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Washed and Ready readers laid bare

Like all obsessive bloggers, I run a stats program to see who's reading my ramblings. I can find out things like where you live, what you had for breakfast and your current golf handicap. If it all sounds a bit too much like Big Brother for your liking, you're free to go and read someone else's site.

As you might expect, just over two-thirds of Washed and Ready fanatics are based in the UK. After that, the US and Germany clock up about 9% of the readership apiece. Howdy y'all and guten tag respectively.

One of the weirdest features on the stats is the one that allows you to see the search terms that have led people to the site. In other words, you can read the phrases that people typed into Google that produced a Washed and Ready blog entry as one of the top returns. Among the latest is "could russell grant find madeleine mccann".

Mmm. The person who entered this search term seems to treat Google as some kind of oracle and was probably expecting a considered reply. "Soothsayer and roly-poly 80s TV personality Russell Grant is indeed capable of locating any missing person, but is very tied up right now with his daily predictions for MSN."

Other recent search terms that led people to these very pages included "allergy to piriton" and "norman wisdom where he now lives in a nursing home".

Strangely, there are no listings for searches such as "excellent value for money", "sexy blogger" or "intellectual tour de force".

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