As a veggie, Christmas dinner is never overly inspiring for me. The thought of furkey (fake turkey) and fausages (fake sausages) wrapped in facon (you get the picture), is about the most unappealing load of pap imaginable. While it may look reasonably realistic, (despite the slightly anaemic look of the fausages), the taste is pretty bad. So, what is the best Christmas meal for us "granola munchers"?

Some opt for just going with the trimmings - roast potatoes, parsnips and of course the sprouts. However, I think that's always a bit of a cop out and doesn't allow for the usual Christmas meal gorging which should be a mandatory right.

While the BBC website has some exotic sounding ideas – this year's recommendation is a pie made of squash, barley and spinach - it never has anything that particularly whets my appetite.

Perhaps the clichéd nut roast is really the answer. Pre-made and just as good as turkey in leftover sandwiches for Boxing Day, the nut roast is certainly not original but at least it is tasty.

Bon appetite!

It has got to that time of year again for mince-pie scoffing, office Christmas does, and of course…semi-naked Santa Claus racing??

Apparently entrants for the annual Santa Claus race rocketed this year with people the world over clamouring to join in their country's respective Santa race.

Races in Britain took place all over the country from London's Battersea Park to Liverpool, from Worcester to Leeds, the bearded runners were out in force raising money for charity.

While the prudish Brits were out in full Santa suit, in Hungary most runners wore little more than St Nick's white beard and hats to keep the cold at bay.

Men, women and children of all ages take part in the Santa runs each year to raise money for various charities around the country.

Labels: christmas, Hungarian, Hungary, santa

If this week you find yourself in the garden swaddling your evergreen pots with bubblewrap so that they don't freeze over the coming cold months and, prompted by the jerkily moving Godzilla-like shadow looming behind you, turn to find yourself faced with a five foot tall dinosaur, try not to be alarmed.

My advice is the following: simply lay down your trowel, your pot and your bubblewrap, make a calm and collected visual appraisal of the dinosaur and search for its off button. Yes, you may have to lower yourself onto your back and slide beneath the beast's belly, trying your best not to be trampled underfoot, but, once you've fondled with its undercarriage and completed your task, you may find yourself due considerable monetary reward.

If you think this sounds crazy or that I might be being facetious, think again. Because such a simulcrum really is on the loose somewhere and it may just be your garden. I know this because it has been reported that one of the main exhibits from the Walking With Dinosaurs exhibition, currently touring Mexico, has inexplicably disappeared.

The exhibition's spokesperson says of the strange disappearance of the £60,000 dinobot, "Only in Mexico! How it happened we don't know."

Let's just be glad it wasn't one of the 43 foot tall dinosaurs; were you to find one of those monsters lost, desultorily stamping down your street, I could understand having some serious reservations about searching for the off button. I also imagine there'd be quite a few wrecked vehicles and some difficult explaining to do to your car insurance company.

Image © InfoMofo via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence

Labels: car insurance, dinobot, dinosaurs, Mexico

Revelations that the BBC's Top Gear team faked aspects of a "flying caravan" segment on their show should hardly come as a surprise.

Aside from inevitable ponderings about how stratospheric the programme's car insurance bill must be, whenever I view Top Gear the one thought that I most frequently return to is just how scripted it seems.

And I'm not just talking about the feature segments; I'm also talking about the "live" aspects of the show. However much Jeremy Clarkson might not like to be thought of as a tight-wearing thesp, my reading of the show has him as little more than the next line of a long legacy of actors that includes, among countless others, Lawrence Oliver, George Takei and Kenneth Williams.
For, although I don't particularly rate him as an actor (Richard "the hamster" Hammond gets my vote - I really think he has the potential to be rather good), it seems to me undeniable that the programme is as and rehearsed and scripted as the most professional West End show.

I guess it can only be testament to the show's writers and actor-presenters that there is still debate about whether the programme is all ad-libbed. I have an incredulous colleague who grows indignant and adamant at the mere suggestion that even the tiniest part of the show might be "faked". It is also a great tribute to May, Hammond and Clarkson that Top Gear has even won an Emmy in the Non-Scripted Entertainment Category.

So, when it was revealed by a helicopter pilot that James May's flying caravan stunt was "set up, the programme had been completely scripted - we were hired to play along" and that the crash-landing "was a controlled accident", I finally felt vindicated. At last, surely, my colleague would be forced to face the truth.
"No," he said, "James May, may be a bit-part actor with dandy-long hair, but Clarkson, he's a genius and a man of action – he never fakes anything!"

Image © tonylanciabeta, via Flickr under Creative Commons Licence

When most people get lost, it may add an extra few minutes onto a journey and a few extra miles on the clock, however one elderly man from Australia has to have taken the record for longest distance travelled while lost.

Having gone out to buy a morning newspaper, the 81-year-old ended up driving more than 370 miles after taking the wrong turn on a major highway.

The New South Wales resident drove for nine hours before eventually asking for directions from a policeman at a petrol station.

The man commented, "I just went out on the road to have a drive, a nice peaceful drive".

He denied the need for a satellite navigation system after exclaiming that he'd only ever been lost once before.

I think however his little road trip may have given his wife a pretty good idea what to get him for Christmas.