A while ago I wrote an article illustrating why buying goods from Tesco is bad for the soul. Okay, so I haven’t necessarily practised what I’ve preached since then, but they sell Duval and Captain Morgan’s at remarkably cheap prices. However, they also sell padded bras for seven-year-olds:

Supermarket giant Tesco has been heavily criticised for selling a padded plunge bra aimed at girls as young as seven.

The bra, which costs £4, is sold alongside vests in the supermarket’s seven to eight-year-old age range.

It is the latest embarrassment for Tesco, which in 2006 removed a pole dancing kit from sale after being accused of “destroying children’s innocence”.

This is no joke. Tesco has ‘branches in every Scottish postcode area,’ and only ‘the Harrogate area in Yorkshire [is] the last in the UK without a Tesco presence.’ Armando Iannucci’s Time Trumpet presented a humourous ridiculing of Tesco’s dominance in a portrayal of Tesco embarking upon an H. G. Wells-inspired war against Denmark. But this latest news reveals a considerably darker side to the company, who seem a little too keen to sexualise the nation’s children for profit. To wipe away the disgust from your no doubt furrowed brows, here’s that Time Trumpet sketch:

This article goes out to my good friend Matt, who recently spent an inconceivable amount of money on the glorified toiletseat which is otherwise known as an ibook. Or Podbook. Or something equally hip.

Unless you have been walking around with your eyes closed, and your head encased in a block of concrete, with a blindfold tied round it, in the dark – unless you have been doing that, you surely can’t have failed to notice the current Apple Macintosh campaign starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb, which has taken over magazines, newspapers and the internet in a series of brutal coordinated attacks aimed at causing massive loss of resistance. While I don’t have anything against shameless promotion per se (after all, within these very brackets I’m promoting my own BBC4 show, which starts tonight at 10pm), there is something infuriating about this particular blitz. In the ads, Webb plays a Mac while Mitchell adopts the mantle of a PC. We know this because they say so right at the start of the ad.

“Hello, I’m a Mac,” says Webb.

“And I’m a PC,” adds Mitchell.

The ads are adapted from a near-identical American campaign – the only difference is the use of Mitchell and Webb. They are a logical choice in one sense (everyone likes them), but a curious choice in another, since they are best known for the television series Peep Show – probably the best sitcom of the past five years – in which Mitchell plays a repressed, neurotic underdog, and Webb plays a selfish, self-regarding poseur. So when you see the ads, you think, “PCs are a bit rubbish yet ultimately lovable, whereas Macs are just smug, preening tossers.” In other words, it is a devastatingly accurate campaign.

I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don’t use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.

PCs are the ramshackle computers of the people. You can build your own from scratch, then customise it into oblivion. Sometimes you have to slap it to make it work properly, just like the Tardis (Doctor Who, incidentally, would definitely use a PC). PCs have charm; Macs ooze pretension. When I sit down to use a Mac, the first thing I think is, “I hate Macs”, and then I think, “Why has this rubbish aspirational ornament only got one mouse button?” Losing that second mouse button feels like losing a limb. If the ads were really honest, Webb would be standing there with one arm, struggling to open a packet of peanuts while Mitchell effortlessly tore his apart with both hands.

For that full article by the awesome Charlie Brooker, click here.

X-Factor, American Idol, Popshit Factory, Arsehole Academy and other such drivel are polluting the minds of the public. It’s highly edited, highly choreographed tripe, and it manipulates not only the poor saps desperate to follow in the god-like footsteps of Gareth Gates, but also the poor saps who sit at home, guffawing with their family in scenes reminiscent of Roman amphitheaters whose top billing invariably features a persecuted religious minority and one of the planet’s most efficient and deadly predators. “Look at him run, Mum, look! Simon’s going to tear him apart! Ooh, Louis won’t like that, look, he’s trying so hard to be accepted by the big cats, they can smell his tears! LOLZ!” This video, made by some clever wit with far too much time on their hands, deserves a linking; it’s for Stars in Their Eyes by Just Jack, and it highlights what I’ve just been ranting about beautifully.

Actually, forget what I said before about stoner-chasing police coming to pick up your incapacitated body after it’s been drugged by anti-drink-driving-robot-snakes, no, instead, there are these ‘robots’. They can carry massive weights, withstand being kicked, hard, and have already formed an army which has taken over Peru.

Not looking good. But, Millets are doing some very nice wellies for 9.99, or 8.99 if you’re a student.

In today’s Guardian, the man who many want to see become the new director general of the BBC owing to his brilliant ability to see through and ridicule the manipulative cunning of massive media corporations, Charlie Brooker, expresses why he wants Ken Livingstone to win the mayoral race in London. Or rather, why he doesn’t want Boris Johnson (surname added to prevent offence) to win. Here’s a few highlights:

Johnson – or to give him his full name, Boris LOL!!!! what a legernd!! Johnson!!! – is a TV character loved by millions for his cheeky, bumbling persona. Unlike the cartoon MP, he’s magnetically prone to scandal, but this somehow only makes him more adorable each time. Tee hee! Boris has had an affair! Arf! Now he’s offended the whole of Liverpool! Crumbs! He used the word “picaninnies”! Yuk yuk! He’s been caught on tape agreeing to give the address of a reporter to a friend who wants him beaten up! Ho ho! Look at his funny blond hair! HA HA BORIS LOL!!!! WHAT A LEGERND!!!!!!

If butterfingers Johnson gets in, it’ll clearly be a laugh riot from beginning to end, like a series of Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em in which Frank Spencer becomes mayor by mistake. Just picture him on live TV, appealing for calm after a terrorist bombing – the scope for chuckles is almost limitless.

Now, even if the Standard photographs Ken carving a swastika into a dormouse’s back, I’ll vote for him for the following reasons:

1) I’m genetically predisposed to hate the Tories. It’s my default, hard-wired position. If Boris wins, their simpering pudge-faced smuggery is going to be unbearable. Picture the expression Piers Morgan makes when he’s especially pleased with himself, then multiply it by 10 million, and imagine it looming overhead like a Death Star. That’s what it’s going be like. Therefore I don’t care who wins provided Johnson loses, and loses hard, preferably in close-up, on the telly.

2) Ken’s other main rival is solid-but-dull Lib Dem candidate Brian Paddick. He probably deserves a shot, but as he’s not going to win, voting for him would be a waste of a perfectly good X, which might otherwise be used to pinpoint buried treasure, indicate affection, or mark a plague victim’s door.

3) I wouldn’t trust Boris to operate a mop, let alone a £10bn Crossrail project.

4) On a related note, I don’t believe in my gut that Boris gives even the faintest hint of a wisp of a glimpse of a toss about London, or indeed humanity in general. Both of which are fairly important in a job like this.

5) But on the other hand OMFG LOOK AT HIS FUNNEEE HAIR LOL!!!! BORRIS IS A LEGERND!!!!

Full article available from the Guardian. Lol.

Man Claims to Speak ‘Australian’ After Allegedly Being Raped by Wombat

A New Zealand man has been sentenced to community service after telling police he was raped by a wombat and the experience had made him speak “Australian”.

Arthur Ross Cradock, 48, from the South Island town of Motueka, called police on February 11 and told them he was being raped at his home by the wombat and he needed help, The Nelson Mail newspaper reported.

The orchard worker later called back and said: “Apart from speaking Australian now, I’m pretty all right, you know.”

Cradock pleaded guilty in the local court to using a phone for a fictitious purpose. He was sentenced to 75 hours’ community work.

Police prosecutor Sergeant Chris Stringer told the court alcohol played a large role in Cradock’s life.

Full article is available from FOX News but for God’s sake don’t go their website unless you’re wearing sunglasses and your best pair of anti-shit-myself-out-of-fear-of-things-happening-that-will-never-actually-happen pants.

Brass Eye star Chris Morris has revealed plans to direct a comedy film about terrorism.

The comedian said he wants to poke fun at Islamic terrorism in the same way Dad’s Army laughed at Nazis.

He told The Times: “Most of us would dearly love to laugh in the face of our worst fears. Why aren’t we laughing at terrorists? Because we don’t know how to, until now.

“I don’t plan for this film to be offensive, but I do want it to be very funny. I accept, though, that some may find poking fun at terrorists offensive.

“There is this Dad’s Army side of terrorism and that’s what this film is exploring.

“This film will hopefully get over that terrorists do what we all do.

“They discuss the mundane, and plan things that sometimes then go wrong. People, that is viewers, are longing to laugh at terrorism.”

The script for the film has been produced by writers of the BBC political satire The Thick Of It.

Morris, who sparked controversy with a Brass Eye episode on the subject of paedophilia in 2001, will not appear in the film.

Full story is available here. One to look out for! For those of you who don’t know, Chris Morris is the man responsible for spoof-satire news show The Day Today, Brass Eye (in which he goaded celebrities into making complete fools out of themselves), and he co-wrote Nathan Barley, a razor-sharp satire of trendy London life, with Charlie Brooker.

This little bad boy is being researched by the military:

Reassuring stuff, right? These can climb pipes (inside and out), swim in water, and traverse mud. And that’s just the prototype. Imagine what the military could do with these! You leave the pub after one pint and head to your car, where you’re stopped by one of these standing on the back end of its tail like some hideous terminator cobra, and you’re forced to breathe in its face, just to make sure you’re safe to drive. If the results are that you’re safe, you may drive away, if not, a dart fires out of this evil little snakebot’s face and stabs you between the eyes, incapacitating you until the police have finished following around a group of harmless teens who are smoking what looks like a dangerously long cigarette.