TQR

Really sorry Bib. Plenty of people in this particularly shit boat at the moment, but hopefully with your obvious time-served experience and loyalty you'll get snapped up very soon.

I’d love to see Ding win. Not that he will, of course; Ronnie’s looking mighty.

Shaping up to be a great weekend for Force India/Racing Point/Pink Mercedes. Sergio Perez has tested positive for Covid again, so Nico Hulkenberg is back in the car (hooray!). Plus, off the back of the persistent complaints to the FIA from Renault boss Cyril Irritaboule, they’ve been fined €400k and docked 15 championship points for copying Merc’s 2019 car. With Stroll still somewhat underperforming in the car he has this year, that’s going to hurt their championship a great deal. Still, who knows what’s going to happen in this 70th Anniversary Grand Prix? With track temps likely to be at least in the mid-50s, everyone’s tyres might just wither and die.

Every bit as energising today as it was in the 00s when I was trying to master the drums.

Alexei Sayle is 68 today, comrade!

Hell’s Basement, a Canadian brewery, is one of two companies to get their Māori slightly wrong and have accidentally named their NZ Pale Ale “Pubic Hair”.

I’d take a strong club hammer to him myself.

Friday: 106

Andrew’s Spitting Image puppet. It’s extremely lifelike as it can’t sweat either.

Sorting out RfQs in the office and I’m bored cuntless, but this is playing so it’s not all bad. I do wish, however, the lyric “All this will fade away...” were fucking true.

Latest Tory gaffe dump: they’ve spent £150million on 50 million masks that are totally unusable, from an offshore banker with no history of supplying medical equipment. Captain Tom’s going to have to drag his sorry arse around his garden another 500 times or so to pay for this bollocks.

Barbara Windsor is 83 today And also happy birthday to Barbara Windsor, who is 83 today

One rather alarming snippet of the UK-US post-Brexit trade deal: So, US private firms would have equal access to UK government contracts, the UK must automatically accept pharmaceuticals from the US, and if we don’t, the US will be able to sue us in a special court.

I’d like to ask the Archbishop of Cunterbury if it’s also unrealistic to ask them not to be horrendous sex pests? Also, of all the backers Andrew could get in this scandal...the Church perhaps isn’t the best.

Yep. It’s the precise reason why The Thick Of It couldn’t happen again - our political landscape is too bewildering and lunatic-heavy even for a genius like Iannucci to top it.

Thursday: 90

I thought coke was meant to make one more interesting?

Formula E makes a return later, in Berlin; there’s going to be 6 races in 9 days to wrap up this disjointed season. For F1 sceptics, FE is definitely worth a go if you haven’t - the racing is seriously close and dicey.

I got one this morning with that same photo that said “How big was that fucking jacket??”

Pat Smear, off of Fighting the Foo, is 61 today

Here’s a headline that’ll put you in need of therapy:

Hate to say it @Paul Bearer, I’m due another 5 for my guess of 98

That all being said about Johnson, he's a world leader, by virtue of him leading the governing political party in this country. By definition, that's what one is, no matter how irrefutably shonky some may be. It'd be different if I was saying something like Leader of the Free World - that's open to discussion with regard to what the 'free world' is. I haven't extrapolated anything too far. I've merely added in the fact that a Scottish indyref isn't imminent to the only reason you gave for voting to leave the EU - to make the Scottish unhappy about being part of the UK. Given that you apparently predicted everything that's happened with regard to EU negotiations and the UK government so far, you obviously also predicted that this is all the vote going your way would achieve. So, your vote has put Johnson in power, as you thought it would, and it's made Scotland miserable, as you thought it would. And no, ignoring the request for another Scottish independence referendum wouldn't be hypocritical - it'd be in line with what was said before the referendum took place - this is once in a generation.

It looks in horror. It doesn’t get another independence referendum though, does it? And, unlike potentially with EU membership, a change of UK government still won’t change that. So as far as you’re concerned, your vote has achieved ‘Blibberwimble’ becoming a world leader and Scottish people becoming a bit more unhappy. Worthwhile