Funny sad...

Playlist
Cloudland Blue Quartet – Soundingfall
J R Monterose - J R Monterose
Various – Strange Soul
Kiss – Kiss Gold

Aargh to Fopp today and went a wee bit crazy on the old purchasing front...

Did still manage top keep the £ : CD ratio pretty low though...

£22 : 10 CDs + 2 DVDs...



Also £4 on the story of jazz label, Impulse – which is supposed to be £20 and sells in HMV at present for £12..

Remember, HMV owns Fopp...

If I’d bought this lot through Amazon it’d have cost me around £90...

Of course if it had been £90 I wouldn’t have bought it...

This is how a bargain becomes a “Reilly” – i.e. a bargain which you would not ordinarily have bought at the real price...

In the evening, to the hip jazz sounds of J.R. Monterose, we enjoyed our first Red Thai Chicken Curry for a good while – tasty as ever...

Then, six hours of the emotional roller coaster ride that is “Comic Relief” – which I would normally avoid like the plague but the line up promised to include many of my favourites...

Well, most of the night was less than funny – and I’m including the sketches here – obviously the between fun films were harrowing...

The little boy, Paul, just 12 months old who slipped into a malaria induced coma and died in front of the cameras...

And a second young boy, 8 years old - same age as my nephew Oliver - who was born HIV positive and contracted TB, eventually succumbing to ravaging disease last November – those images will stay with me for a long time...

Elbow's short piece, "Puncture Repair" from their album "Leaders of the Free World", following the first of these films, touched the spot...

Elbow - Puncture Repair (1:48)


The only sketches which entertained were French & Saunders’ “Mamma Mia” piss-take, Ricky Gervais & Steven Merchant’s piece, Catherine Tait’s old lady ripping up her cheque for £1,000 and Armstrong & Miller – oh and the fat bloke from “Gavin & Stacey” coaching the England football team...

A big thanks to everyone concerned for not setting up a Scottish show with Jackie Bird to which we would have been relocated with annoying regularity...

On “Comic Relief TOTP”, Franz Ferdinand and Oasis entertained – two bands which I don’t really like - and strange to see It Bites' smiley, bouncy left handed bassist playing behind Take That...

The ongoing stupidity of the Great British general public was confirmed once again however, by the song which apparently went straight in at No 1 this week by someone called Flo Rida (geddit) – weak...

As for the rest, well with two years to write these sketches, you’d think it could be a bit funnier – Little Britain’s two sketches were frankly cringe inducingly dire...

However, notwithstanding the crapness of the majority of the entertainment on show tonight, the two films mentioned above, moved me to donate for the first time ever to a charity telethon – I hope my Crispycat Dollars will bring some respite and hope to someone somewhere...

You can donate here : http://www.comicrelief.com/

A malaria net costs £5...

No pressure...

Normally I won't donate to these pleas for money for the simple fact that the people haranguing me are "celebrities" who I personally feel are a tad overpaid for what they do - for example Jonathon Ross earns around £2M a year under his current BBC contract...

Kudos however to the anonymous donor who gave £6M to the cause - I just hope he/she ticked the Gift Aid box...

Highlight of the Day : Being reminded of just how lucky I was to be born in the UK...