Weather: Cloudy, with rain never too far away.

Travel: Bad going out, get stopped for engineers at Stafford Road. 653 before we get into the platform, as the London train leaves. Dispatched at 659, *behind* the stopper. Major f*up by Failtrack, no arguments accepted. Coming back is better, though; the delayed 1703 from London leaves 1727, straight behind a badly-delayed stopper. Bit of a crush coming up the stairs after we get shoved in on 3. Bad planning.

Sun after leaving work, and it's just getting dark as we pass through Dudley Port. The darkness rushing up behind us, with the city lights on both sides, and us chasing into the last of the light. Magic.

Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi today said the world has been misled over his country's role in the Lockerbie bombing. He accused the US and the UK of using Libya as a scapegoat to spare embarassment over their earlier bombing of Tripoli in 1986. However, he produced no evidence to challenge last week's decision by a Scottish court to convict one of two Libyans accused of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988, which killed 270.

Things They Didn't Know On The Weakest Link

• Who were The Goodies. (Graeme Garden, Tim Brook-Taylor, Bill Oddie)
• Who created the Famous Five. (Enid Blyton)
• That the wallaby isn't a bird. (It's a kangaroo-type thing.)
• The Mersey doesn't flow through Vienna. (It's the Danube.)
• Who narrated "David Copperfield." (The clue's in the question.)
• Who's Brenda? (Liz Windsor.)

  shimelle:
  WHAT? it is certainly not possible to have too much Cordelia!
  Oh yes it is. I may not subscribe to the "any Cordelia is too much Cordelia" theory, but it's not a million miles off. Now substitute Wesley in that sentence, and you're away.

  okay, possibly it would be too much cordelia if it outweighed the 'time for angel to be pouty and well-built' ratio that goes into each episode.
  Maybe they did well by me, spinning off Miss Annoying, Mister Irritating, and Cheesy No-Tan into their own series, leaving Buffy for characters that *don't* call for the sick bucket.

  but other than that, no. we like cordelia. says me.
  Someone has to. I suppose.

  Shimelle, warrior princess who gets e4 as of monday.~*
  In which case, the plots you need so far:
  Friends - you'll see what's happened in five minutes.
  ER - ask someone who watched it.
  As If - is good. Honest.
  Dawson's - is halfway through last summer's repeats.
  Ally - Monday at 9.
  Banzai! - worth the subscription on its own.
  Party of Five and Five Go Dating emerge before the end of the month.

Weather: Sunshine and showers in a decent wind. Helps to clear the lungs. +10.

Travel: There's something going wrong around Oxley. Stops both ways today, as yesterday. Fall between the London and stopper going out; get the 1704 to Glasgow (24 down) back. The 1742 is billed for 1752, then 54. London comes in at 51, the stopper leaves at 53, and ours doesn't arrive till 58, by which time the signal is green - a false green, as we're stopped at the second signal out.

Michael Stone (right) could be free in 48 hours after winning his appeal against conviction today. In a dramatic courtroom concession, the Crown said that its crucial witness, Barry Thompson, had admitted lying and could not be relied on.
Stone, 40, was returned to prison this afternoon but left the Appeal Court with a smile towards his sister Barbara, who punched the air with both fists. He was convicted of a brutal double murder two years ago. Counsel William Clegg QC said: "The judges have indicated that they will allow the appeal on the basis of the unreliability of Thompson's evidence."
Thompson, who has convictions for deception and intimidating witnesses, was one of three former prisoners to tell the court that Stone had either confessed or incriminated himself while in prison awaiting trial. Stone launched his appeal on the grounds that all three were liars and after a day's preliminary argument, some of it behind closed doors, Crown prosecutor Nigel Sweeney QC, today drafted a three-point admission on Thompson.
Sweeney accepted these reports of Thompson's retraction and said that therefore, "we cannot seek to rely on him as a witness of truth and would not have called him in the trial" if his unreliability had been known. As Thompson was a crucial witness, the Crown "cannot argue against the proposition that the jury's decision as regards the evidence from Damien Daley (another prisoner who claimed Stone had confessed) may have been influenced by their assessment of Thompson's".
...more

Absence did not make the hearts of Tom Cruise (left) and Nicole Kidman (right) grow fonder. Hollywood's power couple made it official that they are ending their 11-year marriage. "Citing the difficulties inherent in divergent careers, which constantly kept them apart, they concluded that an amicable separation seems best for both of them," said Kingsley.
It's ironic that Cruise and Kidman would cite their divergent careers as the cause of their breakup. They worked together for 52 weeks over a 15-month period on Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, and Cruise recently exec-produced Kidman's film The Others.
Cruise and Kidman's marriage has been plagued by rumours, though they have managed to squelch most of them through lawsuits. In 1998, the couple successfully sued the British newspaper Express on Sunday for an article which claimed their marriage was a business arrangement and that one or both of them was gay. The same year, the pair sued supermarket publication The Globe and photojournalist Eric Ford, 27, for publishing a transcript of an alleged argument the couple had over their cellphones. They won for invasion of privacy. Cruise also won a suit against a German magazine which published a story claiming he was sterile. They have never taken action against persistant rumours that Kidman is biologically hermaphroditic, and only has prosthetic organs. Neither have they rebutted claims that Cruise insists on remaining chaste for the purity of his soul - a cause not helped by his devotion to the false teaching (Send me all your money) of Elron Tubbard and the Church of Latter Day Self-Enrichment. During the filming of Eyes Wide Shut, the couple sued the National Enquirer and the Globe for printing stories claiming the actors had hired a sex therapist to help them make their screen love scenes more authentic.
Cruise and Kidman met on the set of the 1990 drama Days of Thunder. At the time, he had been married to actress Mimi Rogers, 45, for three years. Kidman just pulled out of David Fincher's drama The Panic Room, citing a knee injury.

Allan:
Catherine Zeta Jones is set to be the new "Bond" the PC idea will involve Michael Douglas as her 'love interest''.
This is the point at which it starts getting completely ludicrous. Michael Douglas... love interest? Shome mishtake *shurely*!

Presumably it will be Jane Bond, transexual Extraodinaire, or some other explanation for James Bond dragging up!
Or just James Bond's sister?

Is this taking PC too far?
PC nothing. It's an action adventure movie of the kind that little boys of all ages like. Only now, rather than have the female eye candy as a bathing suit at the pool, the female eye candy is the sharp-dressed hero of the hour.

Perfectly reasonable basis for a movie, as movie bases go...

Cory:
Except, of course, for the part including Michael "I'm-a-creepy-old-man" Douglas. Which is never reasonable. Ever.
Well, yes, there are many, many, many more talents that could better play Ms Zeta's love interest. Pierce Brosnan, for one. Or Matt le Blanc. Bono from U2. Daffy Duck. A plank of wood.

Need I continue?

Weather: Sunshine, still decently blowy. Nice. 9

Travel: Still slow going around Oxley, but ahead of the London. Back gets me the 1710 stopper, running 11 late; then the 1742 holds at the platform for 2 for no adequately explored reason.

Squatters in gun battle at White House A man carrying a gun just outside the White House grounds has been shot in the leg by US Park Police. The man from Indiana was reported to be suicidal after failing to evict a Texas squatter from the prestigious Washington residence. The White House (right) has been vacant since Hillary and Bill Clinton left last month.

$100 million for Birtney Top pop singer Birtney's Pears (left) has landed a massive endorsement contract with a soft drinks company. She follows in the conical bra of such luminaries as Madonna, Michael Jackson, and Dr "Neil" Fox, in her association with the brown gargle. It's also an excuse for us to run another picture of the famous Ms Pears. Heck, any excuse will do.

The government has rejected a landmark report into drugs, leaving the country with a law that is out of touch with reality. The Police Foundation report argued that penalties for the possession of cannabis did more harm than the drug itself and called for a wide reclassification of drugs and drug offences.
The only major proposal not dismissed out-of-hand by out-of-touch ministers was a suggestion people could defend themselves against charges of supplying drugs if they proved it was only for use by a small circle of friends.
The chair of the independent inquiry, Viscountess Runciman, said the government's attitude was "mistaken and complacent"; that attitude would burden the UK with laws that did not match public opinion.
Lady Runciman added: "Our recommendations would create a more effective law which enabled resources and enforcement efforts to be targeted on the most dangerous drugs such as heroin and cocaine, and the most dangerous activities involving them. It leaves us with a law that is out of touch with reality, misleading in its rank of relative harm, disproportionate in its sanctions, dependent on police discretion to be workable and out of step with the public attitudes. It also leaves us with a law that in relation to cannabis produces more harm than it prevents."

The cover of Tuesday's Express newspaper was probably the worst error of proof-redding I've seen.

The only picture is of Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise, who announced their separation just in time for Tuesday's deadlines. Above it was the half-inch-high banner headline, in block capital letters. The headline went with the other story on the front page. The headline:

BEHEAD HIM

Has Cruise really done anything to deserve that? Answers should bear in mind "Far And Away." And "Eyes Wide Shut."

Also...
Some decent guests on Letterman this coming week. Katie Holmes on Thursday night, Regis Philbin on Friday, David "Angelus" Boreanaz on Monday, Jamie Oliver on Tuesday. Shows air the previous night in the US, and 11:15 on ITV2.

So this chap calls me up, dead worried because he can't switch his computer on...
Him: Another tech support told me to reboot my PC, it turned off, now it won't turn on.
Me: Are you pushing the power button? It's a line at the top of a circle.
Him: Yes, but my Samsong does nothing. It's got all these icons along the bottom, and all the wheels, but the power button just flashes green and yellow.
Me: [thinking something's not right.] Do you see your floppy drive?
Him: Yes...
Me: Now go down, to the recessed grill.
Him: Another power button! And it says PC ON!! You *are* marvellous!!!
Me: [embarrassed, doesn't point out that he's been turning on the monitor power.]

Weather: Sunny, though cold as the wind changes to the north. +5.

Travel: No problems either way, though a little late out of New Street in the evening is nothing at all unexpected.

Michael Stone, jailed for the murders of mother and daughter Lin and Megan Russell, must be tried again after winning a challenge to his convictions, the court of appeal ruled today. The decision came despite defence concerns that Michael Stone would not be able to have a fair retrial due to extensive "prejudicial" coverage after the case. The judges quashed Michael Stone's convictions but he will remain in custody pending the second trial.

Chile's former military ruler Augusto Pinochet knew of human rights abuses being committed against political opponents, according to leaked Chilean government documents. The Chilean authorities are investigating whether the material, posted on a website by Chilean newspaper El Mostrador, is authentic. The revelation comes as a Chilean court considers Pinochet's appeal against charges of kidnapping and murder.

Latest addition to the Flaming Hypocrites shelf are Welsh punk rockers the Manic Street Preachers. "We'll split after one great album," proclaimed the four-piece in 1991. Ten years later, they're set to promote album #6. As if that wasn't bad enough, their record company, Fony UK, has started to bar people from downloading unreleased material through file transfer mechanisms. Evidently they don't want anyone to buy their records. US band Rage Against The Machine told Fony US where to stick this policy when they tried it late last year. The Manics have no such courage, and have become the Corporate Rock Whores they publicly railed against ten years ago.

Jaeda:
Please let her know she's in my thoughts and lots of healing energy her way on the full moon Thursday from me and Heather!
Those who note a luni-solar calendar will recall that tonight's full moon is the closest to February 4. In the Northern hemisphere, that date is halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.

It's just at this time that winter begins to lose her powers, and the recovery of the coming spring starts to be felt. This may come as a shock to those in areas that have had 4 metres of snow (literal or metaphorical) over the past three months, but things will get better.

It's a great time of year for healing, and all help will go to good use, I'm sure.

Weather: Sunny, cold after overnight frost. +6.

Travel: The cold wins. Pass the tissues.

A major investigation into price-fixing by Britain's biggest record companies finally gets launched by the Is The Sky Blue Office. The OFT has "reasonable grounds" for suspecting that record companies have banded together to stop cheaper products being sold here.

It follows repeated complaints that CDs are being sold at artificially high prices and that British consumers are forced to pay premiums by over-charging record companies and retailers. The OFT is targeting companies whose labels sell the work of the world's most popular music artists. The investigation will look at the response of the big companies to retailers who have tried to import CDs from Europe where they were 40 per cent cheaper for much of last year.

The Mole

Week Four on The Mole, and who are the Scurrilous Six:
Zi Khan, 32, loud, Doncaster
Jennifer Waller, 37, quiet and composed, Darlington
Jo-anna (Jo) Corlett, 34, artist, Isle of Man
David Buxton, 35, dark and shaggy, London
Sara Lee, 24, impossibly talented, Droitwich
Oliver Norman, 22, annoyingly good, Glasgow

Challenge 13: Split into two teams of three; there are three puzzles to solve in a route around some tunnels. 40 minutes to get both teams round the course; 5 minute penalty for each wrong answer. Think Crystal Maze with a lot of mental games. £5000 if they can get it right.

David, Zi and Sara go first. Question 1 is counting triangles in a larger triangle. Easy.
Question 2 is about a boat that floats in the water. A wrong guess costs five minutes, but it's right second time out.
Question 3 has three light switches, and three lights in the basement. How to tell which switch operates which light with just one trip down? Good work by David to explain the answer. (Your hint: lights don't just give off light.) 14'54" of travelling, plus 5' penalties.

Ollie, Jennifer, Jo go next. Question 1 is a mess, guessing 29 and 30 before the correct answer of 31. Was Ollie primed to give wrong answers?
Question 2 sees the team fall into the same trap as their predecessors.
Question 3 sees Jo disappear down to the basement, looking for the actual lightbulbs! She comes back, eventually. Glen calls it a day on the first incorrect answer. They've had 45 minutes already, and the challenge is well and truly lost.

Family and friends await in the main hall, but there will be a game of Blackjack first. Winner of each hand gets chips, to be cashed against a correct answer in the end-of-day quiz.
David gets an ace-king, and 5 questions right.
Oliver takes 4, Jo 3, Jennifer 2, Zi 1.
Sara's left with nothing.

Challenge 14, for £5000: Twelve people are the stage, six are invited guests, six are not. The five who won the pontoon hands have to spot their guest, and those of the other players. The team has to get 21 correct guests in 30 guesses to win £5000. They're told the gender, and the person they're here to see. The total: 13/30, so the money is lost. The rest of the day is with the guesses. Guests, sorry.

After this Challenge, host Glen Hugget spoke to the producer, and correctly identified the mole. Three days later, Glen changed his nomination. Like the mole, Glen is going all the way to the finale.

Challenge 15, and it's another goodie: Sara is extracted from the group, chained up, and held hostage in an army vehicle. The other five have to negotiate a course, under fire from snipers, rescue Sara, and bring her back, alive and accompanied. There are guns to defend themselves with Sara. £10,000 at stake. We're talking the paintball challenge again.

There's a twist, revealed to Sara. If she can arrive at the finish line alone and unaccompanied, she wins a free pass to the finish. Before the episode, they were discussing, and Sara said she would work with the team. Others would take the pass, she said.

It's all edited down to good action stuff. Zi makes a break to unchain Sara. Jennifer is panicing a lot. The others are pinned down in some bushes. Ollie survives to join Zi and Sara, Jennifer and David are out. Zi shouts assistance at Jo, who has two wounds - three will lead to her elimination.

Moving back. Zi heads off alone, not really making a good job of it. There's lots of tension between Jo and Ollie. What will Sara do? Jo's got herself cut off and dead. Zi's ahead of Ollie and Sara. Ollie gets killed, Zi has to come back. The two drop their guns and run for it.

They make it to the tent. Then Sara shoots Zi. He storms out. Sara explains to David. The bleep machine goes into overdrive. Jennifer is incredulous. Oliver drop-jawed. Sara's (weak) defence is that everyone else would do the same thing. Zi is beyond words. Jo can stop pretending she likes Sara.

Light the blue touchpaper and come back on the Springer show.

Later... Sara regrets causing the reaction, everyone else is amazed. Except for Jennifer, she's depressed. Ollie and Zi point out that this is the point where they stop working as a team and start working solo.

Points of order. 1) Ollie shouting instructions after he'd called he was out. Surely that would have disqualified the team...

2) The paint mark on Zi's vest that Glen shows to the camera is on his left upper chest. Yet Sara clearly shot Zi from *behind*, which would give a mark on the left side of his back. Zi was leaning on the ground, making the right side inaccessible - that becomes the left if the jacket is reversed. It looks to me that Zi got hit by shrapnel from other fire, not Sara's bullet.

The elimination is unusual; the chips buy off questions.

1 Zi - Clearly not Sara [Oliver]
2 Jennifer - Zi [Zi, Zi, Zi]
3 Jo - Anyone but David
5 David - (nothing) [Zi, Zi]
Sara - exempt [Zi, Oliver, Zi, David]
4 Oliver - Zi [Zi, Zi]

A great couple of days for the mole, £70,000 at the start has turned into £70,000 at the end.

It's goodbye to Jo. Zi exhales audibly; David says something to Sara, Oliver and Jennifer also converse.

Mole Hunt Clues

13: David played a blinder, and if his team had the confidence to give his answer first, they would have run without penalties. Oliver, Jennifer and Jo didn't have their brains in gear, quite frankly. This is easily rigged to the mole, by passing incorrect answers. Think Oliver, think perhaps Zi and Sara who were almost invisible in their team.

14: No-one thought to discuss their guests with the other contestants. Given that they've been apart for two weeks, this would surely be a topic of conversation. D'oh!

15: As a method of breaking the team apart, this was a great game. As television, this was a great game. As a method of finding out who the mole is, it's not actually all that good. Ollie had experience of paintball, but was carrying too much baggage to make it through. Jennifer and David fell too early to make judgements. Zi's tactics were risky, splitting off from the rest of the group at the end, but paid off. And anyone would claim passage at this stage. Note Ollie's shouting after coming out of the game. Dare I say it, but there wasn't a huge amount of useful information in the mole hunt this week. The intelligence puzzles were the key game, and that didn't tell us anything we didn't know - David is clever; Ollie and Jennifer may have fed an incorrect answer.

Your nomination, Weaver? I have had suspicions about Sara from the start, and nothing she's done this week has helped to alleviate them. But, reviewing the evidence, I'm beginning to turn towards Oliver as the mole. He's featured a lot, and never takes much of a lead in anything.

Weather: Rain comes mid-morning and never really goes away. +7.

Into town, but I'm still under the weather, and very very crotchety.

Ultimate cheek Former Tory minister Neil Hamilton may stand as an independent candidate against Europe Minister Keith Vaz or former Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson at the general election. Hamilton, who lost his ministerial job under John Major amid the "cash for questions" scandal, and in May 1997 his Tatton seat to anti-sleaze candidate Martin Bell, said his standing against one of the two main figures caught up in the Hinduja passport affair would be a rich irony. "I'm thinking of buying a white suit," said Mr Hamilton, in a tongue-in-cheek reference to Mr Bell's trademark attire.
Hamilton added: "I think it is very important that sleaze as an issue should feature in the next general election, as it did in the last, but this time with a slightly different label, Labour sleaze rather than Tory sleaze. I haven't decided whether to stand against Keith Vaz, I might stand against Peter Mandelson, or indeed any of the others who are in the frame for being remembered for dragging this government down into the mire of sleaze. I think it very important to not only fight for principle but also to have a good time while you are doing it, and there would be a certain irony in me coming forward to point up the failings of this administration, as exemplified by one or two individuals in the same way as they did to me in the last election, it's getting your own back.

Football: A late Andy Cole equaliser gives MUN a point on the travels to Chelsea, cancelling Hasselbaink's opener for the Londoners. Henry gets the only goal as Arsenal closes the gap at the top, beating Ipswich 1-0. Francis Jeffers returns from a four-month injury lay-up to score the opener in Everton's 2-1 win over Leicester. Sunderland is denied a win by a late penalty, and draws 1-1 with Liverpool in a battle for third place.
In other results: Villa 1 Middlesborough 1; Leeds 0 Derby 0; Southampton 2 Bradford 0; Man City 0 Spurs 1.
Charlton beat Newcastle 2-0 in Sunday's match, West Ham and Coventry draw 1-1 on Monday.

League tables:
1 (1) Man Utd pl 27 - 63
2 (3) Arsenal    27 - 50
3 (4) Liverpool  26 - 45
4 (2) Sunderland 27 - 44
5 (8) Leeds      27 - 40
6 (5) Ipswich    26 - 40

15 (15) Everton        27 - 31
16 (16) Derby          27 - 28
17 (17) Middlesborough 27 - 27
18 (18) Man City       27 - 23
19 (19) Coventry       26 - 21
20 (20) Bradford       26 - 16

Tracker points:
1 (1) MUN 1215
2 (2) ARS 1108
3 (3) LIV 1083
4 (4) SUN 1064
5 (5) CHE 1059

16 (17) EVE 960
17 (16) DER 952
18 (18) MCY 876
19 (19) COV 857
20 (20) BRA 844

Those of you from a land down under will remember "Popstars," the show that created a real live pop group from a bunch of no-hopers, and gave them a minor hit record.

The show has been acquired for the UK market, and attracted decent - though not that remarkable - viewing figures. The five components of this manufactured confection were revealed last weekend. Now we hear that the group is being ordered to shed weight to make themselves more marketable, as if ten hours on prime-time television wasn't going to help them shift a gazillion units. The rest is predictable.

* Cue pre-packaged rant about re-inforcement of negative sizes as a positive thing.
* Cue backlash that that's showbiz, baby.
* Cue response that some people have managed to have huge careers without looking like a stick insect.

For my money, it's the record that will count. If it's as tedious, drivelsome and derivative as Bardot, the Aussie band, it deserves to flop.

And yes, Mark, that band *is* called Bardot, as was the UK Eurosong entry in 1982. Whatever happened to them? Exactly.

Speaking of boring pop-stars, Liquid News' Eminem special last night turned into something of a damp squib, as the friend of chainsaws missed his flight in from Paris. Or so thought Christopher Price. In fact, the star of absolutely nothing at all had been caught up in his own ennui, been trapped in a stout wooden crate, and dispatched to a quiet corner of north Texas. He should arrive in about six weeks, giving the rest of us plenty of time to find something more interesting to do.

Weather: Cloduy, murky, 8.

Don't say you weren't warned. We said last year that we'd stop recognising the independence of fifty colonies between Canada and Mexico. As a first step towards normalising relations, we're imposing a minimum quotient of British content on all major tv networks.

ABC has Millionaire, CBS has Survivor, FOX is producing Wanted. ESPN has Two Minute Drill (closely based on Mastermind), and the quota of British content on the WB is filled by the character of Rupert Giles. (We disown Wesley Windbag.)

But how will NBC cope under the new regime? That station toddled off to the land where great game shows are dreamed up, and bought up the first thing it saw. Unable to make a decent game show out of a lottery draw, though, NBC has now purchased The Weakest Link. Think Survivor for people with brains: the contestants vote each other out, based on who has been dragging the squad down. The eventual winner walks off with a crock of gold, or around $5000.

There was just one question. Who will host this festival of nastiness. Two pilots were made. In the blue corner, Rudy Boesch, winner of US Survivor but with no real television experience. In the red-haired corner, Anne Robinson, campaigning journalist for twenty years and host of the UK original.

There could only be one winner, which is why our Annie will present thirteen shows on NBC over the summer. Yay.

In a not entirely unrelated move, the makers of Barney, the stuffed purple dinosaur that's less popular than the Teletubbies, have sold out to HIT Entertainment. HIT is the UK group that made Bob The Builder, who will be constructing on sets across the US later this year. That makes Barney a British production now. Some you win, some you lose.

Chart News

Personal Airplay Stats: 42 contemporary hit records passed my radar this week (40 last), for a total of 82 plays (69 last.)

Debuts:
"Broken Home" - Papa Roach (mr, tbc)
"Fool" - Mansun (albr, Jan 29)
"The Crystal Lake" - Grandaddy (mr, Jan 29)

Adds:
"Fool" - Mansun
"Over The Rainbow" - Eva Cassidy (jazz, single from 1998 "Songbird" album)
"Sailing Off The Edge Of The World" - Straw (aaa, Feb 12)
"Teenage Dirtbag" - Wheatus (mr, Feb 5)

Most Heard: 7 plays for "Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of" - U2.