I've bought a blue shirt. Three-and-a-half hours of traipsing around the West End, Covent Garden, and even the near-legendary 'Wood Green Shopping City' (not so much a 'city', more 'two pound shops and an Argos'), in search of much-needed new clothes, and the sum total of my purchases is: a blue shirt. Not even a particularly interesting or exciting blue shirt. It's a shirt. It's blue. It'll get worn to work, maybe on Tuesdays. That's it. I am, officially, the most ineffectual shopper in the world.

The sad thing is, that's one more purchase than I normally manage to return home with.

Is there some kind of course in, like, buying stuff, I can do?

..or Saturday. Better now. The mysterious magic of 'Benylin 4-Flu'. Stops any known cold in seconds. However also does strange, floaty-spacey things to your head that you'd probably pay twenty quid a go for in certain London clubs. Fortunately the closest to operating heavy machinery I get is probably this here PC...

Minimal blogging today sorry - have suddenly acquired the most ferocious of colds from nowhere, resulting in near-continuous sneezing, thus making typing rather difficult (hey I'm a man, I'm supposed to over-dramatise every slight illness...)

Normal service resumed tomorrow.

And today's programmes on BBC Radio 1:

7.00am The Breakfast Show with a Shouting Northerner

10.00am 'Whispering' Jo Whiley Three hours of shameless fawning over another obscure indie band you haven't heard of, whose first single will go to no.63, before they are promptly dropped and disappear

1.00pm Shouting Northerners from Manchester

3.00pm Fat Shouting Northerner not from Manchester

6.00pm Dave Pearce Two hours of people who use phrases like 'havin' it large..' and 'roll another fat one...' without any discernible sense of irony

8.00pm The Evening Session with God's Celebrity Toadstools and Umbilical Artichoke in the Live Lounge

10.00pm Random interference Absolutely no-one, but no-one, is listening by now, so we don't care.

It's true, honest.

I'm really, really sorry for posting this:

'News just in: Irish troops have surrounded a department store after receiving a tip off
that Bed Linen was on the 2nd floor.'

Ah yes, that is my coat, thank you...

An email request from my colleague, friend, and partner in many a Monday-morning hangover, Mat:

'Friends,
I will shortly be visited upon by an old friend, a sweet Indian-goddess with whom I discovered the millenial joys of blissful Kathmandu, and must arrange some suitable accommodation for her in town, for about a week or so. Does anyone know of a nice hotel, not too expensive, in the West End, or Kensington or some such? The kind of place with pot plants and leaflets in reception. Somewhere nice?

All suggestions welcomed.

'Sound barricades itself into rolls of peanutbutter when you speak...'

Feeling down today? Tuesday blues?

Then you need the Surrealist Compliment Generator.

Keep hitting reload for increasingly nonsensical self-congratulation.

Whilst I'm on a work theme, this from our latest company newsletter:

MD GETS READY TO PLAY WITH TRUNCHEON

In the recent Met Police pitch, Jon Richards was talking about branding when the client,
a Detective Super piped up and said: “But I thought branding was about always having
the logo on the bottom of an ad.” Jon explained that you don’t always have to have the
logo at the bottom. There was a pause, after which our esteemed MD looked at the
Detective Superintendent and said: “Would you like it on the bottom?”

Class.

I have just had a drink delivered to my desk by what can only be described as a half-naked HUNK! No, really.

We're a slightly unconventional company - one of the reasons I've been happily working here for three-and-a-half years. Fancy dress days are not unusual - the Bad Taste Day, the I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Summer Day (held in January involving everyone in their finest beachwear) and the Fantastic Hats Day, to name a few - all held for no reason other than to keep ourselves amused.

This morning's random event though, was a surprise stunt. At precisely 11.30, the sound of Etta James' 'I Just Want To Make Love To You' came blaring over the pager system, and in walks a bona fide, shirtless, gorgeous Diet Coke man (and curvaceous woman for the straight boys), personally distributing cans of said beverage.

Sometimes, I rather like working here...

Wednesday night. Quiz night again at the King William in Hampstead. At which Greg, Dave, Kelvin, Phil, Nigel, Jonathan and myself proved conclusively that seven heads are infinitely less use than three, by doing even worse than last week. Thus demonstrating that decisions made by committee are, invariably, rubbish.

We were too busy marvelling at Phil's transformation into an 'Athena'-style icon. A photo, taken just a few weeks ago at Brighton Pride featuring him in full sailor outfit (complete with pink rubber ring), has been transformed into a greeting card, available in shops all over Brighton.
'No wayyyy!!!!!' was the chorus on seeing said card.
'I know! That's it - I want to be on postcards, mugs, mouse mats...'
This could become a defining gay image of our times. Or something.

Greg wants to make the quiz night a regular thing but I'm not so sure. Now, I'm a tolerant person. I believe there's room for all types of people within the gay community. And if we're sometimes subject to the prejudices and discrimination of others, there's no need to inflict it on each other. There's even a place for 19-year-old skinny provincial queens with blond spiky hair and gratingly camp voices who mistakenly believe they're amusing. But it isn't with a microphone in their hand, attempting to host a quiz. Next week, in preference, I will be breaking into a nearby school in order to scrape my fingernails down the nearest blackboard for an hour or two.

Sorry, I have to bitch occasionally otherwise they take away my gay licence.