Like loads of other people too tight or anti-Murdoch to get Sky, I had to retune my Freeview box the other day. It’s said that some viewers may have been confused as to how to do it or might forget, but I find that hard to believe, given that every time I turned the TV on or changed channel, a reminder would flash up. It still flashes up now, even though I’ve already done it. Match that with alarmist stories in the press about Freeview boxes blowing up and very patronising news reports where a journalist would stand in a Currys (I wanted to write Rumbelows there for creative effect, but it doesn’t exist any more does it? Sounded better though) giving a slow, step-by-step guide on how to press two buttons on your Freeview remote, and surely everyone was in the know.

Since retuning, I have noticed only two differences. A few channels have switched themselves around, moving down a few ‘doors’ in some kind of telly channel house swap. The other thing I’ve noticed, and it’s difficult *not* to notice, is that there are now FIVE channels in a row dedicated to a usually devastatingly-unattractive female rubbing her minge on a pillow. Yes, I now have Babestation!

I’ve seen Babestation before, many years ago. I used to share a flat with a guy for whom masturbation was the only sexual option he was ever likely to have. He had two boxes of Kleenex by his bed and his last girlfriend was such a distant memory, all his photos of their time together were sepia-tinted. He was the first person I’d ever known who had ‘Sky Digital’ as it was then called. I would come home from work or doing something much more interesting to find him watching Babestation. It then consisted of two women reading out texts from pathologically lonely bank tellers and deputy managers of leading supermarket chains. Occasionally they’d lick their lips or plump their (always blond) hair. And that was that really. Endless hours of waving to ‘Gary’ or ‘Steve’ in a tight top. I admired the girls in a way. It really was money for old rope.

Fast forward ten years later and Babestation is a different animal. In fact, animal is probably the best way to describe it. As I’m working late evenings at the moment, I’m getting in at around two-thirty in the morning, so perhaps it’s not quite so bad at other times, but at that time of the morning, Babestation has gone on to the next level. And it’s not an upward journey.

There’s a lady. Oh she’s got no top on. She’s got two or three tattoos. Her boobs are VERY round and look like they’ve been stuck on. Her hair extensions are a bit frazzled. Ooh look she’s on the phone, but I can’t hear her speaking. She’s lying on her back and humping the air in the sheerest, flimsiest of thongs ever. I can see bits of her that even she’s probably not investigated in any depth. Oh where’s she putting her hands? Oh no is she going to put them insi… hmm no she’s not she’s just putting them ‘tantalisingly’ close to the band of her ‘panties’. Now she’s turning over and is on all fours. Her boobs look like huge oranges. They look quite painful actually. The skin is stretched over them like a bad facelift. They’re straining to escape. Now she’s lying flat and, oh, she’s having sex with a pillow with mad, forceful thrusts. Now she’s stopped. Now she’s thrusting again. Now she’s stopped. A lick of the lips. She’s just put her boob in her mouth. It appears that she’s not some bored housewife entertaining herself while she’s holding the line to the British Gas call centre: there’s someone on the phone telling her what to do. As she replies to the mystery caller, her face contorts in what I imagine she thinks are sexy expressions but in fact she looks spiteful, as if she’s telling him what a small penis he has. I wonder what her voice is like. Strong, dominating, persuasive and sexy? Husky and sensual?

I soon find out. After a few calls, the gyrating lady will be tossed a microphone which allows her to speak to us, in order to entice more viewers to call her. She sounds like the woman who does the tannoy announcements in a Stockport Asda. “Yeah hi guys I’m Stacey and I’m really lookin for-wood to talkin to you. Call me now for some sexy chat.” If you get bored of the Stockport senorita, you can always ‘flick’ on to the next channel to watch a slightly thinner girl with huger breasts or a more curvy girl with extra tattoos. The last couple of babealicious channels are in fact Babestation imitators with what viewers might think are less attractive ladies- they don’t have hair extensions and their bodies aren’t like melons glued to a pencil.

At the moment, while the girls are topless and thrusting, nothing particularly sexual is happening. I’m already desensitised to the sight of Stacey rubbing her knock-off Janet Regers on velour cushions, so to her regular viewers it must be as sexy as watching Corrie. Eventually, perhaps with the promise of an extra fiver, the knickers will have to come off and then, perhaps a year or two down the line, God knows what will be going God knows where.

I’ll have to check back on them in 2019.

I have just got back from a short break in Scotland. I spent a few days in Carnoustie with my dad and his wife, but the rest of my break was taken up with the very serious business in doing as much of the Edinburgh Festival as possible. I have had a strange relationship with the festival over the years: I lived in Edinburgh for a few years from the late nineties and used to find the festival something of an inconvenience. Save for the odd show, the only goods I'd get out of the festival would be the extended opening hours of bars and clubs and, er, getting to know the strangers in town for the event. Edinburgh really is consumed by the festival throughout August: the population swells and the whole city is unrecognisable, transformed from a grey, proud capital into a fun, boisterous place. Dour grannies make way for enthusiastic performers and the place is all the better for it.

It is more or less a tradition for permanent residents of Edinburgh to hate the festival, at least outwardly. The influx of RP accents and bright young things prancing around in Victorian clothes or full theatrical make-up doesn't really endear the event to the Edinburghers. Many Edinburgh folk are turfed out of their flats by landlords who want to move in more-moneyed temporary residents for the month of August, prices seem to shoot up out of nowhere, taxis become scarcer than unicorns and the quantity of amateur bagpipers increases tenfold. Secretly, though, I think they love it. Venues spring up in the most unusual of places and the city seems surrounded by a warm aura that you don't get during the remaining dank months of the Edinburgh calendar.

This year, I managed to see 8 shows and missed around 10 more that I would have liked to have seen. Eight shows in 3 days may not seem like a lot, but going to see performances is extremely time-consuming. First of all, you have to pore over the umpteen festival guides to find shows you may be interested in. You have to then spend half an hour cursing that the show you really want to see has just finished 10 minutes ago. You'll then forget to see it the next day. Then it's time to queue for your ticket. For a full festival experience, your show should be sold out after you've queued for aeons. Once you do get your tickets, you need to get your drink to take in with you (the venues are notoriously hot *and* some shows are so bad they can be much improved by inebriation.) You think you're finally at the main event, but no: you have to queue up again, this time to get in the venue. Once you're in, you're in for at least an hour and then when you're out, there's the obligatory drink in the bar to dissect what you've just witnessed. And then the process starts again.

When I lived in Edinburgh I probably saw a maximum of 3 shows for the entire three weeks. I never bothered with the main International Festival, which was usually lots of opera, high-brow dance or Shakespeare. The Film Festival didn't really appeal, either, what with films being much longer than live shows and there being all that festival quaffing to do outside the darkened auditoria. So it was the Fringe that I would frequent, although my experience of it all was mainly confined to the various bars that pop up here, there and everywhere. Now that I'm an Edinburgh ex-pat, however, I try and fit in as much as I can in the few short days I have there. There's some great stuff to see, but, man, there's a lot of dross too. Going as we did this time in the first week meant that not many shows had been reviewed or seen by anybody else, so it was hard to get a feel for what was good and what was absolute bobbins. Last year, we went in the third week and got a much higher hit rate. You do pay less for tickets in the first weekend, though.

And now it is over, and here I am back, feeling a bit blah. I was quite proud of myself for managing to fly there and back (my heartfelt thanks to Diazepam for making this possible). I know that this makes my so-called carbon footprint considerably larger but, come on, I didn't fly for ten years until last year so I reckon I'm due a little bit of aviation experience. I have also come back hopelessly addicted to Kopparberg pear cider. I don't think I could have got through some of the shows without it. So all-in-all, a marvellous festival fuelled by tranquilisers (for the flight only, I assure you) and pear cider. See, you don't need 'Glasto' for rock and roll.

My unemployment rages on. The problem with not having a job is that you're exposed to far fewer humans than everybody else. Some may say this is ideal, as in many workplaces colleagues are dreadful bores who are forced upon you, much like lecherous relatives or rude checkout assistants. I am, however, starting to miss interaction that doesn't involved friends I've know for years and my other half. I miss the whimsy and dreaded 'watercooler' moments that you just don't get if you're not trooping into a workplace every day.

The highlight of my unemployment has undoubtedly been attempting to get state benefits. I have signed on twice before: once when I was 'on hiatus' from college and then again just after I graduated. I was on the dole for precisely one week, both times. I don't remember it being nearly as difficult or stressful as it was this time, but perhaps the mists of time have clouded my judgement. I was quite surprised, despite having worked solidly for the last 10 years, to be refused Jobseekers' Allowance. Apparently, there was mix up and they thought I hadn't made enough National Insurance contributions. It's taken two soul-destroying trips to the JobCentre with my P60 (they lost it the first time) to prove I had paid enough. The money, such as it is, is now starting to dribble through.

The most awful bit is signing on itself. The whole process is designed to upset and annoy. You have a fixed time you must go but, without exception, you'll be kept waiting a good 45 minutes. The heat and desperation go hand in hand and every time I'm in there, someone is shouting at a member of staff. Nobody says 'hello' to you: you are just told to sit down. Nobody even looks at you. It's strange. I can't understand why anyone would behave like that, but most of the people who work there do.

The scariest thing is that potential jobs are becoming scarcer. I see around 3 a week that I may just be suitable for. I always used to get an interview when I applied for jobs. Recently it's been a hit rate of 1 in 10. I shine and dazzle in interviews and the potential employers nearly always love me, but the gig goes to someone else at the last minute. Such is life.

I'll stop now before this turns into an employment-related version of those misery novels about harsh upbringings in Ireland. Perhaps I should write one myself called 'Please Recession, Don't Hurt Me' or similar. 

When Britney finally appeared on stage, the crowd went wild and while the show had plenty of spectacle and the music sounded good, she mimed the whole thing, which no doubt wasn’t a problem if you were stageside but those of us up in the Gods had difficulty connecting with her, knowing that she was twirling around to a tape. She occasionally ‘spoke’ to the audience but knowing her she probably lip-synched that too. It was a bit like watching one of those dolls with a string hanging out of her back that you pull to make it talk. I wonder who does hold Britney’s strings these days. She did her fair share of dancing, despite performing the first three songs being dragged in a shopping trolley, but to me live should mean live, and I almost felt sorry for the Britney maniacs who come back night after night, spending all their wages watching her move her mouth.

As usual, I drank too much and managed to piss off the two girls at the end of my row with my constant trips to the bar. The actual highlight of the concert wasn’t related to Britney at all. Four girls who’d got £5 tickets and were sitting near us were approached by a member of the production team to see if they wanted to sit in a better seat. They naturally agreed, and were shown to luxury couches at the very edge of the stage, where they would be nose to nipple with their idol. Absolutely free. Watching them whooping it up, screaming and generally losing their shit at their good fortune totally made my night and was much more compelling than the dead-eyed pop princess strutting her stuff.

I’ve managed to catch some of the new US version of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! and have found it wonderfully bizarre. Firstly, you don’t really have to be that famous in America to get on it. Janice Dickinson, runner-up in the UK a couple of years ago, is back for more here. While she is relatively entertaining in her other million reality shows, she doesn’t really shine in this format, whingeing and looking increasingly like she’s been left under the grill too long. She’s supposed to be rough and tough but welches out of challenges at the drop of a hat. I can’t believe she’s agreed to do the show again; her pay packet must be huge. The main highlight has been my introduction to Heidi Montag and husband Spencer Pratt. I’ve never watched The Hills, the show that propelled them to fame, but from what I understand it is a ‘scripted reality’ show. I think that means its participants are pretending to be in a docusoap but are actually faking it, the kind of behaviour that would have you hauled over the calls on an anti-sleaze ticket in the UK, but is absolutely fine in the US. Imagine if Ken and Barbie found God and you’d be halfway there with the Montag-Pratts. They’re in turns bouncy and clinically depressed, facing every hardship with utterings of prayers. Heidi, a wannabe popstar, was asked to sing a song from her album for the jungle crew. The resulting tuneless warble was met with derision from Janice, who received a dressing down from hubby Spencer who urged a bemused Janice not to make him ‘spence out’. Sadly, the shiny-toothed pair have now left the jungle thanks to Heidi contracting a vomiting bug. As stick-thin Heidi only usually vomits after a meal, the bosses figured something was up and the world’s worst advert for evangelical Christians slipped off our screens, much to the relief of the other also-rans. I hear that Heidi’s sister Holly has taken her place, so I’ll be tuning in to see if she’s just as jelly-brained.

I’m just half-watching that Giles Coren and Sue Perkins show where they ‘live’ in a different decade and eat food particular to that period. In this edition, somewhat pointlessly, they’re tacking that bygone era that is, er, the 1980s. Watching them ooh and aah over foods like Stella Artois, potato waffles and the like feels like a very empty experience. Unless you’re about 15, the menus don’t have the ‘ick’ factor that previous series would have done, thus rendering the programme a waste of time as no teenager would want to sit and watch this middle-class drivel. One scene had Giles going into Pret A Manger, for fuck’s sake. Gosh, nobody does that these days, do they? How odd!

One more TV gripe before I pretend to get on with some work: Andie MacDowell. Aside from these endless L’Oréal adverts, where she plugs anti-ageing cream (I wonder if it dials the plastic surgeon for you), does she actually do any acting? How would she find the time? She must film a new one every day. 

You see some odd things on breakfast television. It’s news, but not as we know it. Whereas news or current affairs programmes shown later in the day seem to be serious and stern and hard on facts, breakfast TV news is heavy on gossip and light on evidence, coherent argument or, indeed, point. I understand that in the morning people don’t want to be bombarded with the full misery only a proper news bulletin can bring, but when you’re watching the televisual equivalent of a Daily Mail annual it can become quite disturbing.

I watched with interest the other morning as one of the programmes featured a story about parking spaces. The premise was that while we were being urged to ‘shop local’ to save the economy, councils were making this impossible thanks to the distinct lack of parking spaces or, for those spaces that were present, astronomical fees to use them. The article used Bournemouth as a case study. Having lived near enough in the past to Bournemouth to visit it, I couldn’t see why anybody would want to drive there at all. Surely you’d want to delay your arrival as much as possible? The reporter stood stony-faced in front of ‘local’ shops like, er, JD Sports and Topshop decrying the local council for not turning vast swathes of the town into parking spaces. Talking head after talking head said that the only way to stimulate the beleaguered economy was to slash parking prices. The ‘action’ then moved to a retail park some way out of Bournemouth, filled with gleeful shoppers parking their gas-guzzling planet-murdering wagons in a plethora of free parking spaces. Among the shops were the usual Boots, H&M, Next and Wallis that you see on the high street.

I found myself confused. I thought the big idea now, as well as shopping locally, was to take public transport. Congestion charges, fuel taxes and non-stop lobbying on programmes like this very breakfast news I was watching, have all indicated that driving is evil and is causing the downfall of Earth. Now, when the ability of some git to transport his Debenhams carrier bags home safely is at stake, the very councils who try to discourage cars coming into town centres -by making parking difficult, for example- become the demons.

Lugging shopping home can be a pain in the arse, yes, oh people of Bournemouth, but if you can’t get a parking space why not take the bus? Either that or shop really locally and buy everything from your corner shop.