There’s an old gag that’s been used in pantomimes for years – possibly as far back as the days of Joseph Grimaldi. And because it always gets a laugh, I bet it’ll be around for as long as pantos are. Here it is.
STRAIGHT MAN: How do you manage to do so many stupid things in one day?
COMIC: I get up early!
See, it made you smile, too!
One day recently I encountered several stupid and annoying things that people accept as the norm, purely because they’ve become used to them.
I’ll just share a couple with you . . .
First off, I was watching a breakfast TV journalist giving a report about some Royal matter that was, frankly, so trivial I can’t remember what it was. At ten past six in the morning she was standing outside a seemingly-lifeless Buckingham Palace. As no lights were on upstairs or downstairs, perhaps whatever members of the Royals currently reside there were still fast asleep or had scarpered to Sandringham.
My point is, sending the journalist and a camera crew down to Buck House at the crack of dawn to give her two-minute report to ‘the team back in the studio’, which she’d then repeat at hourly intervals, served no useful purpose.
She might as well have been in the studio and for the handful of viewers who didn’t know what Buck House looks like or had forgotten, the graphics department could have stuck a giant photo of the Royal residence behind her.
These pointless ‘on the spot’ reports from places like Downing Street or The Foreign Office, when it’s still dark and no one’s entering or leaving the premises, have become so normalised, nobody questions the stupidity of them.
Then, I saw a few minutes of a programme that’s apparently been running for some time. Watching “Sort Your Life Out With Stacey Solomon” made me genuinely wonder just how bad a state your life would have to be in to request help from someone who came third on ‘The X Factor’ 17 years ago.
After that, my day didn’t get any better.

Every day I sit down to write.
Sometimes it’s a joke, sometimes a script, sometimes an idea for this column. It keeps the brain ticking over and, hopefully, stops the grey matter becoming completely dependent on tea and biscuits.
When I need inspiration, I often turn to the news.
And therein lies the problem.
Scroll through the headlines on any given morning and you could be forgiven for thinking the world has been designed by a particularly miserable committee.
War. Crime. Scandal. Political arguments. Economic gloom. Another crisis. Another disaster.
Then, occasionally, tucked away somewhere near the bottom of the page, you’ll find a story about a dog being rescued, a pensioner raising money for charity or a community coming together to help someone in need.
Why is that usually the small story?
We rightly need journalism that exposes wrongdoing, reports danger and holds people in power to account. Bad news matters.
But so does balance!
Imagine starting the day with a breakfast of nothing but misery. You’d probably want to crawl back under the duvet before the kettle had boiled.
And what about children? They are growing up surrounded by an endless stream of headlines, images and social media posts, often without the emotional tools to make sense of them.
Perhaps we should occasionally remind ourselves that the world is not exclusively made up of the things that make the news.
There are millions of ordinary acts of kindness happening every day. People helping neighbours. Raising money. Volunteering. Checking on someone who lives alone. Doing something good simply because it needs doing.
Maybe that deserves a little more airtime.
I’m not suggesting a Good News Channel should replace the news.
Just that, occasionally, it might be nice to finish watching it without needing a lie-down.

Everybody has a pet hate. We once owned a parrot I couldn’t stand.
People who like to name-drop annoy me, and at my recent lunch with Tom Cruise, King Charles and The Krankies they all confided in me they feel the same way.
Joking aside, what I really cannot abide is pretentiousness, something that was in abundance in posters responding to a newspaper article listing the Top 20 Mythological Movies, around the time “The Odyssey” was released in cinemas.
If I tell you the name of the newspaper (sort of) rhymes with ‘Cardigan’ and is famous for its typos, you’ll understand the Mount Everest level of pretentiousness!
Out of its Top 20 mythological films, I’d only heard of “Clash Of The Titans” (1982) and the magnificent “Jason And The Argonauts” (1963) which both featured Ray Harryhausen’s stunning stop-motion visual effects. Remember the bronze giant, Talos?
Some of the readers’ posts below the article were worthy of inclusion in Private Eye’s ‘Pseud’s Corner’.
What follows are my interpretations of some of them, not too far removed from the originals . . .
‘I’m surprised you didn’t include the little-seen, five hour Mongolian epic “Changa!”. I saw this at its only UK screening, in 1976 at the Snobs-R-Us Arts Centre, in the original Mongolian language with French subtitles.
‘The audience (me and the usherette) almost managed to stay awake for most of it, so I was shocked when it was replaced by a double-bill of “Can You Keep It Up For The Weekend, Vicar?” and “Emmanuelle In Aberystwyth” – films I’d never have brought myself to watch, even if every performance hadn’t sold out for the week.’
Another was…
‘Amazed at the exclusion of Francois Bore’s silent “Eye, Hercules!”. It was made in 1989, but Bore chose not to use sound, subtitles or actors. Three hours of a close-up of his dog Hercule’s eye. A neglected masterpiece.’
If I’d posted a comment, it would have been . . . As Tom Hanks said to Ray Harryhausen as he presented him with an honorary Oscar at the 64th Academy Awards, “Some say…Citizen Kane. I say . . . Jason & The Argonauts!”

There are few things more certain in life than death, taxes and choosing the wrong supermarket queue.
You know the feeling. You’ve got three items, you’ve spotted the shortest queue and you’re feeling quietly smug. Then you notice the queue beside you is moving at the speed of a Swansea bus when you’re already late.
Your queue, meanwhile, has gone into hibernation.
The person in front has somehow found the one product in the entire supermarket without a price.
A member of staff is called.
Then another.
Eventually, someone appears with a scanner, a radio and the expression of a person who has been dragged away from their lunch.
And just as progress seems possible, the checkout operator puts up the dreaded CLOSED sign. Right in front of you. Lovely.
The cashpoint is no different.
There’s always someone ahead who has apparently decided that the cash machine is their personal branch manager.
Balance checked.
Statement printed.
Another balance checked.
Receipt printed.
They’re probably checking whether their pension will stretch to a caravan in Tenby.
Then comes the big question:
Do I change queues?
Every instinct tells you to stay put.
But you ignore it.
You move.
And within seconds, your original queue starts moving faster than Gareth Bale chasing a loose ball.
The people you left behind are already packing their bags and heading home.
Meanwhile, your new queue has barely moved.
At this point, you begin to wonder whether this is coincidence or something more sinister.
Perhaps there’s a secret Welsh committee meeting every morning to decide:
“Right, who’s going shopping today? Excellent. Make sure they choose the slowest queue.”
Because surely it can’t just be me. Can it?