Typecast

First things first: there will be NO spoilers in these posts. I'm writing this on Sunday afternoon before the results show has aired. There are confirmed spoilers, unconfirmed spoilers and people on the internet who apparently cannot survive until Sunday evening without knowing who has been eliminated. I'm definitely one of them but you might not be so, if you're reading this before the results show, you're safe here and I won't mention an elimination until the following week's post.  Of course, the reason we can have spoilers at all is because the Sunday results show still isn't live. It's filmed after Saturday night's live show, complete with pre-filmed pro group dances and impossible costume changes but the BBC continues to describe the Strictly results show as being filmed "as live" for years. It's well documented on the WTF Strictly podcast  and I'm going to continue moaning about it because it remains ridiculous. If you're...

Strictly 2026, Week 1.  Last week I wondered whether Emma Willis would be the glue holding the new Strictly presenting team together . One live show later and I might have called that slightly too soon. Emma seemed nervous, Josh was doing an awful lot and, at times, it felt as though he was overshadowing her. I’m still not sure how the three-presenter arrangement is going to work once they settle into it, but I’m prepared to give them time. It was their first proper live show and, if nothing else, nobody fell down the stairs or swore before the watershed. Johannes seemed more comfortable up in the Clauditorium (which will forever be called the Clauditorium even though Ms Winkleman has rudely abandoned us) however there was a strange production issue when the couples were coming up the stairs. Jojo was talking to camera, but the camera remained on the dancers, so we could neither see nor properly hear him. If he’s delivering a line or some support, we need to see and hear that. Who...

This was Michael’s birthday card this year. It might not seem like a particularly traditional card for your son’s 33rd birthday, but as soon as I saw it I knew I had to buy it. There wasn't even really a decision to make. That was Michael's card. When he was about two years old, Michael went to a special nursery centred around speech therapy because he struggled with forming words. He could communicate what he wanted or needed perfectly well, but the sounds in the words didn’t always come out in the right order. If he said “table”, for example, it came out as “batle”. I can still hear him saying it now. But there was one thing that apparently didn't present the same problem. Wonderwall. Michael could sing Wonderwall word perfect in the car whenever we played (What's the Story) Morning Glory? And we played that CD a lot. There are some completely insignificant bits of your children's childhood that somehow lodge themselves in your brain forever. You forget entire min...

Strictly 2026, Week Zero.  Strictly is back, although this year it feels a little bit like somebody has moved all the furniture around while we weren’t looking. There are new presenters, new professional dancers, a largely unfamiliar celebrity line-up and, for us, no weekly WTF Strictly podcast . Vi and I have other commitments this year and we always said we would keep recording for as long as it was enjoyable and manageable.  I still need somewhere to put all my Strictly opinions though, so here we are. Welcome to Week Zero, aka Launch Night. The biggest change is obviously the new presenting team. Emma Willis was always one of my favourites for the job, along with Zoe Ball. I still wish Zoe had got it, but Emma immediately looked as though she belonged there. She was comfortable in the studio, good in the rehearsal room and generally gave the impression that, whatever happened around her, she had it covered. Johannes already knows the programme and everybody involved in it,...

Earlier this year, I planted some sunflower seeds and then promptly forgot about them. By the time I remembered, they had grown to around two feet tall and were all crammed together in one pot. I decided the sensible thing to do would be to separate them into individual pots, at which point every single one immediately wilted and looked as though I had killed it. This probably tells you everything you need to know about my gardening technique. Somehow, though, most of them survived. Not because I followed a carefully researched growing plan or knew what I was doing, but seemingly through a combination of water, sunshine and their own determination to live. They grew, they flowered and, for a while, they made the yarden look properly summery.  Then we introduced an Akita puppy into the mix. Kaizer didn’t destroy all of them, but he did chew through several stems as part of his ongoing investigation into whether absolutely everything in the garden is edible. I’m not sure his pruning...

I BLOODY DID IT - 38 minutes and 37 seconds. I've been working towards getting a "3" in front of my parkrun result for a while. I'd given myself until the end of this year to run a sub-40 minute 5K but, apparently, I didn't need quite that long. Yesterday, at Blackpool parkrun, I crossed the finish line in 38:37 - except I didn't actually know I'd done it. My friend Rowena (and her sidekick, Hatter) was running with me and, despite knowing exactly what my goal was, she had deliberately not told me what pace we were running. This was probably helped by the fact that her watch works in miles and mine works in kilometres so any mid-run discussion about pace would require mathematical ability that I definitely don't possess whilst trying to breathe. She knew though.  And, more importantly, she knew it was achievable. I knew Blackpool was probably my best opportunity to have a proper crack at sub-40. It's a very flat course apart from the incline by the...