WASHED AND READY TO EAT

There are a couple of ads on South West Trains at the moment that are testament to the sheer power of the humble SMS. 'Birds need gardens,' reads one. 'Invite them to yours with a text.' This bewildering appeal from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds conjures up images of our feathered friends tapping their beaks on a Galaxy S4. When I want to get in touch with a sparrow or blackbird, I always tweet. Sightsavers take the idea a stage further. 'This eye infection could blind him. Text the antibiotics that could save his sight.' My phone is now seemingly linked to a 3D printer. We've certainly come a long way from wuu2 lolz.

Here are two great ideas I can guarantee won't be taken up by the authorities any time soon. First, a solution to the labelling of unhealthy foods, which we know to contribute to premature deaths from heart disease and cancer. Forget traffic lights. Why not show the number of cigarettes a food product is equivalent to? I don't know the facts, obviously. Leave that to a boffin in a research institute. But a cheap, own-brand lasagne, packed full of salt, saturated fat and horse, would be, say, 10 ciggies. A couple of deep-fried Mars bars would be 20. Instantly, we'd see what we were doing to ourselves at a glance. Here's my other idea, drawing from innovations we've seen online. You know how when you go on Google Street View now, they show the names of the roads as if they've been painted in large letters by a gang of virtual municipal workers? Why not ACTUALLY paint the names on roads in real life? Then we'd always know where we were.

I recently had the misfortune to encounter that terrible BBC show in which members of a family have their home made over by local tradesmen. Because there's zero justice in the world, these homeowners are picked at random to have tens of thousands spent on their property, which is usually some kind of tip beforehand. The format involves teams of plumbers, electricians, chippies and so on descending on the house and blitzing it - probably doing more actual work in the space of a few days than most of them have managed in the past few years. Inevitably, when the family arrives home, they are bowled over by the transformation that's taken place. So far, so good. I guess I could cope with all of that. But the next bit is truly unbearable. The family members - having inspected their new-look home - are expected to go to the front of the house where the workmen have gathered. What follows is something akin to a religious ceremony in which tears are shed and thanks are offered. Gi...

Nothing beats a full English breakfast, right? But if you're serving it up outside the English border, you can't call it an English breakfast. On my recent business trip to Cardiff, I was offered a Welsh breakfast. It looked eerily like an English one. There were some potatoes (a little unusual perhaps) and some slightly undercooked black pudding. But the black pudding is part of the traditional Scottish breakfast I've been served north of the border too. Come to think of it, what distinguishes it from the Manx and Irish breakfasts I've been offered? I think it's time for a London breakfast. Enfield eggs, sizzling sausages from Seven Sisters and some back bacon served up the old-fashioned Bayswater way. While I was in Cardiff, incidentally, I struggled with the lighting in my hotel room. Unable to see my hand in front of my face, I called for assistance. An Italian guy arrived and activated the lights from a switch that I had missed. Even then, I could ...

If you have a taste for the oddball, I hope you'll enjoy my survey of some of the weirdest news stories of 2012 . I've put together three short audio files which talk you through everything from Silvio Berlusconi's chat with Hosni Mubarak about Ruby the Heart Stealer through to the German visitors to Yorkshire who encountered people dressed as SS officers. Enjoy!

"I'm with the Coroner's office..." The Big Q always stood up for the little guy. ‘Gentlemen, you are about to enter the most fascinating sphere of police work: the world of forensic medicine.’ As hardened LA cops tumbled to the floor, we knew we were about to launch into another episode of the cult TV show Quincy ME , in which actor Jack Klugman played a coroner whose inquisitive nature and burning sense of injustice consistently got him into trouble with his boss. One of the sure signs of middle age is finding that people immortalised in obituaries tend to be familiar figures from your childhood or teenage years. Learning about the 90-year-old Klugman’s death over Christmas made me feel genuinely sad. It also made me ponder a very important question: who the hell would perform the autopsy? Would it be Sam, Quince’s worthy, but rather plodtastic assistant? Or Aston, the smooth-talking bureaucrat whose career had taken him from the mortuary table to the boardro...

I can't help but notice that the biggest advertisers in The Richmond Magazine - a glossy freebie distributed to households in the prosperous London suburb - seem to be private schools, lingerie shops and divorce lawyers. I'll lead you to draw your own conclusions as to what this tells us about the lives of the readers.

I gave up on Dallas after the series in the mid-80s when Bobby woke up to discover it was all a dream. That did shatter my illusions. Up until then, I’d been convinced the show was some kind of fly-on-the-wall documentary of life in oil-rich Texas. I had even glossed over the absence of Barbara Bel Geddes in one season and her replacement with another actress. (Can this stunt have been pulled in any other TV show? It’s a bit like taking June Brown out of Eastenders in the 1990s and telling the audience that Felicity Kendal would now be playing Dot Cotton.) Although Larry Hagman had starred in some other TV shows and played movie roles, he of course became synonymous with the scheming JR Ewing. Just as the UK’s George Cole is forever Arthur Daley or, I guess, Sofie Gråbøl will always be Scandanavian sleuth Sarah Lund, some parts are just bigger than the luvvies who play them. Actors probably never know in advance where a particular role is going to lead them. Hagman’s strength was ...

Mrs W has had a smart idea, which may just have legs. We were talking about the foods that are packaged up for cats. They tend to be things like 'Chicken and Rabbit Terrine' or other weird combinations of meat and fish. But what about the stuff that cats really want to eat? There must surely be a market for 'Rat and Squirrel Supreme', 'Magpie and Pigeon Delight' and so on. It's just a question of sourcing the ingredients, setting up a production line and coming up with a name. Mouse-based food might be branded 'Hickory Dickory', for instance. 'Wings of Desire' would be a strong name for any range involving sparrows, blackbirds and other avians. Fresh from the garden. All the nutrients your cat needs, without the mess.

One of the weirder aspects of the Jimmy Savile story (and I admit there have been plenty, including the former DJ's supposed role as a marriage guidance counsellor to Prince Charles ), has been the sex pest's involvement at Broadmoor. While swanning around the top-security hospital, he seems to have struck up a friendship with the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe . Let's face it. Before all the dark and seedy stuff started tumbling out about the Jim'll Fix It star, it would have been a pairing that seemed quite preposterous. Celebrities from very different walks of life do, however, seem to have a habit of forming unlikely relationships. I'm thinking particularly of Richard Nixon's fascination with Elvis Presley , the rapport between Burmese politician Aung Sang Suu Kyi and British radio presenter Dave Lee Travis and the flying visit Lady Gaga paid not so long ago to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange . Which celebrities do you secretly hope will get togethe...

I bumped into a retired CID officer recently and he was talking to me about his early days in the Met back in the 1970s. As a novice 'woodentop', he'd been attached to a sleepy suburban nick, where crime rarely intruded on the working day. First thing in the morning, the officers would arrive for parade and would be allocated their tasks. One guy would be sent for bacon, a second for eggs and a third to get a loaf of bread.

You wait years to encounter a talking animal and then they arrive like buses. No sooner had we heard about a whale called Noc , who seems to emulate human speech patterns, he was being challenged for his celebrity status by an elephant in Korea who likes nothing better than to chat away to his human visitors. No need for a Dr Doolittle to provide interpretation. The giant herbivore’s diction is so good that he’ll soon be able to place a trunk call all by himself. It makes me think that Hitler wasn’t entirely barking up the wrong tree with his plans for a so-called ‘Woofen SS’ unit of dogs who could read, write and speak . Maybe the Nazi dictator just happened to pick the wrong species. The war could have ended so differently if talking whales had been linked by radio to U-boat commanders. ‘Achtung, Herr Korvettenkapitän! Ze British are poised to attack!’ ‘You haf cracked zerr code?’ ‘Nein. Wir haf just had a call from Villy ze Vale!’

Under great pressure from one of the mini-Ws, I agreed a couple of months ago to provide shelter for an abandoned cat. The feline in question is a spirited character, who has made short work of our carpet and gets through mountains of chicken and turkey terrine. I guess I must have a soppy, sentimental side. Of course, it's a short step from being a pet owner to shelling out for pet insurance. People are quick to warn you about exorbitant vets' fees. And once you sign up to Petplan, you become a proud recipient of Pet People - a magazine packed full of exciting advice for animal aficionados everywhere. In the current edition, I have an opportunity to win a TransK9 'Space Saver' Dog Transit Box, one of seven 'pawprints lockets' or 10 sacks of Burgess Sensitive Scottish Salmon and Rice. For pet owners worried about their pooch being seen on a dark winter's night, 15 high-visibility, reflective dog jackets are on offer. But it's the obsession with excr...

Great excitement in north London today, with the official launch of Arsenal Snow Globe Christmas Ornaments. A full-page ad on page 69 of The Metro showcases these tasteful Yuletide decorations, which retail at £4.95 - 'a price you may never see again'. The editorial team at Viz should note that the concept of parody was pronounced dead on 20th September 2012. 'Officially approved by Arsenal,' gushes the copywriter, 'each ornament features an intricately sculpted festive character cheering on the Gunners inside a snow globe.' These characters, disappointingly, are not intricately hand-crafted representations of Walcott or Wenger. We are treated instead to Santa Claus, Mr Teddy and Frosty the Snowman. Just one shake and watch it "snow"!

In the middle-class suburbs of London, where I grew up, people had a name for girls with a penchant for getting their kit off in the open air. And believe me, it wasn’t princess. Amid all the debate about privacy and the hullabaloo about the recent antics of Harry and Kate, we shouldn’t lose sight of the reality. In the real world, respectable blokes don’t cavort around naked in $5,000 Vegas suites with hen parties, much as they might secretly like to. And respectable young women keep a lid on their exhibitionist tendencies, confining striptease to the bedroom. Yes, I’m afraid I take the old-fashioned, clearly outdated, liberal view of people’s personal lives. I’m generally pretty tolerant of what people choose to do in private. But the overlooked grounds of some French chateau are not private, if you’re a figure known on the world stage. And your luxury hotel room is no longer private when you open the doors to your minders and a bunch of starstruck party girls with mobile phone...

Does Prince Harry's little game of strip billiards with a Vegas 'bachelorette' troupe really matter? His friends in the media have been quick to offer all kinds of bizarre justifications for his behaviour. The most ludicrous of these - which I read quite soon after the news of his escapade first broke - was that His Highness needed some R&R after the Olympics. Err... excuse me? Was he actually involved in the competitions? I don't remember his challenging Mo Farah for the tape in the 10,000 metres, do you? In which case, we're talking about the need to recover from a succession of jollies, where he lapped up the sporting action from the best seats in the house. Poor diddums. It must have been tiring. The next argument is that he's an army officer and about to ship out to Afghanistan shortly. If we had to fight the Taliban like him, so the argument goes, we too would be spending thousands of pounds a night on a luxury suite and inviting an excitable he...

Personally, I feel pretty ambivalent when it comes to the case of Julian Assange and Wikileaks. In principle, it's great that the hypocrisy of world leaders is exposed, but it's a shame the whistle-blowing website has seemingly alienated a number of its erstwhile supporters. And while I have no idea whether any of the personal allegations against its founder hold water, I think the Swedish authorities are unlikely to be part of an international CIA-inspired conspiracy. What can't be disputed is Assange's capacity for generating headlines and disconcerting his enemies. From his political bid for the Australian Senate through to his grandstanding from the balcony of London's Ecuadorian embassy, the guy is a showman who wants to be remembered as a world figure. Although pretty much anything could happen in this bizarre, unfolding story, the smart money surely has to be on Assange staying in his embassy bolthole for years. In 2030, he may still be there, long after ...

Mrs W has had a real battle with NS&I - the UK's state-owned investment and savings organisation - over her attempts to close accounts for the two mini-Ws. You'd think that closing an account and getting your money out should be a pretty straightforward affair, but not with this particular arm of government bureaucracy. It involved form filling and phone calls on a scale not seen since Leonid Brezhnev asked the KGB to register all the establishments selling vodka within a 500-mile radius of Moscow. Anyway, after about three months of going backwards and forwards, the money did emerge and Mrs W was offered some modest compensation. We can forget it all and move on. As a footnote, however, it's worth flagging up one complete and utter absurdity of the way NS&I handles accounts for children. It seems from Mrs W's correspondence and conversations that any kid over the age of seven, who may nominally be an account holder, is required to give permission for their ...

Although Nice Airport is France's second biggest, the facilities beyond passport control are a little on the limited side. In terms of eating and drinking, passengers have a choice between a small convenience store which rejoices in the name of Ouishop and an Irish bar called Murphy's. The two establishments interconnect through supermarket-style gates that swing open and shut, so perhaps it should have dawned on me that the shop and the pub were, despite very different facades, one-and-the-same business. In fact, this connection only became clear when I looked at my receipt and saw that it was headed Murphy's-Ouishop. I feel Murphy's-Ouishop is a brand name with real potential for extension across multiple markets. Irish enough for Dublin and French enough for Paris. A place you might expect to find crackers, as well as a healthy serving of craic. To be sure, it has a je ne sais quoi about it.

This is a family blog, so it's with some trepidation that I turn to an ad on page 67 of the Metro newspaper, which promises men 'longer lasting' love-making. To take advantage of the incredible oral spray being promoted, I need to phone for a free consultation with a specialist doctor. It's a little difficult to imagine how this conversation might go, but the customer testimonials seem to give us a clue as to its likely frank nature. Mr MH of Luton tells us that he... wakes up somewhat... err... aroused, shall we say, in the mornings now. Indeed, he proclaims, the very thought of this arousal alone is enough to get him going all over again. Ray Phillips of Redcliffe is so happy at being able to last 20 minutes, he's prepared to give us his full name. Mr H of Bedford, meanwhile, is very precise in his time measurements. He's clocking up 12-15 minutes extra every time he hits the sack. Too much information already, gents. Mr PW of London has lasted a full 17...