It May Wean Me From My Pickle Vinegar-Drinking Habit

Sometimes great and fantastic stuff can come from deep and prolonged misery. But you know what? I think I may have recently discovered the best and most brilliant example of this phenomena. "Dulce et Decorum Est"? Forget about it. Pretty pictures of sunflowers torn from interminable mental anguish, much like an earlobe is torn from a crazy head? Mere Crayola scribblings. The beautiful, lyrical melancholy of sacred cow around this parish, Mr Guy Garvey Out Of Elbow? OK, you may have got me on that one. But let's say my discovery is almost up there. Sing it long and sing it loud: Happiness, thy name is Bovril.

Let me start at the top. I have a cold. I am safely assuming that I am not alone in the feeling that every time I have a cold, I redefine the phrase "deep and prolonged misery", as each time I recover, I somehow manage to forget just how annoying having a cold is. Especially if it's not quite bad enough to silence the aggravating, earnest corner of the brain which is just obsessed with getting out of a cosy bed and going into ridiculous work. And doubly especially when there is a sore throat involved. Did you know the average human swallows 2,000 times a day? Nothing like a searing slice of pain whipping across your neck twice a minute to remind you of that juicy little statistic. Anyhow. "Hot beverage!" my white blood cells were crying. "Bring us a hot beverage, so that we have the energy to continue fighting our good fight!" What a quandary - can't have tea or coffee, cos I don't want the dairy to clog up the pipework, can't have hot 'bina, cos I'm not 5. Suddenly a burst of feverish inspiration!

Oh, Bovril. You came and you gave without taking. The perfect drink. It's hot, it's nutritious, it's more delicious than a mug full of liquid has any right to be. It's like drinking gravy, for God's sake, but gravy that you're allowed to drink without people throwing you out of their establishments. I can't believe more people don't drink this all the time. True, I've got through a jar in two days, and as the sodium makes itself known in my system I can actually hear my arteries fuzzing up. That, and I'm so dehydrated that I'm not so much "going to the toilet" as "huffing talcum powder out of my body". Plus, it's done absolutely stone-cold nothing to affect my cold, apart from give it a delightful meaty hue.

But still, I feel like I have discovered a whole new colourful prism of experience. A brave new world where the horrendous suffering of the winter sniffles can inspire the revelation that beef can sooth a hurty throat. And bring into being a post so solipsistic that even hardened bloggers would cock a snook at it. Truly, friends, it is a wonderful world.

Like We Won't Notice The Cadburys Gorilla Needs To Drum In Slo-mo Since They Changed The Music

This is how the advertising industry picture the viewing public: Imagine, if you will, a small, idiotic child. Now give him a crayon in the brightest possible hue: "Dolt Blue," for example, or "Yellow Shit-for-Brains". Now make him draw a big, happy, simple face. Just a wobbly circle, two dots and a smudge of jam and dribble for a smile. Now make the child eat the paper, wait for nature to take its inexorable, disgusting course, and the resultant mess will be a fairly accurate representation of the intelligence of the average viewer, according to Mr Advertiser.

And they're right, of course. We're all complete imbeciles when it comes to making decisions about spending our rapidly dwindling cash-monies. I'm possibly one of the most intelligent animals on the planet, and I was duped into spending Five English Pounds on a pointless super-sweet caffeinated beverage and pie of mince simply because the beverage was contained within a cardboard cup which was prematurely seasonally red. Christ, it's still 7 weeks until the birth of Santa! (Sorry, Bart Simpson. No, I don't mean 7 weeks until the birth of Bart Simpson. I... Oh, you know what I mean) And because of this wonderful, magical time of giving to various multi-national behemoths on behalf of your Auntie Maud, the laughing advert peoples are going batshit overdrive and spewing out the Chrimbo ads at a rate of sleigh-bell jingling knots.

They're all thematically very similar this year, excepting of course the pre-Christmas adverts for new and increasingly repulsive and gaudy means of supporting your festive buttocks. I don't really understand how so many sofa companies exist. I mean, who actually gets a new sofa each Christmas? I have existed for a good few years now and I have only ever bought one sofa. And that was with someone else, so that's only 0.5 of a sofa each. I only remember one change of sofa in my entire growing-up period. There can't be a sustainable market, unless there is an insane and terribly rich sub-section of the UK population who would welcome the invention of a sofa vending machine, as featured in a couch gag on the Simpsons (I assume. I may have made that up. Yay, I could write for the Simpsons!) Although saying that, I do recognise the utmost importance of Sitting within a Christmas period. It will be my third favourite verb in December.

But yes - in general all the actual big Xmas campaigns this year have gone for the "Celebrities - they won't be mixing with people like you!" angle, featuring a host of family-friendly, cuddly stars hanging out with each other, and no-one else. I once had a dream - trust me, this is going somewhere, possibly not as inspirational as it could be - that I was allowed access into a hallowed place, a supermarket that only celebrities were allowed to enter. It was entirely stocked with stuff that us norms had never heard of, the slightly gross highlight being coffee-flavoured Marmite. Morrison's have clearly been rummaging around in my subconscious, with Richard Hammond, Denise Van Outen and that gardening fella-me-lad palling about in their local hypermarche. They even know each other's holiday plans. They're obviously all part of some vile daisy-chain of sexual depravity, to which none of us unclean specimens will ever be granted access to.

And over to Casa del Marks'n'Sparks, in the permanent picturesque snowy winter that has never actually happened in British Christmas history. The usual M&S wimmin suffer their usual compulsion to gaily dance around with demented grins on their beauteous faces whenever they're within 10 metres of an M&S product, and the one who always lolls about in her pants lolls about in her pants (despite the aforementioned imaginary blizzard), and they are joined by bloody hell! It's Take That! And Lily Cole. Her presence strikes a bum note in an otherwise generic campaign. Her combination of an 8ft tall body of a nubile wench, Lolita-esque flirtation and startling haunted china doll face, which looks perfectly at home in a high-fashion high-concept fashion spread in Vogue, doesn't sit well in a mass-appeal advert where she's gadding about with Barlow et al, as it makes all of Take That look a) about 500 years old and b) like a load of filthy paedos. And again - no lowlife proletariat scum to be found.

Lastly in this non-exhaustive flick through the ad breaks Sainsbury's, who are admittedly running a festive advert with their credit-crunch normal mum, offering up their shop as the perfect place to buy shit presents for people you don't care about. But fear not, gouty saviour of the children Jamie Oliver hasn't left us. He's teamed up with Ant and Dec to cater a super-douper celebrity party. Oh, but look at Ant and Dec, the lovable fools! They want to serve cheese and pineapple! The evil advert people must really hate the Geordie twosome, as they are cast as absolute flaming morons. The most basic culinary feats dazzle and amaze them. "Look, I'm drizzling!" Ant (or maybe Dec) gibbers at one point, happy as a two-year-old marching into his parent's anniversary dinner and proudly displaying his first, gleaming, solo stool.

Oh, hang on. It's cos they seem like normal folk. They're just like us. Unquestionable cretins.

You Heard It Here The 675th Time: Obama Is President

We will get you back to the regularly scheduled programme of whinging about opticians and light-to-middling stalking of writers and comedians shortly, but just one more comment on important current events that every single person in the whole world, and that is factually accurate, has dun a writing about.

I didn't get the chance to stay up and watch it in real time, unfortunately, but I've been wallowing in the coverage on BBC Breakfast this morning. It seems that the feeling of euphoria flowing from the streets of the US spread into the presenters, whose normal grating fake bonhomie was replaced by a genuine warmth and enthusiasm for the story. Hard not to, really, with the endless VTs of Americans screaming and crying with joy. I had the same gut reaction as do when I watch Graham Coxon come home at the end of the Coffee and TV video. Instant shedding of hot, salty tears of joy, as if I was cutting into the world's largest and happiest onion.

There is, of course, a danger in being swept up in the hype and fervour of the day, but I can categorically say this is the most important thing that has ever happened or will ever happen in the whole world and universe and I'm alive and everything, so take that, ancient ancestors. It's just so nice to be part of a genuine day o'history that's not about people gleefully blowing up other people. McCain was dignified, reminding us that, hey, he may not have been that bad a president, were it not for the insane whirling caricature of redneck America at his side. I feel slightly sorry for McCain, who (in my view, that of someone who don't know nuffink 'bout nuffink) seemed to be fighting a losing battle against his own supporters who never really liked him anyway, and sabotaged his message at every turn by bellowing about Arab Muslim terrorists and the like. And as for Obama's speech - he was so composed, so engaging and handsome, I absolutely refuse to believe he wasn't created in a petri dish by Aaron Sorkin. Somewhere in the background, his campaign manager was snogging his assistant, FINALLY. And then, blaring stately music!

I'm looking forward to the next 76 days, where Bush will presumably adhere to the ole' "Whaddaya gonna do, fire me?" defence, and steal all the paperclips from the office, order the destruction of Iran, and probably totally go home at 4:oo to catch DOND every day until January.

Oh, oh! Breaking news! Voting Machine Voted President:



The thing that you have GOT to love is, and always shall be, The Onion.