I’m currently being attacked by one, or possibly more, of these 21st centrury viruses. These days you don’t just get a cold one day, spend a day or so in bed and then get better. Viruses are getting cleverer – makes sense I suppose, evolution and all that. They creep up slowly over a period of several weeks so your immune system never gets a chance to get into full swing. As a result they get progressively worse by stealth. By the time your immune system switches on it’s all over the place. So, I’m off work in an attempt to kick start my own immune system by giving it what it likes: sleep and relaxation.

After the demo on thursday – you know the one, the biggest weekday demonstration in Britain EVER ? Feeling pretty content that so many hundreds and thousands of people share our opinions on George Bush and the rest of the right-wing capitalistas, I sat in front of the telly and watched the news coverage which was very short compared to the other news items, but nonetheless longer than usual for such a piece of real news. It was all going so well. Even John Simpson sounded impressed by the days events. And then I made a dreadful mistake.

Question Time

No no no – why did I do it ? Clive James. Clive Bloody James. Clive “Smug Overprivileged Unfunny Traitor” James. The bit I saw before I threw the remote control across the room consisted of Clive Boy, a tory and a few Eltham Nazis in the audience verbally abuse Vanessa Redgrave and some inept LibDem woman using the words “Terrorism”, “Democracy” and “Dictator” as if they knew what they meant and as if they had any relevance to the current oil wars.

It was particularly irritating seeing Clive James, smugly chucking out these cliches. I read half a book of his once and there were some funny bits in it. It was about coming to England from Australia in his youth and occasionally he made me laugh which on reflection makes me feel slightly violated.. [ have you any idea how difficult it is to type a blog with a parakeet pecking and typing on the keyboard ? ] But I got fed up with the book because it contained several, irritating, themes:

• I used to be a socialist in my foolish youth
• I didn’t have a job because I was trying to do something more worthy like becoming a writer but the money my parents sent me kept running out
• I had wealthy friends in high places who pulled strings for me
• I had sex with lots of attractive women
• I’m cleverer than you, and most of the people I meet

Clive now prefers to be referred to as a “Poet”. Yes Clive – whatever you say. I can think of other words beginning with ‘P’ that would describe you more accurately so why not write a nice poem with these: pointless, parasite, portly, polled, pillock, pedantic, purulent, pratt, painful, primadonna, pustule, penis, punani, pack-of-shit, pube, privileged, pinheaded, pukeworthy, priggish, pompous, plain, petty, pugnacious, ponce.

Question time has the knack of bringing me right down and making me think the world is doomed. Luckily Charlie Brooker, Jeremy Hardy, and Rich Hall managed to cheer me up and remind me that there are some people in the world who can think clearly. I wish I could.