Just finished watching the final 'boot camp' of X Factor 2008 and WHY oh WHY are the boys such whiny b!tches? They cry more than little girls of four who've just had their Barbies crushed under the wheels of Satan's bulldozer (something really scary that would make a little girl cry particularly emotionally).

Yes, we all know you want it so badly. We all know it's the most important thing in your life (although why you've not had a single singing lesson or applied for a single job in the London Star is quite beyond me) and we ALL know it's an emotional time, but do you really have to break down in tears at Every. Bl**dy. Opportunity?

I found it all rather unpalatable.

This year's whiny and exceptionally needy crybabies are hardly the epitomy of superstar quality (mind you, neither was last year's winner Leon who would have lost to cardboard in a Most Sparkling Personality contest).

I'm sure there are more tears to come. I don't know if I can watch this year.

Of course I will, and I'll be sure to moan about it right here!

It may sound completely obvious, but never let a puppy jump in the bath with you.

Why? Because, it might seem oh so cute for about two seconds, then, there are, as I can see it, three downsides:

1. You have floppy bits they love to bite (I presume this applies to both sexes).*


2. They end up leaping out of the bath just as quickly, allowing them to dash madly about the house trailing water unhindered by man (or at least by me). They then proceed to jump on your bed and dry themselves on your expensive sheets.


3. They tend to smell bad (thus precipitating the necessity for a proper bath).

In addition, dogs find all of these three things hugely amusing. I learned all of this the hard way and really need to lock the bathroom door when I take a bath.

*If you don't have any floppy bits, you're either very lucky or far too young to have been hit by Mother Nature's magic lard fingers (they don't warn you about that at school!).

Of the raft of fairly mediocre shows to hit the US this fall, True Blood glowers proudly in the darkness. HBO's racey new series stars Anna Paquin (Rogue from the X-Men movies) as a telepathic waitress in a small town in the Deep South who meets Bill, a dark and brooding vampire who has returned to the town of his birth to live in peace (or at least that's his plan). It's a romance show at heart, but a dark and bloody one with a gratuitous amount of swearing and violence. It's any of HBO's other shows (Six Feet Under, Oz) on vampire-fuelled steroids.

Hang on, I hear you cry, a male vampire and a female human... Isn't that exactly like Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Well, you could make comparisons to Buffy and Angel's on-off (but mostly off) vampire / human relationship, but this is a far cry from the sugar-coated romance of other fantasy shows. This is dark stuff more with more similiarities to hororr flicks like 30 Days of Night and Salem's Lot than it has to kiddy-centric mainstream TV shows (which is probably why no one will ever get to appreciate True Blood).

While only three episodes have aired in the US, the show is already picking up speed with an interesting take on the vampire mythology. Named True Blood after a Japanese scientist invented a synthetic blood which allowed vampires to come out 'of the coffin' to integrate themselves into society. But, humans being humans, there's a lot of resistance to their arrival, and that's no more evident than in the small town of Bon Temps, where belief in God is second only to religious intolerance.

The show has already been green lit for a second season and with such an interesting premise, strong characters, and a delicious relationship forming between the two main characters, it's hard not to see why. It's not for kids, though.

Check it out here.

Pop Meister Alan Connor has released his new video for summer smash, Let Your Love Flow.

It's completely brilliant and you can check it out by going here (or by clicking on the linky below). Remember, if you like it, show your support by giving it a rating.

Wohooo. Zack's on #1 Web Show Cute with Chris.

You can check out his pic by clicking here 

How cute is he (and I'm still talking about the dog). Check out the show and leave a comment.

Took Zachary for his first major walk today to the lakes in Brentwood, Essex. All was going great until he decided to chase the ducks...

... there was a fantastic moment where around fifty ducks took off right beside us in slow motion, which turned to horror when Zack decided to follow them... right into the lake.

I don't think he'd realised it was water, and that he could sink without a trace into its murky depths.

But he did, and I arrived with my heart in my mouth to see his panicked eyes plunging under the surface. He couldn't get out of the water because there was a wooden barrier all the way around the lake. It was heart-breaking to see his little face filled with the realisation: Help me! I'm going to die.

I risked everything (muddy trainers) to save him. I reached into the lake and grabbed him by his harness and pulled the half-drowned rat onto dry land.

While I'm the hero of this story, I'm still shaken by it and it's a tiny tiny glimpse of how a parent must feel every day when their child faces danger from endless sources. I wonder, now, how my mother survived all the disasters I caused over the years...

Well, the big bang happened and we're all still here...

No, I'm not talking about the 'shocking' Paris Hilton porn video, I'm talking about the much talked about experiment with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, which was today turned on for the very first time (and no I'm still not talking about Paris Hilton). 

Despite all the media rumour, misinformation, and hyperbole, we're still here. The Earth didn't get swallowed up by mini black holes and Europe wasn't destroyed in a huge explosion of red hot gases. In fact, as predicted, very little happened at all. Bit boring really.

In all seriousness, the big bang won't happen for a month or so... Those CERN boffins are saving the fireworks 'till after the media speculation has died down, when they step up the reactor power input three more points and blast those protons at each other at 99.9% of the speed of light. Today's activities were little more than operational readiness tests.

I'm telling you, we're all going to die...

... horribly, in a big ball of superheated fire.

Final update on the paypal woes I've been having over various items bought and sold in the past 45 days. Someone issued a chargeback against me for items worth £150. They clearly knew what they were doing as they used a fake address in the UK (I only found out this today) and asked me to send to an alternative email address.

Anyway, it turns out that you can dispute purchases with your credit card (as you are allowed to do at any time) and then it goes out of Paypal's hands and into the credit card companies.

They, today, found in favour of the buyer, despite me being able to provide an email trail, receipt of goods, and a few messages from the buyer commenting on how good the items were. A buffoon could see that the transaction was completed fairly...

But, clearly, you can't win, as I'm £150 out of pocket and the buyer has items for nothing.

Buying on Ebay is clearly a case of Caveat Venditor (let the seller beware) as Paypal is a minefield for the novice seller with all kinds of ways to trip you up to avoid repaying your cash.

I know there are thousands of lawsuits out there aimed at Ebay and Paypal, and now I can see why. Tens of thousands of sellers have been conned out of millions of dollars of their hard-earned cash.

If you're using Paypal, make sure the buyer has a verified address; that way you're insured against any losses incurred through unscrupulous and sucky behaviour.

How could I have missed the GOLDEN RULE for contestants on the X Factor?

The Number ONE rule must be: when you've been told you're a deluded freak who sounds like a sack of cats being rolled down a hill, never, ever say: Your loss, this isn't the last you'll see of me. I'll be back. I'll be huge. I'll be the biggest thing ever! I'll be bigger than (insert huge singing celebrity)...

That claim is reserved solely for Darius Danesh (who? I hear you cry), who, despite having a few major hits, still failed to have a triple platinum album by the time he was thirty.

But he's the only one EVER to make this claim.

If you're wondering why. Let me explain. It's because the chances of these caterwauling freaks being successful is less than zero. They'll simply vanish into obscurity, back to the chip shop from which you came, never to be seen of or heard from again (unless you bump into one of them outside Debenhams in Sheffield (but that's another story entirely...)).

Seriously. I'm gonna be the biggest writer evah! I'm gonna be bigger that J. K. Rowling. Or that bloke who was in that Bible book.

To all those people who've told me how brilliant Spore is (thanks to you all for your emails and messages) I have just one comment:

Go and BUY the damn game! 

Downloading software is ILLEGAL and it is STEALING.

You wouldn't steal a copy of the game from HMV...

So stop doing it!