Now we are 3

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday is that while I've been away on holiday this blog celebrated its third birthday. Hooray for Modern Gutnish! Little did I know that back in the summer of 2008 whike innocently posting a photo of Diane Keen with a breast on show on one of this blog's first entries, Modern Gutnish would be no.1 in the Google search list for 'Diane Ken tits'. Who knew so many people were interested in the Cuckoo Waltz star's knockers? Not I, that's for sure as mustn't. Turns out this blog is also no.2 on the Google list for the search term 'Jo Whiley tits'. Funny thing is that the sentence I wrote on that particular entry was "Jo Whiley's a tit". So, for all the pervs out there I'm going to try a little experiment just to see how stupid some people are. Here goes: JUNE WHITFIELD TITS. There, now I just need to sit back and see what happens.
Getting back to 2008, do you remember it? A long time ago now of course, but let's get a bit nostalgic, eh? Lehman Brothers Bank was still very much a going concern, Gordon Brown was well on his way to becoming one of the UK's best-loved Prime Ministers, your house was worth double what it's worth now, you could get credit just like that, Cher Lloyd was busy being a school bully, my mother was still very much with us, there was one of the greatest statesmen of our time in the Whitehouse, nobody had heard of swine 'flu, I still thought Christine Bleakley was nice, Rupert Murdoch was a cuddly old gent who just happened to own a few newspapers. Halcyon days indeed. Here's to the next three years of Modern Gutnish!

Q. What are you doing? A. Not going on Twitter

Well, the votes have been cast, the results counted and not verified, and the verdict is that out of ten of you who could be arsed to vote, six of you said you'd follow me on Twitter. Which is bad news for six people as I won't be Twittering any time soon.

I don't know how to access the internet on my phone (which is surely essential for any serious Twitterer; I'm so thick, aren't I?), my life is nowhere near interesting enough for anyone to want to 'follow' it on Twitter (my life bores me so it's bound to bore anyone else) and when you look at what Stephen Fry posts on Twitter (like 'I've just finished a day's filming at Twentieth Century Fox studios in Los Angeles'), then what chance do you stand of getting yourself noticed?

Not only that, there was a Twitter item on The One Show last night and Christine Bleakley said she didn't Twitter and didn't see the point of it. So that's that. I use The Bleakley as a kind of life coach, even though she doesn't know it. Gyles Brandreth did the item and he Twitters. I could rest my case right there.

The thing is, is it just fad? In 2001 it was Friends Reunited (which I may have made myself look a complete tit on last week, but never mind), 2004 it was eBay, 2006 was MySpace's year and a couple of year's ago it was Facebook.

Now I've come to quite like Facebook. You can post videos on there without clogging up your blog. There's some fantastic pictures of me as a kid and adolescent on there and it's enabled me to come back into contact with people I haven't seen for years. As well as come into contact with charming and witty people who share my enthusiasm for early 80s footballers and looking through the CD sale at Sainsbury's.

So, you Twitterers, enjoy yourself and think of all the fun I'm missing out on.

While I'm at it, does anyone here use Spotify?

2008 and all that

That's 2008 then. The Bright Ambassador highlights:

• Guitar Hero 3 - how to kill weekend afternoons during a crap summer


• Dexter


• Nottingham Forest's promotion


• Mad Men


• Metallica back on form


• Charlie Brooker's print and TV tribute to Oliver Postgate


• Fleet Foxes


• The sitcom Pulling - deliciously filthy


• Word magazine's Prog edition


• Danny Baker back on 606


• Rebecca Romero


• Son of Rambow


• The rise of Christine Bleakley


• Dead Set


• Jez using a £20 note as a masturbatory visual aid on Peep Show


• The Ting Tings


• Seeing Peep Show's Isy Suttie in the flesh (pictured)


• Elbow finally getting the recognition they deserve


• Kristen Schaal in The Flight of the Conchords


• Armstrong and Miller's Timeghost podcast


• Terry Wogan leaving Eurovision - how about him leaving Radio 2?


• Watson and Oliver at Edinburgh
  

What didn't float my boat:

• Sam Allardyce not coming to Nottingham Forest


• Graham Norton joining Eurovision


• The way newspapers, especially The Sun and Daily Mail, use the slightest thing as a stick with which to beat the BBC. I'm surprised I haven't seen a headline along the lines of 'Man's disgust at getting papercut from the 1985 edition of Radio 1's Which Way Now? pack. Fat cat Beeb bosses laugh themselves unconscious at the news during the Christmas party WE paid for'.


• The film PS I Love You


• The Ting Tings


• Nottingham Forest playing like a steaming pile of poo from August onwards


• Ashes to Ashes (the telly show, not the Bowie song)


• Dirty Sexy Money - the biggest waste of talent since ELP


• The upward curve of Frankie Boyle's career


• Hole in the Wall

What to look forward to in 2009:

• Guitar Hero: Metallica Edition


• Seeing Metallica in February for the first time in sixteen years


• Anything else Metallica-related

That's me done for this year. Happy Christmas - whether you like it or not. As Geddy Lee says, with alarming regularity immediately pre-interval, I'm 'going to take a break for some brain surgery.' Things are out of my control a little work-wise in the new year, so whether I'll be back sooner rather than later is yet to be seen.

To quote Derek Batey, be good to each other. Ta-ra.

Sexist comment from 1993 alert!

This has been written by Esther Rantzen, but don't let that put you off (mind you, I saw her daughter do a documentary the other week, and very good she was too), it gives me hope. Nearly as much hope as when Christine Bleakley followed Adrian Chiles to an empty flat for an hour. That means the Bleakley's into pudgy-faced, broad blokes from the Midlands who support unfashionable football teams. I think I may be in there.
The Rantzen article reminds me of something one of my better-looking-than-me friends used to say to me when I'd to travel to Bath to visit him at university, usually just after he'd copped with a complete siren: "Don't worry, Rich, the fat birds are better in bed. The skinny ones take it for granted you fancy 'em so just lay there like a starfish". That never explained why I was always left with the less attractive one though. Never mind, beauty's only skin deep, ain't it? Attractiveness takes so many forms, I only hope he enjoyed himself. His un-PCness seems so very decadent these days, doesn't it?

In other news, I found out today a colleague of mine likes, and is going to see Uriah Heep. Oh dear, I needed a laugh today.

And I know Joe Brown isn't exactly fashionable, but I kind of love his new single. Hear it here at track no.5.