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.

White winter hymnal

I've just been to a funeral. Don't worry, it was no one close, it was a neighbour. Of course when it isn't somebody you knew really well you can enjoy the proceedings a little more. Myself and another neighbour were about the youngest there after grandchildren. I suspect a lot of those who knew the deceased wondered who those two stylish blokes were. There was an order of service which informed us that there were to be two Beatles' numbers played during the arrival and departure of the coffin. I could hear a woman behind say "Well she never told me she liked The Beatles, and I've known her for eighteen years". Who doesn't like The Beatles? And it's true folks, people of the Beatles' generation are now croaking. How old does that make you feel? I imagine at my funeral people will say, as One Step Beyond blares out "I didn't know he liked this".
There was an address by a bloke who looked like the Willo the Wisp version of Kenneth Williams. The whole thing could have been written by Alan Bennett; he kept banging on about pragmatism, I've had to come home and look pragmatism up in the dictionary. I can now reveal, exclusively, that I'm a pragmatist.
And the congregation were very lacklustre in the hymn-singing. I'm most definitely not a religious man, but I was the only person putting any kind of heat under it, singing-wise. Besides, there's a line in All Things Bright and Beautiful about 'purple heads', and that always makes me stifle a laugh.

I guess funerals are pretty good at focusing the mind. I'm forty in just over two years and I've yet to see the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the Grand Canyon or the Northern Lights. The funeral and a motivational 'seize the day' talk this week by a lady colleague I never knew cared has given me fresh impetus for 2009.

This song's been played relentlessly on my iPod this week. Radcliffe and Maconie started playing it in the summer, but it left me cold. Now we've arrived in December with its short days, sun low in the sky, frozen puddles and a general crispness in the air it all makes sense. It's definitely a winter song - creepy video too.