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Turning a people carrier into a mobile disco

People carriers. They’re for married couples who have been overactive with their loins, and suddenly find themselves in charge of four screaming mini-me’s who they don’t really like, and so decide to keep them out of the house as much as humanly possible by keeping them active in endless football / karate / ballet lessons, which involve using up what’s left of the Earth’s oil resources to ferry them around, so that by the time the kids are old enough to inherit a planet choking in carbon emissions and rising sea levels, at least they’ll know how to dance to Swan Lake. Although they’ll have never seen a swan.

To avert this terrible fate for people carriers everywhere, my ex-uni mate Di (who is usually seen generally cooking up amazingly silly ideas – she could be a Kari Byron for the Birmingham edition of Mythbusters) has turned a people carrier into a mobile disco, which is a much more sensible use of such a car. Watch the video, and then go and vote for her idea.

Maybe I’ve been watching too much Top Gear…

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Excited about Top Gear Live

I’m not a car person – I drive an elderly Daewoo Matiz with all the power of a lawnmower – and yet, Top Gear is one of the reasons why I value paying my BBC licence fee. (The other reasons being Dragons’ Den, Doctor Who, Newsnight – oh, and it’s illegal and immoral for me not to!)

So the news that the Top Gear team are going on tour around the world sounds really good, especially since the first performance is round the corner in October. Does this mean, though, there’ll be less new Top Gear on our screens? There’s only so many repeats on Dave that I can watch … actually, that’s a lie. I happily leave multiple repeats of Top Gear on as nice background noise all the time!

Anyone else excited at the prospect of Top Gear Live?

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Has Richard Hammond gone all girly?

Richard Hammond on Top Gear 7 Oct 2007

So on Sunday night I settled down on the sofa, like most of the British population, for the new series of the fantastic Top Gear – the programme for people who like silly blokes.

But oh dear oh dear oh dear. What on earth is Richard Hammond wearing? I know he’s the girliest presenter on the testosterone-laden programme by a long shot, but even so someone should have had a word in his ear about that jacket. Whatever was written on it, it looked too well-designed, as if it was a jacket from Top Shop that a girlfriend had bought for her reluctant fella. Which, come to think of it, is probably what happened. (bear in mind I’m not usually moved to write in an angry fashion about what television presenters are wearing!)

But it gets worse. During the film the presenters made driving around Europe in super sportcars looking for the ideal road, Richard is always seen wearing a namby-pamby necklace. Not a silver or gold one, but a chunky black one. Just like the kind of necklace I was reluctantly persuaded into wearing during one summer weekend in Italy. And it looked as wrong and girly on him as it did on me.

He’s a television presenter. He’s run PR agencies. He ought to know what is relatively acceptable and unacceptable to a Top Gear audience. What gives?

And another thing, the Top Gear team seem to have decided that what makes a great road primarily consists of steep bends and turns up and down sheer mountain peaks. Have they ever tried driving into mid-Wales late at night? It’s not exhilerating then, let me tell you – mind-numbingly dull, tedious and dangerous comes to mind. Give me six shimmering lanes of concrete any day of the week!

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Happy Horny Werewolf Day

Since I’m suffering with headaches and no sleep (thanks to man-flu, before you ask), I can’t seem to concentrate on anything for more than 5 nanoseconds today. Which isn’t much of an improvement on my usual concentration span of 10 nanoseconds, but there ya go. So instead of reading up on project management software, here are the random moments in my brain:

- Thanks to the recent post about Top Gear’s adventures in America, I am now ranked second on Google when you search for “man love rules ok”. Fortunately, this has not led to an influx of people begging for man/boy love on my blog, as what happened in this blog’s previous incarnation.

- If you’re recovering from yesterday’s Valentine love fest, then bear in mind that in Ancient Rome, today would be Lupercalia day, a Pagan festival involving blood, werewolves and sex.

“Many of the (men) … run up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs. And many women of rank also purposely get in their way … present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped in delivery” — The Parallel Lives by Plutarch

. So how we’ve mutated from striking each other with shaggy thongs to zombified-men wandering around Tescos or Asda looking for the right red-coloured flower, card and chocolate box, heaven knows. (I was prepared this year, before you ask!) All hail power of Hallmark. (with thanks to Warren Ellis, as if he needs my thanking!)

- Weren’t the Brits fantastically dull last night? The music was crap, all the rock’n'roll had been sucked out of the occasion by corporate managerial swines and Take That did their wearysome ballad Patience instead of the crowd-stomping quite-jolly Beatles/ELO-ripping Shine. The only highlight was the first five minutes with the Scissor Sisters recreating their black-puppetry video onstage. Russell Brand just kept going on and on making verbose random introductions that seemed to make no sense of all and totally ignored the audience who in turn ignored him. If you’ve made it to the end of this paragraph, then you can fill in the punchline.

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