Seven people have died in that chair: two heart attacks, two strokes, two choking incidents, and one case of spontaneous bleeding from nose, mouth, and ears. DON'T SIT IN IT.

My single favourite 45 minutes of TV the BBC has ever done. The perfect ghost story.

I'm determined to bring "thanks for the sour persimmons, cousin" into everyday usage. As a way of expressing general disgruntled disapproval, it's unbeatable.

There are times - especially when the weather's as thunderously unsettled as it is at the moment - when I look out of the window and expect Ronnie James Dio to turn up and start singing "Man on the Silver Mountain".

Any elderly millionaires using their free bus pass deserve respect for true Scrooge McDuck levels of tightfistedness

Featuring an honest to goodness Banks epic ("An Island in the Darkness"), and some of his most appealing pop stuff. Feels like a close companion to "Still". It doesn't scale the heights of "A Curious Feeling" (but then, not much does) but it's one of his very best rock records.

Just got back from a lengthy walk. "Misplaced Childhood" on the headphones. I've been wandering about with MP on the headphones since I was 15 in 1985. I'm 53 now and I'm still at it. The headphone pads aren't huge and virulently orange now but in everything else I'm consistent.

I see Michael Cragg's "Reach For The Stars" is £3.99 on Kindle at the moment. Extraordinary book. Also, a very angering one. You sort of know that pop music's a production line, a grind and it exploits, but the extent of it revealed in this is quite shocking. It's an eye-opener.

Treating myself to a Muppet Show run-through - one a night, as and when it's needed. J.P Grosse has just turned up in the Judy Collins episode. Reminds me weirdly of Christopher Benjamin. Now I want a Muppet version of Talons of Weng-Chiang. Uncle Deadly as the ghost, obviously.

We're going to miss Kenneth Cope. Here's Mike, Kenneth and Annette arsing about together. A favourite photo, and a poignant one today.

Luisa's having difficulty getting something sorted out with her doctor. They keep bouncing her about. I've just described this as her "being stuck in an infinity loop even Jeff Slade can't get out of" and I'd like someone to kick me in the arse now please. Bloody hell.

The Iceman cometh, again. chortle.co.uk/news/2024/09/0…

Really enjoyed this interview with Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill about Still Game's return in comic book form. Those characters seem perfectly suited to it - or maybe comics are perfectly suited to them. Sweet little interview, anyway. youtube.com/watch?v=vSfcf2…

It's that time of day when I'm reminded that thanks to an act of witchcraft that brought the earliest surviving BBC Morecambe and Wise into existence from a thought unsalvageable source, we have oddly beautiful, chalk drawing-esque images of Eric and Ernie (and a bonus Roy Budd).

You always remember where you were when the moon Broke Away. On that day in 1999 I was in a pub at a Doctor Who local group meeting. We piled outside to wave goodbye to the moon, much to the bemusement of the regulars. Poor Moonbase Alpha. I presume they're out of coffee by now.

This is surely long past the stage where he should step down. He's not well. He's really not well. Apart from anything else, you don't take a goose anywhere. You approach a goose, it's not going to end well.

“The migrants are walking off with the town's geese. They've taken the geese. You know where the geese are in the park, in the lake, and even walking off with their pets. My dog's been taken. My dog's gone.” This goose? This goose here?