Saturday.

Saturday in our household is a non day.

This is the day the Memsahib says "do you want to go shopping". This is not a rhetorical question that you can ignore, or a question that you can offer the answer "no" in reply. No, "do you want to go shopping" is more of a statement of fact. So off we go to enter the rugby scrum that is Aldi. I look around and I can see many other male faces with that "resigned to a fate worse than death" look. I fail to grasp why it is essential for me to be in attendance when I would much rather be shoving hot needles into both my eyes. 

Saturday is not even a day for watching football any more, because SKY have slid a large pile of shekels to the cash strapped Football League and the  Football League  are doing their best impression of Uriah Heap in watching out for the interests of the supporters. You would think that Digger Murdock Enterprises would be far too busy listening into other peoples private phone calls anyway.

Which takes me into the murk and mire that is the fragrant realm of celebrities. Who on earth gives a toss about celebrities. This is an industry manufactured by the press to provide "news" to keep the pleb public entertained. Which brings me on to the paparazzi. Look, I don't want a new photograph everyday of the same bulimic tart flashing her knickers as she gets out of a taxi. Look if the truth be known I did not want the picture the first time round. I certainly don't want a picture of the alternative which seems to be one of a silicone reconstructed strumpet with four kids by different fathers. Look, these people are page three mucky picture models not role models.

I suppose I could go and watch a live football match. However, the bile rises into my throat when I look at the cost of a ticket. Money that is being used to pay for under talented but over waged players. I could go down to the local recreation ground and watch a better game played out between two pub league teams. Where the result is not measured in goals but in blood.

Which, takes me on to another pet peeve, the   Premier League dive! I watch a game of rugby and one large Neanderthal gets tackled by another equally large Neanderthal. Up they get and get on with the game. If one Neanderthal gets a broken leg, then he slows down a little. If he gets another broken leg the coach will consider substituting him. Contrast this with the "Premier league" where one player gets a gentle tap and does an writhing impression after executing a perfect forward roll in the pike position. A bald headed bloke in black then shows a series of traffic light coloured cards, but all to no avail. I expect one day I will go to a boxing match and a spontaneous  game of football will break out.

But there is always the alternative of terrestrial TV. Sports entertainment starting with Saturday kitchen. Saturday morning has long been a time for sport broadcasts. It is not a time for a competition to find a recipe for quiche. Quiche for me is a concoction that has an uncanny resemblance to those "pavement pizza" you find about a hundred yards from a kebab house just after the pubs have closed.

Thinking in terms of a regurgitated pavement pizza, as being a short term waste of money. Takes me onto the Royal Wedding. Who cares if the sprog of a philandering - would be king - wants to get married. Here we are, with cash starved banks unable to pay out their mega bonuses. We the tax payer are now expected to be funding a wedding. When my kids got married I paid for it - when their kids get married we all pay for it.

Just what is the roll of "The Firm" anyway. We could easily save millions if we got rid of them. The French and the Russians did it. I know that their form of a retirement plan for the royals was a bit drastic - well for the royals anyway. I hear all this twaddle about how much money the royal family brings into the country. Fergie proved that they were able to acquire the wherewithal to pay for it themselves, with a little bit of her skulduggery I'm sure some mug would be happy to pay. Instead we the tax payer all get mugged. If having a royal family was a good income generator - every country in the world would have one. 

Look at the countries like Australia, New Zealand and Canada. They have a royal family - but it is one from somewhere else, err here actually. So they have all the dubious trappings of the royalty without paying a royalty so to speak. We could do the same. The English Interregnum from 1649–1660 was a republican period in Britain. Cromwell got rid of Charlie I using a variation on the French method. We had a period of ten years without a royal family. We actually managed quite well until some idiot called George Monck went and invited Charlie II back. Now we get to pay for the “sprogs wedding” of Charlie III's ill fated first attempt at marriage.

I think Cromwell got it right and we need to give his idea a second chance. He was so right that we have a statue of him outside Parliament. He was buried in Westminster Abbey for a while, (before we executed him - after he was already dead) we even struck coinage with Cromwell's head on.

Ah! it's time for Time Team, now there is a good alternative, to the celebrity cook-athon on ice. A show staring Edmund Blackadders sidekick Baldrick. Supported by a wild haired Einstein look-a-like, but without the brain. Who in turn is supported by a feather doffing, equally wild haired mole-a-like. Who in turn is supported by a woman with a wrong way round blokes name. All advised by one sort of geek or another. Is it me, or is that the same field in every episode?

Television is not what it used to be. Bring back Mortimer Wheeler and Magnus Pike. Even the potters wheel, the windmill or the tank of angel fish were better than what's on now.

That as they say - is entertainment.

I must go and get my pills.

Later....