Ahoy there! So terribly sorry to bother you. I’ve got a book out - and I know what you’re thinking: It’s just another plug for Red Top. But it’s not! Really!

This is the story of the Marathon des Sables. I ran it last year. And now… I’ve set a love-story there. (Of course)

The Woman Who Was The Desert Dream. If you’re interested, then here’s the link: http://amzn.to/1g9q4mN

Just come back from trying to swim the Hellespont.

EPIC FAIL!

I’d done a year’s worth of training, but somehow in the Force 4 wind, it wasn’t good enough.

Still - just means that I get to do it all over again next year.

Like Samuel Beckett says: Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better!

I love that! FAIL BETTER!

Here’s the full story in Huffington…

We hard-nosed hacks are nothing if not versatile…

Like a bumble bee, I buzz from trenchant columns on the impending Royal circumcision to reviews of the hottest kiddy shows at the Edinburgh Fringe.

And that includes The Amazing Bubble Man. If you’ve got a kid under eight, they’ll love him…

Seeing as we royal pundits have very little to write about at the moment, what with Prince George being stuck in Bucklebury with Kate and his grandparents, we must endeavour to make bricks from straw…

One small matter that is greatly occupying the American press is whether Georgie is going to be circumcised.

A very interesting question. Abstruse. We see it through a glass darkly.

I pondered it long and hard - and, after some days, I came up with the answer. The correct answer.

This, I hope, will put an end to all further speculation…

So: my latest whirl in the Huffington Post

Watching Prince William and Kate coming out of the hospital with their new baby, I was very struck by one teeny-tiny thing that they said - William has already changed a nappy.

It seems like quite a small thing. But as regards our Royal Family, it’s a pretty big deal!

He’s only the first male heir in British history ever to have changed a nappy! Then, later, he only goes and straps the kid’s car-seat into the back of the Range Rover.

Looks like Wills and Kate are going to be doing things rather differently… Here’s my latest whirl in the Huffington Post.

Just been to see Scottish Ballet’s Highland Fling.
What a romp! Matthew Bourne has set this pre-Victorian opera in modern-day Glasgow.

Here’s my latest whirl in the Huffington Post.

I am being taken to task over my grammar…

Unfortunately, it was not in a piece of copy that I wrote, but in a headline that was stuck on one of my Huffington Post pieces.

It’s an interesting one - and though various pedant mates have gloated that the grammar is wrong, I’m not sure. Because although I may not all the rules of grammar, I have a pretty good feel for what sounds right… and if it sounds right, then it generally IS right.

It’s why I have no problem at all with split infinitives. You get some nutters who have this knee-jerk reaction to a split infinitive. But a hell of a lot of the time, a split infinitive is not only clearer but it sounds better too.

Anyway… on this particular point…

The headline for the piece was “None of us know ‘The Real Kate’…

And my pedant chums are telling me that it should be “None of us knows ‘The Real Kate’…

Their reasoning is that “None” is a singular, short for “No one”…

But I reckon that, actually, the first sounds better…

What do we reckon?

And so… Kate, The Duchess of Cambridge, has been snapped by a paparazzo on the beaches of Mustique and the first pictures of the royal baby-bump have appeared on the cover of Chi magazine.

Then, not a day later, this same front cover happens to be “accidentally” flashed up on “This Morning”…

Perhaps I’ve recently developed clairvoyant powers, but… I saw this one coming…

My irreverent thoughts in the Huffington Post…

My latest little whirl in the Huffington Post. On Camilla. And the Queen.

For a long while now, the Palace has been putting out this idea that when Charles becomes King, then Camilla will merely be his “Princess Consort”…

It’s not going to happen, my friends. When Charles becomes Charles III, Camilla will become… The Queen!