POP GEAR

So 4.4 million people tuned in to watch Top Gear. What does that tell us about how good the show was? Absolutely nothing. They didn’t tune in because they liked it, they tuned in because deep down they knew they wouldn't, but wanted to be proved wrong. Unfortunately, and inevitably, they were not.

Imagine if James Bond walked off the set of the next Bond movie and vowed never to come back. Not Daniel Craig mind you, James Bond. What would the producers do for the next movie? Make a Bond film without Bond in the hope nobody notices? Fooling themselves into thinking that international espionage and the inner working of the British Intelligence Service are what people actually watch Bond movies for? No, they’d probably call it a day.

Which would have been a very good idea when Clarkson went last year. May and Hammond knew the show couldn’t work without the three of them so they left too. The BBC probably knew that as well, but had no choice but to give it a go. So they pretended people watch Top Gear to see people - any people - dicking about in cars, and re-booted the show. 

KILLING TIME

Passing gallstones hurts, but passing time hurts more. Especially if you’re eleven and waiting to play Star Wars Battlefront on your brand new Xbox One.

First the box needs updating. Cue two hour wait with mid-strength teary tantrum. But we get there ahead of time, and suddenly there’s hope. The Microsoft account works. Good. The Xbox profile copies across. Good good. We get out the new game - on a good old disc God bless it. No more of this interminable downloading nonsense. 

But guess what, it turns out the game isn’t finished. The bloke who was supposed to have finished it must have nipped out for a vape and left it on his workbench where the bloke who was supposed to put it in a case and take it to Amazon mistakenly put it in a case and took it to Amazon.

FREE LUNCH

The youngest is contemplating his plain cheese burger, the eldest his burrito. The youngest’s friend is contemplating his chicken nuggets and I’m contemplating him. He’s small with specs and ginger hair. Quite cute looking I suppose you could say. Which makes it all the more difficult, because I’m thinking about the most humane way of disposing of him.

To be clear, this isn’t the kind of thing I do on anything like a regular basis. In fact I can’t remember the last time I disposed of a child - let alone a small, relatively cute one with ginger hair and specs. But fate has dealt young Reginald a cruel hand, because he’s standing between me and £100,000. 

GOD AWFUL ADVERTISING

Funny how the laws of advertising don’t apply when it comes to God. You’d think a once all-powerful worldwide movement trying desperately to hang on to the last remnants of credibility would try a bit harder.

You can imagine God’s brand people briefing the agency:

"Okay, so the challenge we have is that people are repulsed by our use of meaningless cliches, antiquated language and constant references to insanely cruel and sadistic ancient torture techniques." 

And the agency goes away, gives it plenty of the old blue sky, and comes back with this:

At which the brand people pop a bottle of bubbly, give each other a hearty pat on the back and brace themselves for an unprecedented surge in church attendance and a complete reversal of society’s encroaching secularism.