ONE FORMULA THAT I'LL NEVER UNDERSTAND

Formula One.
For all my brilliance, I'm stumped. I've tried and I've failed.
Formula One has passed me by.
Admittedly, at great speed. But pass me by it did.
And yet, for others, it's like a religion.
Religion? Sport? Business?
Whatever the attraction, its following is massive.
So massive, in fact, I hesitate to criticise it.
But stuff it!
He who hesitates is toast.
As a spectator sport, I find it wrist-gnawingly boring. So boring, I sometimes wonder whether the cars that pass across your screen with such metronomic regularity are slowly hypnotising you into subservient submission.
"Love me. Love my logos".
The mantra can be clearly heard above the deafening din.
Yes, it's business and it's big business that drives the cars.
Everyone else falls into place.
Me? I simply fall asleep.
I hope I've not been hypnotised.

And the noble prize goes to.....Lord Rees of Ludlow

Lord Rees of Ludlow, Astronomer Royal, is an atheist, so I believe.
So it came as a shock to fellow scientists when he accepted the Templeton Prize in London for contributions to life's spiritual dimension.
Not only were they shocked, they cried boo-hoo. Had they cried boo-hoo-hoo, they would have had the same number of 0's in their woeful whimpers as Lord Rees received in his accompanying £1 million cheque.
What must be reassuring for lesser mortals than me is that such eminent scientists are prone to throwing their toys out of their prams.
In particular, I refer to Professor Sir Harry Kroto and Sir Richard Roberts, both Fellows of the Royal Society.
Lord Rees' decision to accept the prize can be interpreted in several different ways. That these two scientists' minds are not open to those possibilities, regardless of what they consider to be the probability, suggests to me that they would never be worthy winners of the prize themselves.
Maybe that's what has got their goat.
Personally, I'm prepared to entertain other theories, such is the receptive nature of my mind.
As they say, like a parachute, it works best when open.
Having come back down to earth with one almighty thump (I assume that the Almighty still controls gravity) Kroto and Roberts have now gone public with their spat.
They don't like the fact that there is another viewpoint that might test their theories that little bit further.
Maybe Lord Rees agrees with them but believes the money could be used to great effect in countering those opposing views.
Maybe he has a distant relative in Outer Mongolia who needs life-saving surgery.
Maybe he decided that the future welfare of his family matters most and who can argue with that?
Whatever his reasons, as Astronomer Royal investigating phenomena such as dark matter, I don't doubt that Lord Rees has enough grey matter to rise above the scurrilous remarks that are swilling around in this cosmic soup.
Meanwhile, for all their pre-eminence and pomposity, Kroto and Roberts have most emphatically been laid low by Lord Rees of Ludlow.

I'm taking a year out to bite a rook

It's a homophonic spoonerism. A tough old bird.

The Eighth Wonder of the World. The Viagra Falls.

It's a water fountain.

This little PIG went to market

The PIG I allude to is Portugal, Ireland and Greece.

The market? Well, that’s the one that had started off as the eminently sensible Common Market and evolved into the uncontrollable monster that we know today as the European Union.

But it is still a market - a money market where member states, bankrupt and bereft of morals, go for hand-outs.

Big ones.

It’s where Dick Turpin and turpitude come together.

Portugal, we now learn, would like their hard working, economically prudent neighbours around Europe to dig deep. Deep enough to find 80 billion euros to patch up their profligacy.

It’s not fair. It’s not right. And it’s not on.

Except that it is….on, I mean.

But why?

Well, that’s easy.

Our unelected representatives collect prodigious sums of money from member states.

They then skim off the cream to cover their salaries, pensions and expense accounts. And when I say expense accounts, I really mean the pâté de foie gravitas of expense accounts.

It’s serious stuff.

From what is left, they then exercise vicarious munificence in doling out our dosh.

It is in their interest to keep the show on the road, the train on the track and their snouts in the trough.

Pigs all.

So what’s the solution?

Instead of hand-outs, let’s offer secured loans.

In return, the Portuguese might offer the Algarve, the French their vineyards, the Italians their art treasures and the Germans their sausage industry.

Fortunately, Britain didn’t subscribe to the Euro. But if we had, what could we have offered that Europe would possibly want?

Well, probably nothing of any real value except the desperate promise that one day we would take back Neil and Glenys Kinnock.

Poor Europe has suffered for long enough.

Okay, not a fag. But what about a cigar?

So Silvio Berlusconi goes on trial yet again and this time it concerns nothing so mundane as previous defences against fraud and corruption.

No. This one involves having sex with an underage prostitute whom he believed to be the daughter of a former Egyptian leader. Maybe that last sentence isn’t imbued with pinpoint accuracy but who cares? It adds to the intrigue.

If only he could follow the example of that fine upstanding ex-President Bill Clinton and enjoy the occasional cigar.

It would certainly help to improve the bad smell that is forever surrounding his leadership.

I am useless at my work

Bloody space bar!
I amuse less at my work.

I went to The Wattle and Daub last night

...and got plastered.

At last! I've managed to get my poetry to scan.

Rooney's foul language charge a charade

Poor Wayne Rooney. It seems the whole world is on his case.
There, there, there.
One minute he turns up in an old folks home partaking in some old-time favourites like charades, next minute he turns out for Man U.
Before he even has a chance to get his brain in gear - remember, it's a slow gear change - he pops up at the far corner of the pitch.
An overexcited fan screams "CROSS!". Thinking he was still playing charades, Wayne gives the nearest camera his full range, thus doubling Fabio Capello's vocabulary into the bargain.
"And so Your Honour, my client's case should be dismissed."
Well done Mr Loophole.
Not even Wayne could lace your boots.

BREAKING NEWS: Gaddafi defects

Flat feet
Bad breath
Trapped wind

With so many defects, maybe we should exchange him?

Fire and brimstone. Without the brimstone.

Without getting too bogged down in science lessons, among other things, free radicals are known to play an important part in combustion.
Perhaps it is this inflammatory aspect that is the catalyst behind that other type of free radical, Terry Jones.
You may remember, he is the pastor from Florida who threatened to burn the Koran in protest against...well, radicals.
For a while I wondered what the hell he was thinking about.
Then I thought, I wonder if he is thinking about hell?
Eventually I came to the conclusion that he just wasn't thinking.
Not unless he was trying to create his own version of a heat seeking missal.
And here was me thinking he was an idiot.

George Osborne has an inflated opinion of himself. And...

...it's index-linked.

I can't cope with homophonic experiences

So I'm going into my herb garden to take time out.

I earned 0.007% on my investment

It was a junk bond.

You get badly drunk and fall madly in love

Are you:

a) sotted?

or

b) sotted?

Spotted the difference?

If the Royal Wedding goes ahead without a hitch...

...does that mean that Kate and Wills won't get hitched?

Politics enters the soft cell

Not unlike a couple of skunks jostling for position in the queue at the John Lewis perfume counter, there is a conspiracy afoot as political parties joust with each other for renewed popularity in prison.

But we all know that they will always smell.

It is no surprise that this coincides with prisoners insisting on the right to vote. A captive market if ever there was one.

Today, yet another politician was jailed. Ex-Labour MP Jim Devine was sentenced to 16 months in prison for expenses fraud. A selfless act simply to get nearer to his voters.

One might suspect it was utter folly to jeopardise a promising career - a career built on promises that he never kept.

What he did keep, however, was taxpayers’ money. And lots of it. Money that was earmarked for more worthy causes than lining his own pockets.

In his defence, and in order to save his own backside, Jim Devine blamed everyone except his own mother.

His counsel might well have advised him to save his backside for prison where I believe his voters are the ones who swing to the left.

“Put your ‘x’ in the box” is about to take on a ‘hole’ new meaning and it’s certainly not going to be Devine.

Lucky Jim!

Bowdler had his work cut out

As a result, so did Shakespeare.

You’ll find him in the dugout. Under stand?

Let’s not get too heavy on Fabio Capello, the England football manager.

His contention that he requires only 100 words to communicate with his players is probably not too far from the truth.

One needs to remember, not that regular readers of my blogs need any reminding, is that the English language is the natural bedfellow for the double entendre. The fact that we attribute a French term to describe this genre (oh, there’s another French term) is out of respect for the multifaceted nature of the French personality. Put another way, they are, at the very least, two-faced.

But I digress.

And so, with only 100 words, it is sometimes necessary to use the same phrase to mean two different things.

For example, the referee may drop the coin when deciding who kicks off.

Capello might well interject “You useless tosser!”

That same phrase could easily be applied to any of a number of England players during the course of a game.

He may choose to single out one of these players with the threat that he is about to be substituted.

The phrase “I’ll pull you off at half time” would be enough to convey that thought.

It can, however, also be an implicit promise of a half-time reward for any player who might be playing a blinder of a game.

“Go for the tackle!” needs little explanation.

Vinny Jones understood this perfectly, much to Paul Gascoigne’s chagrin. The true value of that portmanteau word - coming from ‘shag’ and ‘grin’ – will be lost on most players.

“My granny can run faster than that.”

Strictly speaking, this is not a double entendre but it has great benefit in letting Wayne Rooney know what pace he has to achieve if he is to score, if you know what I mean.

After their latest match, we asked Capello to comment on his critics.

“I no like cricket. No understand it. Understand?”

Yes. Fully. 100 words, not out.