who I assumed would bumble through life, just being… well, nice.
So you could’ve dressed me in tights and called me Mildred when he emailed me a couple of months ago, telling me he’s grown a beard, used to be a soldier and is currently an aid worker in Afghanistan having a “mad time” clearing bombs and suchlike. He’s a bit of a photographer too – have a look at his website for a “Jack’s Eye View” (does that sound a little rude?) of his peacetime operations out there. Good luck, Jack, you crazed fool!

*Don’t be put off by the title – give it a read. It’s not often I make a post without trying to raise a titter or two.*
It’s a funny old thing with weblogs. Some are merely places to share amusing or interesting things – links, videos, pictures and the like. People click the links, laugh (or not), respond, and wait for the next gem of linkage to appear.
Many others are like online diaries – a place where the owner can put down their earth-shattering, life-changing thoughts. Throughout the day, these people have ideas, brainwaves, criticisms and thoughts involving the three main staples of life – namely jobs, relationships and family. Just like any other person, you might say – only webloggers go one stage further. They write those staple thoughts down, invite comment, purge their souls and ponder awhile.
wibbler.com has tried to be both of those things, bless it. It’s stradled the strands like a true workhorse. But I’ve come to the conclusion that a diary weblog’s effectiveness is directly proportionate to its anonymity. I’ve thought of many things to write about over the last month involving those three staples, and almost every one I’ve vetoed on the assumption that the views – or at least the public airing of those views – would be at odds with at least one of the people who read the site. I’ve even on several occasions had to remove certain posts I’d already made, when people have protested that it doesn’t quite fit in with their views (one of which I did manage to tell you about). And I suppose it’s a symptom of a successful weblog that every contentious post is bound the touch the nerve of at least one reader.
I’m sure that people who know me will now ask the obvious question. “Was it about me?” they’ll think. The probable answer is yes, more than likely, at some point I may have wanted to say something a little close to the wind involving your good self. It may even – are you sitting down? – have been a positive thing. Who knows? No one knows, of course, because I couldn’t say it.
Of course, I can’t complain at the attention – in fact, I’m glowing with pride, puffing out my chest and announcing to all and sundry how successful it’s all been so far. As I put in a post the other week, wibbler.com has brought me all sorts of visitors, all sorts of positive feedback and all sorts of little web projects. 3000 people a week visit to read me droning on; 200 people subscribe to my RSS news feed. 1000 people a day visit my subsite Boriswatch – a fact that doesn’t please my hosting company. I’m at my busiest yet with out of hours projects, and I only have this little trojan of a website to thank.
But I hope this goes some way to explaining (along with the horrendous hours I’ve putting in at work and the going out having fun part, of course) why the posts have been few and far between lately – and why the posts that do appear may be sporting those clever little rose-tinted glasses. It’s not that I don’t have a lot to say – it’s just that a lot of other people may not like me saying it. And that’s a sad thing.

You know how Baker’s Dozen is an inexplicably imprecise 13? Well, I’d like to qualify my previous “I’ll post in the next week” promise by saying that I meant a Baker’s Week. In essence, that’s around 9 days, I reckon.

You may be thinking that the lack of posts on wibbler.com shows the dull, slow-paced life I must be having. Quite the opposite, in fact, and that means very little time to post the wonderful, action packed events that have graced the last few weeks. For example, there was:-
- the paintball expedition, where I sustained bruises that were still coming out a week later;
- the visit to Fright Night at Thorpe Park, which entailed 2 visits to the wettest ride in the park, long queues for every other ride and even longer queues to get out of the car park;
- the leaving meal of my old boss at The Pier, which resulted in my first visit to chilly Oxford and a series of particularly appalling renditions at karaoke;
- the designing/building of part of the Fat Face website, done and dusted in little over a week;
- the designing of two other sites in under two weeks;
- the Grand Get Together with 16 of my nearest and dearest, all congregating in Zizzi’s restaurant in Guildford, on a table designed for 12 people;
- A visit to Nick’s house with Sarah and Michelle for a night of drinks, games and pre-birthday presents;
- A knees up with Nick last Friday in Guildford, where we cobbled together an ingenous business plan in a drunken haze.
- Visits to the gym four times a week with Michelle, with a view to turning my body into slightly more of a temple;
And last, but not least – Boris Johnson. Boris Boris Boris. He’s been in the news a lot lately for better or worse, and Boriswatch has been inundated with visitors – an average of 5000 a day for the last two weeks. And then last Friday in a hail of media fire, he was sacked. Cue calls from Sky News and the BBC, asking for comments and interviews – and it all came to a head yesterday, with your humble host popping up to the House of Commons for a lunch date with the great man himself.
So what I propose is this. I’ll blog a selection of these events over the next week of so, and you sit there with the patience of a saint. Sound reasonable?

I’ve been indebted to wibbler.com in many ways since its conception in the womb of my university’s academic syllabus. It’s allowed me to hone the prose, create a diary of amusements to look back on in a dull moment, and to reduce those always badly-timed but very welcome “So, how you doing?” calls from friends. It’s attracted attention from two magazines, spawned subsites that have been more popular than this one, and found its way onto Sky News and BBC News. It’s even got me designing sites for MPs, clothing companies and local firms. It’s frankly been a ball.
But a more negative turn came about this week, when my year-old post about Michel Harper, megabusinessman of Guildford, hit home with several visitors. In fact, a simple Google search for “michel harper” brings the post to the top of the rankings, a fact that please my inner geek, and the content of the comments was brought to the attention of Mr Harper. Cue an email a few days ago, and several calls since, from his lawyers and private investigators, asking me to cease and desist, and give up information on the commenters. In fairness, they noted my cunning lack of accusation in the original post but the visitors comments had to be censored. Not to be outdone, someone’s comments then appeared on the woefully underused wibbler.com Forum. Which is now equally cleansed.
So, the first sign that this blog actually affects the outside world. What next? Do you think I’ll be able to reverse the American election maybe?

Do you have any idea what you’ve let yourself in for, America?

“Are you woken at 6.30am to open presents? Do you have a general feeling of fun and frivolity? It must be your birthday!”
UPDATE: 3 double chocolate muffins, 3 chocolate brownies, 6 cream cakes, 4 iced buns, 2 Wallace and Gromit-shaped shortbreads biscuits and a box of chocolate Heroes duly delivered to the office. Currently feeling ill.

Political apathy is evident everywhere nowadays. There’s discussion on the cause, but most agree that the media are guilty of marginalising the power of the vote. I just thought it was this country – but The Daily Show, hosted by the razor-witted, sharp-tongued, Emmy award winning Jon Stewart, shows that it’s alive and kicking in America too.
The Daily Show started as a comedic look at the days’ political events in America. Now, it’s the only show which gives it to you straight, in a humourous way that really sticks in your mind. Jon Stewart, in my opinion, is the funniest political comedian I have ever seen, and his show appears to outclass all other “news” shows in America.
So, why am I telling you this now? Well, Jon was invited yesterday onto “Crossfire”, a popular political show on CNN, to discuss his new book. But, instead of promoting, he accused the mainstream media – and his hosts in particular – of being soft and failing to do their duty as journalists to keep politicians and the political process honest.
It was one of the most powerful televised exchanges in recent history. Instead of pushing the tome, Stewart used his time to verbally slap the network and the media for being “dishonest” and “doing a disservice” to the American public. After co-host Tucker Carlson suggested that Stewart went easy on Senator John Kerry when the candidate was a guest on “The Daily Show,” Stewart unloaded on “Crossfire,” calling hosts Carlson and Paul Begala “partisan hacks” and chiding them for not raising the level of discourse on their show beyond sloganeering.
“What you do is not honest. What you do is partisan hackery,” Stewart said. “You have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably. I watch your show every day, and it kills me. It’s so painful to watch.”
It takes balls of steel to do something this large. As one of the commenters on Metafilter put it, “Not only is our most honest news program not really a news program, but the only guy on TV who wants to be serious about living up to journalistic responsibility isn’t even a journalist.”
Good luck in the elections, America…
LINKS (because you really have to watch this):
More on the event: Jon Stewart Bitchslaps CNN’s ‘Crossfire’ Show – MTV
Clips from Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show: here – here
The Crossfire showdown: BitTorrent – Quicktime video – Another Quicktime video – Windows Media Player (WMP) video – Another WMP video – Transcript and videos
Comments/articles on the broadcast: Metafilter – MTV – Salon.com

Fridges must have a very hard time in Gran Canaria.

By the second day of our trip to the sunny Canary Isle, as the heat climbed up the the early 30 degrees and I dripped like a wet towel, my concern for our fridge was paramount. The poor thing was commended to freeze our drinks in temperatures that were climbing into the 30s by 11am. It was a tall order.

But still, let me start at the beginning. The very early beginning.

It was 4am. Even the bloody birds were asleep. But for the second time that week, I was up, busily preparing for a trip abroad. Michelle was being her usual organised self, reading off a prepared list of things to take, whilst I laid back and left everything until the last possible moment. Michelle’s mother has drawn the short straw, and drove us through wind and rain to Gatwick airport. The take off in this weather would be fun, I surmised.

After we’d managed to queue-barge a long line of travellers at the check-in desk and braved their glares, we shopped a little, worried at the weather a little, ate a little, and headed for the gate. The howling gales outside made the grey, unremitting interior of the airport look almost inviting. We were happy to be indoors.
20 minutes later, we were decided unhappy. Trudging up to the plane, across the wind and rain, we cursed our luck that the plane hadn’t been allocated a berth. After several minutes of buffeting, and a particularly loud cabin crew announcement, we were flying into the grey, overcast sky, the turbulence causing small children to scream. I was brave – I merely whimpered.

The flight over was uneventful, save for the excellent choice of in-flight movie – Shrek 2. How I laughed – how I annoyed the person next to me with my chortling shoulders. And then, 4 hours later, the volcanic isle of Gran Canaria hove into view. As we descended through the clouds, the perfectly flat sea gave way to land, and as we touched down I could sense the heat.

It wasn’t long before we arrived at the hotel, on the seafront of a large town called San Augustin. We’d read in the brochure that there was a “nudist sun terrace”. I eagerly began scanning the ground for hints of genitalia, so that I could recoil in disgust. There were none forthcoming, and I slumped back in my seat, waiting for the cue to alight.
We alighted with 2 other couples of dubious age. Probably around sixty-five to seventy years old, I reckon. This was the first hint that this hotel may not have a carnival atmosphere, but on a few minutes reflection we decided this was a good thing. Now we’re cracking on a bit (24 and 25 years old repectively), Michelle and I were pleased that our holiday was not going to be ruined by raucous folk. The thought of the nudist sun terrace, however, was distinctly less appealing.

This being her 6th trip to the island, Michelle was eager to show me the highlights. “Shall we go for a short walk down the coast to a place I know? Mum says it’s only a few minutes away.” One and a half hours later, my feet were like stumps, and asthma was beginning to grab hold of my lungs. But despite the length of the journey, it allowed me to take in the sights and sounds of the Canary Islands. And it wasn’t half bad. The sea was flat and calm; the sun was starting to set over the horizon, and people were wandering carefree along the sand, playing in the dunes and rocks near the water. Life seemed very peaceful, and I’d warmed to the place already.
Warm was as good a word as any to describe the weather too. It was past 5pm when we found a seaside bar, before taking in a nicely limed-up lemonade or two. We’d found the Playa del Ingles, the mystical destination Michelle and I had trekked to. The one and a half hour walk back was completed in three and half minutes by a handy taxi, costing 3 euros. We decided, belatedly, that taxis were the way forward. Our feet were immensely relieved.

The rest of the holiday was a mix of sunbathing (unfairly, I’ve no tan to report), getting the in-room and aforementioned fridge to work, and visiting the nooks and crannies of the local towns. There were an unbelievable number of shops, mainly centred around the Kasbar and the Yumbo Center, all with eager shopkeepers trying extremely hard to make us a bargain. I eagerly wanted to purchase several bargains, but at the end of the week managed to buy only a baseball cap. On the second night, we went to a few bars, one of which Michelle has known for years – the barman remembered her, bless him – and another which is a spitting image of Chinawhite’s nightclub in London. It’s even called Chinawhites.

We went on 2 excursions and we chose well. One was a musical, where the singers and dancers came and served us dinner when they weren’t singing and dancing. The quality of the production was astounding, and the idea really should be brought over here. The second excursion was a trip around the island on a catamaran. This required no effort at all, and from 9am to 3pm we mostly laid down on the deck, sunning ourselves while the boat took us past the villages and beaches of the island. There were water caves to explore, and snorkling to indulge in. And I still didn’t get a tan.

So, come Monday, we were sad to leave. The airless coach took us to the airport and deposited us at the entrance. We queued, shopped, queued and boarded the plane, horrified at the thought of trudging back to work the following morning. Still, our objective had been successful – we were fully refreshed after a couple of months of hectic action, and ready for the days ahead.

I never did find the nudist sun terrace.

Tony Ho comes and goes like a thief in the night. One minute he’s hosting the mother of all parties (you may remember my multiple visits to Cafe de Paris with Tony at the tail end of last year), the next he’s disappeared, his mobile phone goes dead and we all hope he’s still alive.
He chose the middle of my course in Switzerland to reappear again, inviting me to an opening party in the centre of Mayfair, at a nightclub he was promoting. So, not at all fresh from the flight from Switzerland, I jumped straight into my car at the airport and sped off to London, shaver in one hand, steering wheel (luckily) in the other. 11pm on a Wednesday, I thought, the roads should be fine. I hadn’t banked on the M4 being closed though and 45 minutes later than I should have been, I arrived at the “Capiche” nightclub. Slap bang opposite The Ritz, it was a location to die for, and Tony doled out free drinks for a couple of hours until my senses told me I may have overdone it. I bade Tony (and a slightly drunken Simon B) goodbye, and drove home. Thanks for the drinks Tony – if only I hadn’t had to have been at work 8am the next morning…!