According to a survey by clothing manufacturer Bwear, 64% of men with skinny girlfriends (anything under a size 12) admit to being unfaithful, compared with just 20% of men whose partners are above size 12.

Just thought I'd mention that. No particular reason.

I've just discovered that over at the South Park Studios site you can create your very own South Park character. So seeing as I'm barely out of my twenties, and clearly still young enough to legitimately spend the afternoon playing around with cartoon characters instead of writing anything worthwhile, I've created the South Park version of me.



I think I've captured my likeness quite well there. It's like looking in a mirror.

Ok, it's time for a quick update on the words and phrases which are bringing people flocking to my website. Every time I get a hit from a search engine, the words searched for are kindly logged for me. Which is how I know that 31% of ALL visitors to my website searched for the words "Jail Babes". But hey, when you're ranked number one out of 170,000 websites on Yahoo for that term (no really, it's true), it's hardly surprising.

The good news though is that I'm also now appealing to both sexes, having just received a hit for "guys in jail suits". I presume they mean those orange American things. They are quite fetching.

In the past three days I've also had...

"He doesn't return my calls".
What? That's not a search, it's a complaint. Are people now using Google as an agony aunt?

"Shaved blondes".
But surely if they're shaved, it's immaterial what their hair colour is? Or am I missing something?

"How is the packaging of Toblerone done?".
I'm ranked #11 on Yahoo for that. And not only do I not know the answer, but I'm not entirely sure I care.

"Poem written in 1990".
What, ANY poem?? Remarkably I appear to be ranked #2 out of 256,000 sites on Yahoo for that one. Is that even possible? Second out of a quarter of a million? I wouldn't mind, but I don't even write poetry. Well, apart from that one in 1990.

And finally...

"Micro Pygmy Hippos".
Another number one ranking on Yahoo! Yes! I knew I could do it.

Incidentally, what are micro pygmy hippos..?

Two weeks after 'Be Worth It' was rejected by both the Royal Court and the Soho Theatre, in what can only be described as an outrageous administrative error (probably), I've finally picked myself up and read through the play for the first time in four months, with a view to highlighting the sections needing a rewrite. And the result..?

I don't want to change a single word. In fact, I have no idea how I wrote that thing in the first place, so the thought of improving on what's already there seems kinda stoopid. In fact it scares the hell out of me. That play is the best damn thing I've ever written, which for someone with low self esteem is quite a statement, and I'm not at all sure I can write anything like that again. At least not without significantly increasing my bagel consumption, having no life, and driving myself to the brink of insanity for three months, which is how I managed it last time. That darn play nearly killed me.

So I'm pig-headedly refusing to take out my chisel and chip away at any slight imperfections. The whole thing would just crack and dissolve into a million pieces.

Instead, it's going straight back out there. It's off to join the new improved 'Internet Cafe' at the Warehouse Theatre's International Playwriting Festival, and on top of that, is heading for the Sussex Playwrights 2004 full-length play competition. Which, seeing as I was born in Hastings, and I now know Brighton like the back of my hand (well, I can find the police station with no more than two or three wrong turns), I should have no problem winning.

So being an obsessive who can't leave anything til the morning, I was naturally up til 3:30am last night sorting out these entries. And simultaneously making myself poor. I fitted a new printer cartridge immediately before printing 'Internet Cafe' three weeks ago, and as of this morning, that's virtually empty. So let's consider the cost of sending out these three plays...

Inkjet Paper (1 copy of 'Internet Cafe', 2 of 'Be Worth It', 340 pages) = £3.40

Envelopes (for sending of plays, return of plays, acknowledgement of plays, sealed contact details) = £4

Printer Cartridge (about 90% of one cartridge) = £20

Postage (for sending of plays and return postage of plays & acknowledgements) = £20

Contest Entry Fee = £5

GRAND TOTAL = £52.40

And that doesn't include paper fasteners, electricity, blood, sweat, or indeed tears.

It's no wonder I'm living in poverty.

Sixteen months into this blog and I finally have a bona fide scoop, involving two, count them, TWO top tabloid celebrities...

...and the woman on whose chest they sit. Not to mention her musically talented boyfriend. It would be total insania not to reveal the facts of this story here, especially as it means I might have to talk about cleaning my car instead, but sadly I have been banned from revealing the details of this explosive incident in case it leads to the sacking of a dear friend.

Which obviously wouldn't bother me in the slightest, but I'm scared of physical violence and you don't mess with someone who's been trained in the use of fire extinguishers.

So in place of top quality tabloid scandal... sigh...

I've cleaned my car this morning.

I know, even I'm not interested. But hey, don't blame me, I'm not the one with the morals here. I'd happily sell this insider information to the hack with the biggest chequebook quicker than you can say "Rebecca Loos". But what can I do, my hands are tied.

I think it might rain later...

I went into Ipswich this afternoon to do some high level banking (mostly at the cashpoint near the cheesecake shop), but I subsequently found myself standing for hours in the queue at the pharmacy in Boots. The girl in front of me was engaging the assistant in deep conversation about her choice of purchase, whereupon the assistant dutifully led her off into the store to choose an alternative brand, leaving the rest of us happy shoppers high and dry.

Naturally, being British, I chose not to complain, but instead stood there quietly tutting, sighing, and looking despairingly from my watch to my fellow queuers. As someone who buys his footwear from charity shops, it's not the first time I've felt uncomfortable standing around in boots, but on this occasion I spent the time constructively cursing people who don't know what they're doing in shops, and arrive at the counter before having completed their shopping.

Eventually the girl returned, I exchanged one last empathetic roll of the eyes with my fellow queuers, and stepped forward, by now feeling fully justified in requesting some painkillers. Having found them for me, the assistant began to scan my other items, before stopping at my two boxes of earplugs, and saying "Did you know these are 3 for the price of 2?"

I looked at the growing queue of frustrated shoppers behind me, looked at the assistant, considered the situation for a moment, then checked my sensitivity at the door and said:

"Ooooh, are they? I'll go and get another box!"

I'm sure everyone understood, as I disappeared off to the other side of the store. And I would've been back quite quickly too if it wasn't for all the women with pushchairs who insisted on blocking the babyfood aisle en route. Honestly, don't they know that's the most direct route to the earplug section?

Still, all's well that ends well. And fortunately looks can't kill, so I was able to live long enough to get out of Boots and buy up half the contents of the Mind Shop down the road. You can never have too many earplugs or too many pairs of charity shop jeans, that's what I say.

Obviously it's prudent to take your time over major decisions, and consider all the options before making any new financial commitments. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Apparently. So is it really such a good idea to change your phone company for the first time in your life at one o'clock in the morning, half asleep, after about two minutes thought?

Don't answer that. But on the bright side, it's thanks to people like me that the government brought in laws about cooling off periods. This is why I never go to Spain - I'd come back with timeshare holidays totalling fifty-three weeks a year.

But anyway, it's not my fault, I was forced into action by my latest phone bill, which had the audacity to be twice as much as any phone bill which had ever previously dropped through my letterbox. I'm not saying who's to blame, but the answer begins with 'L'.

And ends with 'isa'. So I decided to take action. That was at about 12:58am. Ten minutes later I'd handed over my bank details - there's no point hanging around. So I have officially left BT, after a lifetime of paying through the nose for frankly nothing, and joined OneTel, who are kindly offering me free local and national calls 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for just £10.99 a month.

So now might be a good time to change your number, coz you can bet your life I will be calling, and I won't be putting the phone down.

I've just investigated the worldwide impact of my Which Poddington Pea Are You quiz. I may have been stoopid to write the thing, but a quick survey of the search engines shows that there are clearly people with far bigger problems than me. A number of people are actually displaying their pea personality on their own websites.

There's 20 year old Emily, who's happy to admit to being Sleep-pea. Alex and Ruth, a couple of teenagers from an American independent preparatory school, who are Sweet-pea and Hap-pea respectively (leading to the comment from Ruth, "Haha! I was in Girl Scouts" - you see, it DOES produce accurate results. And some people thought I just threw that quiz together).

And then there's Carol, who, on top of finding out which Poddington Pea she is, is also planning to fight me for Orlando Bloom. Which is worrying.

But not as worrying as the fact that 20 year old girls on both sides of the Atlantic are perfectly happy to display the words "Good grief, you make me sick", alongside my name and website address. Still, at least my writing is reaching a wider audience.

I think I've found my soulmate.

Blogger have recently added a new feature (well it's new to me, but I'm fairly unobservant, so it's probably been around for months) allowing you to create your own little profile page. I've no idea why, but I'm not averse to indulging in pointless activities, so I filled mine in. Which, if you're VERY bored, you can view here.

This resulted in two interesting pieces of information (apart from finding out I was born in the year of the ox, which explains why I'm such a hard worker):

The first is that it tells me I've written over 34,000 words so far in this blog. Which I found surprising, considering that until recently I barely managed to scrape together a couple of sentences a week. So I investigated further and found that 30,000 of those words have been written since January. Which explains why I never have time to write anything important - I've been far too busy here, writing half a novel's worth of crap since Christmas.

Although having said that, my last play was 29,000 words, and has so far received fewer positive comments than this blog, so perhaps it was time well spent.

But anyway, far more important than that, is that this new profile feature has led to the discovery of my perfect match. I was asked to enter some of my favourite music, so being deliberately awkward, I entered four of my less well known favourites, first among them being Lucy Woodward. (Stop mouthing "who?"). Having done so, I found I could click on the name and find out how many of the other millions of bloggers worldwide had named the lovely Lucy in their profile. And the answer...?

One.

Only one other blogger in the entire world likes Lucy. And what's more it's a girl. So I clicked on her, and...

She likes Michelle Branch and Matchbox 20 too. Is that spooky or what? She likes three of my four obscure musical favourites. The only one not mentioned is The Senators, but frankly no one's ever heard of The Senators. And I mean no one. Boy, if I ever met anyone who liked The Senators, I'd probably fall in love or something.

So Jesse, as her name appears to be, is clearly my soulmate, and the girl I should be spending the rest of my life with.

There appear to be just two problems:

1. She lives in Australia.

2. She's 14.

But hey, the course of true love never runs smoothly. So what if she lives on the other side of the world, and happens to be a small child? Besides, by the time I've saved up enough money for the airline ticket, she'll probably be 18 anyway.

Fantastic news! I've just discovered I'm now officially the number one web resource on Google for the phrase "Linda Tonkin".

It's something I've always dreamt of. Well, for the past eleven days anyway.

I wonder if Linda knows I'm making her famous here? I bet the woman's thrilled. That's if she hasn't already left the area after finding out everyone hates her.

I was watching ITV's fine talk show 'Trisha' this morning (and what's more, I'm not ashamed to admit it). The subject of today's edition was something along the lines of "I'm Too Fat to Marry". So naturally I felt I should watch, for research purposes only you understand.

Anyhoo, the show featured a woman in her fifties who weighed 25 stone. Trisha, always one to seek out the truth behind the headlines, posed the question:

"Have you always been a larger lady?"

To which the woman in question replied:

"No, no, not at all..."

She then paused for a second, before continuing in complete seriousness with:

"I didn't start putting on weight til I was 11."

So obviously being fat is quite a recent thing for her. She must have struggled to adjust.

I now realise I've been lying my whole life to all those people who have ever asked me "Have you always been able to write?". The answer of course is no. There was a good three or four years at the beginning of my life when I struggled to pick up a pen at all.

My Big Sis has sent me a card from Texas which reads:

"In pig years...



Beneath which she's written "Americans are just fantastic."

They certainly are.

Well all good things must come to an end, and so it was that I reluctantly agreed to tag and release Lisa back into the wild. We diced with death on the way back down to Brighton yesterday, and not just by eating at a service station branch of Burger King. An accident on the A23 just north of Brighton had closed the road, meaning we were forced to enjoy a tour of Burgess Hill at speeds of up to 5mph. Still, a couple of hours earlier and we'd have been enjoying a tour of heaven, so you can't complain.

Despite Lisa's deliberate attempts to get me lost, I successfully ignored her and found her flat, where I picked up another two packets of Polos and was treated to a demonstration of a stereo system in perfect working order. I also wondered how anyone can own CDs by both Eminem and Barry Manilow.

A quick chat about jockeys with Lisa's Mum, and I was off again, making my way home via Washington, which I always thought was in America, but is in fact just north of Worthing. I arrived back at the shores of Shotley Gate an injured man, having managed to suck my way through one and a half packets of Polos. My tongue feels like it's been attacked with a blowtorch. They should put a warning on the packet - how am I supposed to know it's not a good idea to eat them non-stop for three hours?

One of the tragedies of my life is that I'm frequently forced to stroke fat-tailed sheep alone, and my dreams of poking aardvarks with company have remained unfulfilled. But that all changed yesterday when Lisa agreed to join me in a hands-on experience at Colchester Zoo. Being a Saturday, the place was full of children, but fortunately, as the only grown man attempting to get close to small furry animals in the children's petting zoo, I was able to force a clear path through the crowds of people half my size, and get my hands on a sheep. And I'm sure Lisa didn't think my attraction to fat-tailed ruminants was anything to worry about. But she is quite polite. Except when she's talking about my taste in hats.

I was forced to admit that I've never actually poked an aardvark, due to the fact that they're always asleep, and unsportingly refuse to come out and be prodded. But I think I successfully demonstrated their big-eared, furry stomached appeal, and may have gained a willing partner in any future poking attempts.

Though possibly I'm alone in my desire to ride a pygmy hippo.

That aside, the underwater sea lion tank was strangely relaxing, and Lisa felt she could fit a baby agouti in her handbag given half a chance, but despite many temptations we failed to leave with any large animals under our coats. Which was mildly disappointing.

But still, spending an evening watching the Eurovision Song Contest will always make up for any disappointment. Especially when it features a French woman on stilts, and a gay Bosnian singing about disco.

The postman has brought me three interesting items of mail this morning:

1. A postcard from St Lucia, on which my Big Sis has helpfully written "the arrow shows where we are staying", and then drawn an arrow which points off the edge of the postcard.

2. A party invitation from da Melee, which promises "champagne and canapes", and insists on "smart dress". Yeah, like I own anything smart. I'd better get down the charity shops.

And spookiest of all...

3. A letter from the Wolsey Theatre inviting me to a production of 'Candida' in Ipswich next month. They HAVE to be reading my blog. I study Candida at A-level, 13 years on I finally reveal the secret in the poet's heart to an expectant public via this blog, and just ten days later I'm being begged to attend a new production of the play. At least I THINK it's the same play. It says it's written by Bernard Shaw, but it also describes it as "an exquisite comedy". But I expect that's just a typographical error.