Peace out, James Brown.

The King of Pop bids farewell to the Godfather of Soul.

Inches and centimetres

Having debunked the rumour that I recently died, I have another, of even bigger concern to deny - "bigger" being the operative word, and more concerning than death, you might ask? If you're a guy, you'll understand.

A survey of more than 1,000 men in India has concluded that condoms made according to international sizes are too large for a majority of Indian men.

This, from a BBC News article, Condoms 'too big' for Indian men, has been the bone - sorry, the bane of my existence for the past two weeks. And the subject of many e-mails, mostly from white guys, liberally copying in their address books, and pasting the article below some small joke about size (though you don't see me complaining about length).

The article spread even to my mother, who is so news illiterate she still thinks Princess Diana was murdered.
"There are people talking in the office, San," she said over the phone. "They say your penis is small."
"What?!"
It was a conversation I didn't want to have with my mum. Again.

In my defence, and that of Indian guys everywhere, who, like me, have been forwarded this article, mocked by their friends and mothers and injured themselves on retracting tape measure, I say this:

It is not the size of the boat, people, it's the motion of the ocean. And, let's not forget, that over Indian seas (incidentally the third largest body of water in the world) is birthplace of the Kama Sutra and a billion children.

"From our population, the evidence is Indians are doing pretty well," says Sunil Mehra, the former editor of the Indian version of men's magazine Maxin. "With apologies to the poet Alexander Pope, you could say, for inches and centimetres, let fools contend."

• Condoms 'too big' for Indian men via [BBC News]

Not dead.

If this blog is my life "approximately", then I died about two weeks ago. And only three of you were concerned (only one left a comment - thank you, Nyssa). What's with that?

Well, when I ended the last post with a health scare and the words, 'The End', I had intended on writing sooner to explain. But the truth is, my life - not death - needed some serious examination. And I've spent the last week or so doing just that - getting it back on track; evaluating my work, my relationships, and my health.

Of course, none are really the better for it, but at least I have a clearer perspective on things. Even if my absense, these days, is harder to maintain.

In web 2.0, it's hard to play dead.

You can blog your own death, sure. But keeping a low profile on the Internet is a much harder thing. Visiting MySpace, for example, the online equivalent of popping into a Starbucks (albeit one full of emo kids pouting at camera phones), lets other members know when you last logged in.

And if you're slow on your old keyboard shortcuts, your instant messenger of choice might automatically sign you in as 'online', or as I like to set it, 'out for lunch' (which is the most likely).

These signs, and the recent changes to my web site, I imagine, put the most observant of my readers at ease. For the other three, rest assured, I am not dead.

Pain in my heart

A little pain in my heart
Just won't let me be
Wake up restless nights
Lord and I can't even sleep.

Mmm, mmm yeah
Stop this little pain in my heart

Pain in my heart, Otis Redding
(covering the Rolling Stones)

It's a little less romantic than I remember, sitting in bed, listening to Otis Redding tonight. But that's because I do have a pain in my heart but it is less the pang of love than it is the sharp shooting sensation in the right side of my chest.

It woke me up about 3 am this morning. I couldn't get back to sleep and so rang NHS Direct, our health service's 24 hour hot line, which, I'm told, is not the number to chat to naughty nurses. I described my symptoms with the help of our soul singing friend.

"Mmm, mmm yeah," I said. "Stop this little pain in my heart."

Unfortunately, the nurse could not. Nor could she appreciate the song, or the inappropriate jokes I made about her naughtiness. Perhaps the pain is comeuppance for mine.

I have fallen spectacularly off my detox tonight, and indulged in more than a little gluehwein at a German Christmas market. But hey, it's Christmas. And it's German. And since I don't eat bratwurst I had little choice but the hot, spicy goodness of mulled wine. And now I'm left with the sharp, shooting pain of what might be a heart attack.

And so I leave you readers, perhaps for the last time, in the hope that a problem shared is indeed a problem halved (or, in the case of my readership divided by about 20); and that you might help me stop this little pain in my heart, before it stops me.

THE END.

They don't call it '24 Hour Fitness' for nothing.

There's no better blog fodder than my infrequent trips to the gym. Unless, of course, you include my infrequent relationships with lesbians. Or maybe my penchant for social faux pas. (Wow, I really do a lot of stupid stuff...)

So, I thought I'd share with you something that I did this morning. I went to the gym. It was something I'd not done for some time. In fact, in the month that I'd not been I'd thought to cancel my membership but - and this is the way my mind works - I figured it was a tiny bit less of an effort to actually go to the gym than it was to cancel my membership.

I'd felt terrible about not going for a month, likening the waste to throwing £35 onto the ground. (In the run-up to Christmas even that's going to have to stop.) So, having decided to once again utilise my membership, I was buoyed by a sense of self-righteousness and the relief of not having to admit defeat to Kevin, my idiot instructor.

And so, when I got to the gym early this morning and the door was locked, I convinced myself that I was such an enthusiastic athlete that I was first to arrive. I waited no longer than a few seconds before Kevin came to let me in.

"Oh, how eager am I?!" I said, cocky and from under an oversized wooly hat. (I'd imagined I was Rocky Balboa when I got dressed that morning, but had neither the physique or the appropriate gym gear to pull it off convincingly.)
"Hold on," he said, opening the door. "I just popped out for a minute. Come on in."
As I did, and signed the book, I saw that above my name were others more eager than me. 2 am, 4 am, 5 am, read the 'time-in' column.
"What'd you say, mate?" asked Kevin, from behind the counter.
"Yeah...nothing," I said, pulling off my hat. "Just slept in a bit this morning, that's all."

• The Weights Are The Hardest Part
• Kevin's Head

Has anyone ever told you you look like Ashley Olson?

I tell you what, it's a bloody good job that I'm very secure in my sexuality...

I came across MyHeritage.com via a MySpace profile that had posted a "Celebrity Collage".

As part of its development on face recognition in genealogy (and part gimmick, clearly), MyHeritage.com reads your photo, detects your face and, by way of dubious algorithm, associates it with the celebrities you resemble the most.

I thought I'd have a go.

• MyHeritage

Biscuits keep falling on my head

Lovely though she is, I must apologise on behalf of Myleene Klass, for her soapy breasts and their unlikely appearance on my blog last week. I realise the post was somewhat out of character and I do hope it didn't offend my more conservative readers.

The truth is, I've not been feeling myself recently. Quite literally. I'm undertaking a month long detox, in which I'm abstaining from booze, fags and sex. Some are easier to give up than others. I don't smoke really and it's actually more of an effort to attract girls than to...repel them.

Jesus will tell you however (when he's next in) that temptation is the hardest part. Indeed, my four days in detox has felt like a biblical 40. Short of the devil himself making an appearance I have been plagued with the wicked snares of desire.

The inescapably attractive Myleene Klass is one, appearing bikini-clad and buxom on ITV's I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. A burgeoning social life is another. This weekend alone will see me at a club, a house party and a wedding reception, with orange juice and clarity at each.

As if that weren't enough, junk food - perhaps the hardest thing for me to give up - has practically been falling from the sky. Sorry, has actually been falling from the sky, I kid you not. Yesterday, and not for the first time, I was pummelled by chocolate biscuits as I walked down Princess Street. What's that about? Go down there yourself and you'll see crumbs where I was.

Luckily, I've not reached the stage where the smashed remains of chocolate biscuits have tempted me from my detox. Should the bikini-clad and buxom fall into my lap I might be swayed.

	Sorry girls... I'm breaking my 'no ITV' rule, skipping Celebrity Scissorhands (deciding instead to make a large donation to Children In Need) and watching I'm a Celebrity... Here's why.
So long 'Celebrity Scissorhands!'
Why I'm watching 'I'm a Celebrity'...	Ladies and gentlemen, Myleene Klass.

• Celebrity Scissorhands (BBC)
• I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here (ITV)

Washed Up

When I moved out of my family home into my own place one of first things I bought was a plastic washing up bowl. It's more symbolic than it sounds.

To me, it, and all the new kitchenware I'd bought, represented a new independence and a break from the Indian culture on which I was raised.

I'd never seen a washing up bowl until I went to my girlfriend's house. English people, I discovered, put their dishes in this bowl, soaked them in hot water and, some time later, rinsed them off. It seemed to be the antithesis of the Sisypheon ordeal that was washing up in my house.

My long suffering Mum stood making hot chapatis while we ate, and somehow managed to finish hers first and be at the kitchen sink quicker than we could say alloo sag. (My pronunciation always slowed me down somewhat.)

There would be no after dinner conversation. The trays had to be washed - jaldi, jaldi - before the colourful culinary delights left stains in their steel compartments. Mum would stand, hunched over the sink, scrubbing the trays as they clanked, one by one, before her.

The plastic bowl, I observed, allowed my girlfriend's family to dispose of waste liquid into the sink, whilst keeping the washing up water relatively clean.

It was perfect, I thought. While the dishes soaked I could...listen to Radio 4, read the newspaper, have a glass of wine - do all the things we never did in our house. I could...be white and middle-class. All thanks to a plastic washing up bowl.

It wasn't long, however, after moving into my own place that I began to find the plastic bowl a bit cumbersome. I couldn't get much in it and I didn't get much out of it. It just became another thing to wash up. And while I let things soak I realised that I didn't care much for Radio 4, I never bought the paper and I didn't know how to drink wine without getting drunk.

I took it out of the sink. And my washing up bowl, for some time, became my fruit bowl.

Some say multiculturalism is a melting pot. I think it's more a plastic washing up bowl. And I've decided - and can only imagine its cultural ramifications - that I'm getting a dishwasher.

Borat. And mixing with the wrong crowd.

I went to see Borat for the second time yesterday. But I don't imagine it'll become the multiple viewing experience Superman Returns was. In fact, the first time I went to see it I didn't see it at all. I made the mistake of going on an Orange Wednesday, when mobile phone customers get two-for-one cinema tickets, saw the enormous queue of Borat fans, turned around and walked home.

I was put off, not exactly by the size of the crowd, but by its components. And that sounds like a terribly snobby thing to say. But, to quote the Onion, stereotypes are a real time saver, and just a glance at the crowd revealed a group of people probably unable to separate the irony from the racism, misogyny and anti-semitism of Borat.

The genius of Sacha Baron Cohen's creation is that it makes its point by seemingly embracing these bigoted ideas, turning the mirror on its subjects and making us question the boundaries of humour. When I finally saw the film yesterday I found that my stereotyping was spot on, that the crowd, which I'd tried to avoid by going to the matinee, asked no questions of its humour, instead erupted into hysterical laughter without the slightest delay.

I was, and not for the first time in Shrewsbury, immersed in a crowd with whom I shared little in common. And it made me feel as uneasy as Borat's tasteless gags. If you don't see these as satire, I thought, you are essentially laughing at racism, misogyny and anti-semitism. Were these people, I thought, looking at the crowd, the ones accusing me of terrorism? Calling me "über-gay"?

Is it good satire? It is occasionally. I liked when he lambasted people who deserved to be lambasted (and not just because I like to use the word 'lambast'). The frat boys in the Winnebago were truly horrible racist, sexist bastards. The scene in which Borat fearlessly strides into a Texan rodeo ring and loudly praises his hosts' "War of Terror" to wild applause is brilliantly surreal. But picking on shopkeepers by smashing their cheap antiques or presenting Atlanta folk with a bag of his after-dinner poo is just bullying one step up from Jeremy Beadle.

Is Borat funny? Yes, it is, and fine TV. And perhaps that's how it could have been better enjoyed, on the small screen and with like minded people, with whom I could have been sure to share the joke. But yesterday, I think, I was sitting in the wrong crowd.

• Stereotypes Are A Real Timesaver, The Onion

Greatest Hits

I spent a big portion of last night, horizontal on my sofa, going through my entire blog, assigning labels to every post in its three year history. It was a Sisyphean task. But an enlightening one, in that it allowed me to see the frequency with which I write about certain subjects.

By this study you could say that this is something of a travel blog. There are 43 posts in this category, but that's not necessarily because I travel a lot. It's just that I post a lot when I travel.

I also write quite frequently about dating. It's quite alarming how many posts are labelled both 'sex' and 'faux pas'. That should give you some indication of my prowess. (Still single, ladies. Form an orderly queue.)

So, the next time you're horizontal on your sofa browse my blog by label and you might find, if I may say so myself, some absolute corkers. Like these:

From Travel:

• Postcard from South Beach, Miami
• Postcard from Ohio. That's right. Ohio.
• Postcard from Hollywood

From Dating:

• Dumped.com
• My Mental Girlfriend
• Pretzel Logic

From Music:

• Michael Jackson: The Monster that Lurks Among Us
• Thrilling Me Softly
• Sylvia Plath

My type.

I don't exactly have "a type". I find the whole notion a bit non-sensical. Beyond the obvious physical attributes (attractive, please) surely we all want to meet someone who is funny, interesting and smart, etc. (I doubt there is much demand for the sombre, dull and dumb.) Besides I've learnt, in this town, not to be so picky.

There is one attribute however that I assume most people demand in their prospective partners. And that is a compatible sexual orientation. It's an important quality sure, but one that, for some reason, I seem to have difficulty finding.

I didn't find it last weekend. And I'm beginning to wonder if my type is, in fact, lesbian. Or whether I am so metrosexual - so far from the alpha male - that I am considered attractive by the lesbian community. Or even, ironically, so often perceived as gay that my own gaydar is somewhat faulty. In any case, and to quote Larry David, I am a "friend o' lesbians".

It started in 1997 with my first girlfriend, who - you could say - played the butch to my femme. She whipped me in sports (though that's no great feat), she wore her hair shorter than mine and spent an inordinate amount of time with her best friend. She is now, incidentally, a pro-golfer. And full-time lesbian.

More recently I dated a lesbian that I found on match.com. Her profile read, "22-year-old woman...seeking women 18-35." Remarkably, she said, I was just her type. Needless to say, it didn't work out. I guess something got between us.

And then, of course, last weekend. And Sarah. And although I'm off the dating scene at the moment I was happy to meet the delightful Scotswoman and publisher of My Little Pony magazine. And, while I doubt her job has anything to do with her sexuality (unless My Little Pony is some sort of horrible euphemism), I was quite surprised when she asked me out and even more surprised when I heard the next day that she was gay.

With the news I began to piece together the evening. And it's a wonder I didn't work it out for myself. She did have rather boyish hair, she dressed not unlike KD Lang and, of course, she was into me. There was a point in the evening when we were dancing and she grabbed me by the hand and sort of twirled me around. "I'm sorry," she said with a laugh. "I'm used to being the lead." I didn't think much of it at the time. But now it makes complete sense.

• Dumped.com

David Blaine: Street Magic (sort of)

WARNING: Okay kids, this one's got some bad language.
But it's f****** funny.

• Classic (actual) David Blaine trick

What's wrong with Ricky Gervais's Extras?

I suspected something was wrong with Ricky Gervais when he, and writing partner Stephen Merchant, ended The Office with a two-part Christmas special, in which its star-crossed lovers became uncrossed, so to speak, and all lived happily ever after.

It was lovely, don't get me wrong. But at that moment, when Dawn and Tim kissed, a whole country was watching. And it applauded. Long gone were the days when you and your few like-minded friends would cringe at David Brent, the world's most annoying boss. Now annoying bosses all over the country were watching. And they'd bought the DVD.

Then came along Extras and an admirable effort to shed the catch-phrase loving contingent of Gervais's mainstream audience. Viewing figures dropped and, for the first season at least, Gervais and Merchant remembered how to make a cult TV show.

They just forgot to make it funny.

Okay, that's not fair. It has its moments. But, as the second series finished last week, I wondered, what's wrong with Extras?

I came up with this:

• Andy Millman is the least funny character
  Ricky Gervais is Andy Millman, struggling bit-part actor who gave up his day job in the hope of achieving fame and fortune. Actually, Ricky Gervais is Ricky Gervais, which is not to say unfunny, but it's unimaginative. There's very little creation in the character. Ashley Jenson (Maggie); Stephen Merchant, who plays Darren, Andy's incompetent agent; and Barry "off Eastenders" have less screen time but much more realised characters, far more funny in their absurdity. "Have a bit a muffin." Brilliant. That's some funny stuff.
• He's inconsistent
  David Brent was, like Maggie, Darren and Barry, a more consistent character. In Extras, Ricky Gervais alternates between Andy Millman, the podcasting Ricky Gervais and David Brent. He is, in one scene, cool, condescending and cringingly crude - but rarely consistent.
• It's difficult to sympathise with him
  It's like how do you relate to 50 Cent, now that he's off the street and making millions? Okay, bad example. I doubt many of you were ever on the street, or being shot at for that matter. I don't even like rap...what's my point? My point is, by the second series of Extras, Andy Millman's biggest gripe is that he's late for a meeting with Al Pacino. It's hardly Dog Day Afternoon.

There is no doubting Ricky Gervais's enormous talent. The man has actually made me wee laughing. That's funny. But, with Extras, there is something wrong. And I dread to think that it's Ricky Gervais.

I hope with his next project he can either deliver a character as creative and consistent as David Brent or remain behind the cameras as a stellar screenwriter and director. Maybe we'll see more of writing partner Stephen Merchant. Give him a spin-off show with Barry off Eastenders and I might just wee myself. That's some funny stuff. Right there.

S&M

When my local Marks & Spencer revealed its new store layout last week I was a bit disappointed to find that access to the food hall no longer required a trip through the lingerie section.

It had always been something of a guilty pleasure, having to wade through thongs and things to get to the groceries.

Now however when I want, say, some milk or...baps I can take the escalator directly to the food hall.

But I did notice today that, while I'm quite missing the scantily clad mannequins of the lingerie section, M&S seems to have transformed from department store for the elderly into, what looks like, sex shop for the single.

There is definitely an air of eroticism beyond the wireframed undercup of the lingerie department. Mannequins in ladies' clothes hold hands and look adoringly into each others' plastic eyes; they wear Basques and hang from poles, like exotic dancers; and, as I was leaving the store, I noticed a mannequin in that most suggestive of positions: dressed in office attire, bending over a table!

As I went to push the door I saw two letters, backwards through the glass: S&M. Is this the secret to M&S's recent success? I guess the clothes weren't selling so well so they tried the one thing that does in abundance: sex.

Tony Blair rocks out.

• George Bush and Tony Blair sing 'Endless Love'

FHA

Oh, sweet relief. Some good news today: apparently only three of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (FHA) are bad. One of them is God! I did not know that. I do now!

I had a chat with a couple of Christian chaps on Pride Hill today. One of them had some sort of American accent and looked like a member of Hanson (he also had like ketchup on his shirt or something); the other was from India but looked black. The whole thing was weird. But they were nice kids.

And so I figured while God himself might not removeth thy stain from thy shirt I might as well donate some money in the hope that the Church might offer some sort of laundry service. Plus, the posters they were selling actually looked pretty cool. The one I bought depicted three horsemen in drab, dull looking clothes, brandishing bloody swords and what looked like nunchucks, and another on a white horse, in clean, newly pressed cricket whites. He also had white hair, a white beard and a mean looking bow and arrow. He was God, apparently.

"Is that God?" I asked.
"Well yeah," replied the Christian. "That's Jesus."
"Wow," I said. "That's really a relief."

And so I gave him a pound and went about my way. I might not hang the poster on my wall but knowing that only three of the Four Horsemen are a problem seems one less thing to worry about.

The red, white and blues

As a medieval town Shrewsbury's epicentre is a castle that sits atop a hill - Pride Hill, to be exact, also the namesake of one of Shrewsbury three shopping centres.

The Darwin Shopping Centre is nearest the castle and generally considered the best of the three. Pride Hill is next - a little worse for wear, and then the Riverside Mall. If the Darwin is "king of the castle", then Riverside is something of a "dirty rascal", home to stores such as BeWise, TJ Hughes and Wilkinson, and frankly some of the strangest most miserable of Shrewsbury's inhabitants.

As the town's bottom-most shopping centre, the Riverside Mall sits quite literally in the shadow of its competitors, its customers generally those unable to climb stairs or inclines. Hence, there are a lot of old people and prams in the Riverside Mall. There is also a terrible sense of doom. Yesterday there was even jazz, but it did little to lift the mood of mall staff.

"Ah, bet that's lovely, getting to hear that jazz all day," I said to the assistant, as live music from a 'grand opening' party drifted into the store.
"Well," she sighed as she closed her eyes and clutched her head. "Don't get me started on that."
"Oh...okay," I said.
Hang on, I thought. What does she mean? "What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well, it's not my cup of tea," she said, still clutching. "That, out there." With that she used her other hand to point to the black lady singing old standards.
"What?" I asked, intrigued.
"Music."
"You don't like music?"
"Well," she brought her hand down to her side. The clutching had left little white marks on her forehead. "In my own time I do - "
"Right."
" - but I'm working."
"Yeah...did you say you had this in another colour?"
"Only what's on the shelf love," she said abruptly. "If it's not on the shelf we don't have it in stock. OK?"

And so I smiled, bought it in red and stepped out into the mall to see that the jazz band were packing away. "Tough crowd, huh?" I said to the drummer. "Perhaps you ought to play the blues next time."
He looked at me blankly.
"You know, give the people what they want?"

The future's bright. The future's useless.

After two days of presentations and for the most part being asked "is television dead?", Emma and I decided to leave the 'Buzz Hall' of Cross Media Week's main conference building for the 'Tree House', and a line-up of speakers and presentations very much more alive.

'New Interfaces - How to interact with a connected world' presented the studies and developments of four scientists working in the field of advanced media interfaces.

The most impressive was John Underkoffler, inventor of g-speak gestural interface technology and advisor to Steven Spielberg. G-speak replaces a conventional computer mouse with a glove that allows the user to point, push, pull and grab objects within a 3D graphical user interface.

If John de Mol was right yesterday and "the meaning is in the use," what followed was impressive but mostly meaningless presentations. Dr. Emile Aarts from Philips Research Laboratories premiered LED technology that lit a room according to scenes in a film, placing the viewer in an immersive environment; a collaborative canvas on which two children could virtually paint together and thus, to quote Dr. Aarts, "be kept off the streets, and from smacking one another"; and, the most useless of all, LED fabric apparently best demonstrated by a soft cushion that bore a pink glowing heart.

Though I won't be running out to buy one of those, if Jo Reid from HP Labs gets her way school children will be running from creatures great and small as she subjects them to what she calls, "Virtual Experience Environments" - or what anyone else might call, "placing small children in horrifying situations." The technology allows schools to advance their pupils by allowing them to walk around existing environments, such as playgrounds and parks, and make them virtual by attaching audio and video feeds of scenes from the Discovery Channel: riots in Northern Ireland, hunting in the Savannah, the Second World War.

The future's bright, I thought to myself. It's also a little bit useless.

This is a low

There's an old Indian saying - "do not judge a man until you've walked two moons in his moccasins." That's a lot of moonwalking and, when you're in the Netherlands, an uncomfortable trot in wooden clogs.

Nevertheless, I squeezed into a pair (metaphorically, of course) and trotted to an infamous 'coffee shop' in the Red Light District. (Where else would I suggest when accompanying my boss on a business trip?)

It was horribly garish. And utterly uninspired. A Rastafarian at the counter, toad stools for chairs and Japanese tourists sucking on spliffs, making peace signs for pictures.

The 'buffalo soldier' at the bar turned down the music, the crowd sang loudly and while everyone else got high I thought to myself, this is a low.