Bad week, and they didn't see it coming

The Big Brother racism row, has turned into mass hysteria. There's a strokey beard meeting scheduled today between Channel 4 bosses to discuss whether to axe the programme. William Hill are offering odds of 50:1 on the current series being trashed. Shipa Shetty is 11:8 favourite to win. Jade Goody has essentially wrecked her career, and her perfume line has been ceased it seems. The Carphone Warehouse has pulled its sponsorship, and both PM and Chancellor have commented. And I still haven't watched any of it.

It's been a bad week for psychics. Both Sylvia Brown and James Van Praagh screwed up royally over predictions about Shawn Hornbeck, a missing teenager. Browne said he was dead and gave directions to the body. Van Praagh claimed he was abducted by a railway worker and would be found in a railway car. He turned up alive and well recently, and neither mystics got any predictions right.

And Uri Geller has been caught cheating on his own live tv show in Israel. Apparently Geller is looking for a successor. Geller always claims that he is not, and never has been, a magician. Actually, he also claimed he was abducted by aliens at one time as well, so I'm not sure quite why anyone should really believe him about anything. During his tv show however, he can clearly be seen attaching something to his thumb before deflecting a compass needle. The video was on U-Tube, but has since been removed for "copyright" reasons. A Google video search on "Uri Geller" will however find it fairly quickly.

Coincidentally, James Randi, probably the coolest magician ever to walk this earth, and sworn nemesis of Geller, has changed the rules of his $1 million challenge and is now threatening to take legal action against the likes of Geller, Sylvia Browne, James Van Praagh, and John Edward. I can't wait. John Edward hasn't screwed up this week yet has he? I'd like to seem him take Most Haunted's Derek Acrobar to court.

There was supposed to be a protest on the trains this morning. People were urged to travel without buying a ticket to protest at the terrible service currently provided. I didn't see anyone doing this, but I think the train company were turning a blind eye to it in an effort to avoid publicity. I have a season ticket anyway. Last week I thought there was going to be a fight on the train. One passenger got most upset with the ticket man over the issue of slow running trains and the ticket man threatened to throw him off at the next station.

My holiday was authorised today, so we will be returning to Taiwan on 14 Feb with Dumpy. I'm terribly excited.